Candidates’ Name: …………………………………..…………………………..…………………..

 

Random No. Personal No.

Signature: …………………..………………………

 

 

(Do not write your school / Center name or Number anywhere on this booklet)

112/1

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Paper 1

July / Aug 2024 2 HOURS

 

 

Uganda Certificate Of Education ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Paper 1

TIME: 2 HOURS

 

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

This Paper consists of two Sections: A and B. It has four examination items. Section

A is Compulsory.

Answer One item in Section B. Answer three examination items in all.

Answers to Section A must be written in the spaces provided.

Answers to Section B must be written in the answer booklets/ answer sheets provided. Any additional items answered will not be scored.

 

FOR EXAMINER’S USE ONLY
SECTION	ITEM	SCORE(S)	EXAMINER’S SIGNATURE
A	1
	2
B	3
	4

 

 

 

TOTAL

 

SECTION A

Item 1.

Read the text below.

 

Leaders are changed with the responsibility of providing inspiration to their subordinates. Employees will always look up to this. It can come inform of motivation in different ways as designed by the administration. However, modern day leaders have failed to meet this and it has proved a challenge today. It demotivates the workers and they feel their effort are not appreciated by the system. Inspiring workers will help them to focus on the value of their work and share the vision of team work in a unified way and the result translates into success for the company or institution.

 

A key part of a leader’s talent and employee development. It’s important to search out the potential in your team members and encourage their growth through organizing workshops, seminars and allowing for refresher courses. When one’s leadership cannot foster staff or workers develop it faces a lot of challenges. Even when this is supposed to be done, modern leaders have to some extend failed to implement this. They have failed to identify their worker’s interests and push them towards attaining the skills for the good of the company.

 

It is incumbent upon leaders to cause change in their institutions, and change for the better. However, they have sometimes failed to implement this due to factors either within or beyond their means. Today, leaders see causing change as a big shift that would give their workers opportunities to progress to other levels and thereby dropping the company. They decide to keep them in the same environment and conditions without minding their issues. Change seems a scary with leaders as it creates some sense of uncertainty. They forget that how we work is changing like never before and employees will look to leadership for guidance and reassurance. It’s important to validate the feelings of your team and help them to feel their fears are heard. Helping them to find the positives of the change can lower resistance towards it. Workplace conflict can be extremely detrimental when handled poorly, causing stress to almost half of employees. There will be times as a leader when you have to manage conflict between team members or

 

 

between yourself and an employee. Conflict can feel uncomfortable but you need to solve it before it upsets the team.

 

If the conflict is between two employees, try and facilitate them in solving the issue themselves by encouraging listening and compromise. If one of your employees disagrees with you, make sure you consider their point of view, and don’t be afraid to change your approach if theirs is better. Handling different perspectives and conflicts among employees is a big leadership challenge today. Given the diversity of employees within the workplace, it’s unsurprisingly that friction arises from individuals’ differing experiences, ideas, and

perspectives. The challenge for leaders is creating space for those ideas to be shared and ensuring that conflicting ideas are channeled into a productive discussion that allows for growth and shared understanding It’s common, especially for new leaders, to lack confidence or feel like they don’t deserve to be in a leadership position. Dealing with imposter syndrome is a challenge most leaders encounter in executing their duties. There are a number of different types of imposter syndrome. You might question your own skills or judgment which could lead to indecisiveness. Or you might feel like you have to tackle everything alone which could prevent you from asking for the help you need. To

squash imposter syndrome, look for evidence of your capability in feedback from your line manager or peers. You were given the role for a reason! And continue to develop your own skills in areas you find most difficult.

 

In leadership managing and keeping a united team is key to steering a reasonable management. Challenges are faced when the leader is new to the team, they find it difficult to quickly adopt the strategies and the dynamics and work well with the team. It may become tricky for leaders to fit in a system yet they have to auger leadership. leaders also encounter communication challenges in leadership .

Keeping everyone on the same page. In a fast-paced, changing environment can be tough for leaders. It’s important to keep communication frequent and open so that everyone is on the same page. Developing a culture of feedback within a team is an essential way to ensure they can really progress together and individually.

 

Staying honest is a leadership virtue, but most leaders today have failed to keep it. As a leader, you’ll sometimes have to communicate difficult things to your team. Things that may cause a lot of hiccups amongst employees. This has always been a challenge with leaders who do not want to open and say the truth. Sometimes

 

 

they compromise honesty and be silenced by their inferiors. It’s important to share tough news or information as clearly and as honestly as possible. Prepare what you’re going to say and make sure there’s a chance for you to answer any questions.

 

There will be times when you have to make hard decisions as a leader. It might mean making an unpopular choice or taking an action that upsets someone but is best for the business overall. In those moments, you can feel alone and unprepared for the task ahead. Take a deep breath and remember that doing the right thing doesn’t always mean doing the easy thing. Take bold steps and make painful and meaningful decisions for the good of the company. Managing company resources can be especially tricky if you’ve got a great team that everyone wants to work with as a leader. There is therefore need to create a clear workload so that you know what requests for support you can accommodate and what you cannot.

Prioritize work coming in against the core purpose of your team so you make sure you say yes to the things that create the most value, void of this may plug you into a leadership crisis. Seeking feeding from employees is yet another challenge especially those who head big companies. This may keep the workers at parallel with the company cores and in the process things may fall apart. Things won’t always go to plan and staying positive in the face of disappointment is a real challenge for leaders. But it’s important to move on, especially if the team is also feeling down and looking to you for motivation. Acknowledge the disappointment and identify what you can learn from it. Then use it as fuel to do better next time.

 

Leading others can be challenging. There may well be times when you feel daunted or overwhelmed by the responsibility. You’ll need to be able to keep yourself motivated, deal with the stress that comes with uncertainty, and avoid emotional exhaustion and burnout. As a leader, make sure you take the time to really switch off from work. Try to focus on maintaining work-life balance.

Tempting though it is, don’t read and reply to emails and messages outside work hours. It’s exhausting for you and sets an expectation for your team to also work when they shouldn’t. At work, try prioritizing a break in the day to eat and move. Self-care is important if one is to overcome leadership challenges. Keep a bottle of water on your desk so you stay hydrated and try and take a screen break every hour or so to give your eyes (and brain!) a chance to rest.

 

 

For a leader, getting clear on your role is very important in as far as overcoming leadership hurdles is concerned. Make sure you know exactly what you and your team are responsible for, and what you’re not! This really helps with managing resources and making sure you don’t take on too much work and stretch yourself, and your team, too thinly. Really understanding your role allows you to focus on the things that only you can do and delegate tasks that others can tackle amongst the team. Delegating shows you trust your team to get things done and can help develop their skills. And it frees up your time to concentrate on where you can add the most value.

 

There are lots of different types of leaders, and lead. Being authentic in your roles wins nothing but respect and honor from the workers and helps you win battles of leadership. Don’t feel you have to fit into a certain mold. Develop your leadership skills and leadership style by trying different approaches to situations but don’t try to be something you’re not. Part of effective communication is being able to express yourself authentically, so keep that in mind. It is important as a leader to find support in executing your roles. We all need help at times, and sometimes, leadership can feel lonely. Make sure you get the support you need so you can do the best job possible. As a leader, speak to your line manager or see whether a coach or mentor can help you develop your skills. Coaching and mentoring can be extremely helpful for both new and experienced leaders. Coaching creates space to think things through and finding a mentor whose experience you can lean on can also be helpful to overcome challenges of leadership. Investing in making the company culture is key. It can only be possible if you as a leader uses the feedback from the employees well and not for the sake. It will help the workers get accommodated feeling that their views matter a lot. Learn to set clear expectations and always communicate often. Keeping employees in the know is key to unlocking a lot of leadership challenges. Effective leadership does not happen overnight. It takes time and experience to develop the hard and soft skills needed to become a better leader. That said, professional development programs can add structure to the learning process. Through this structure you’ll set goals, work through difficult scenarios, and delve deeper into the root causes of many leadership challenges.

 

 

Task: As the chairperson of the school council at your school, address the prefects on the challenges of modern-day leadership and how they can be overcome as brought out in the passage. Use about 120 words.

 

ROUGH COPY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FAIR COPY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Item 2

Read the following text and respond to the item

Reverend Johnson K. Mwaura was known to be a good man. Above all, he was known to be as good a Christian as they come. Perhaps that’s not saying much, for they did come well below the mark in our village. However, it’s enough to say that he

had run his own life enviably and had at least endeavored to navigate his household as close to the spiritual waters as possible. Well, of course there was his son, Kamau who ministered the oath in the forest, but that could have happened to any father. No one in the village had anything against the pastor, for he never intended any man a bad turn.

Soft spoken except when in combat with Satan at the pulpit, he had a kind of bedside manner who was the sickly souls of the lord’s flock which perhaps might have hurt the more sensitive. Even then, any such apparently patronizing attitude was not intentional. It only arose from the fact that he saw it as his personal responsibility with God’s mercy to mete the cup to these trodden souls.

Looking at the flinching unmovable horde of sinners, one would have felt sorry for the aging reverend. For the Sabbath audience, especially the men flock, consisted of sinners half- asleep, sinners half-drank, sinners who still wore Saturday night shirts sinners still smelling of Saturday night indulgencies. Some of them did not care much whether their hangover sobered down at all or in the serenity of the lord’s house.

A few had been intercepted and diverted to church on their ways to Muriuki’s.

Everyone knew Muriuki’s. you had only to ask your way there and you were a stranger. The bar was virtually next door to church. One Sabbath morning, pastor Mwaura addressed his congregation:

“ I ask you brethren, is it right that the lord should abide under a rusty roof while the devil takes residence under sparkling corrugated iron? Two years ago, I appealed for generous donations so that we can honor God with a much more reverent church.

What do we witness instead? Must we, by the declining to tax ourselves generously, tax the patience of Jehovah? Remember Sodom and Gomorrah?”

You would have heard a pin fall on the Lord’s earthen floor.

“Brethren I ask you where all these people are?” (all these people being the supposed occupants of the empty benches).

 

 

“Arise, follow me. For today we are going to take the word right into the house.”

And off the pastor led his flock towards Muriuki’s. a less determined man would have been put off by the sacrilegious singing that was to be heard from Muriuki’s. but not the pastor. Muriuki’s was crammed to near capacity. The dramatic entry of the reverend had caused silence in the bar. It was too early yet for most of the patrons to be effectively drunk. He encountered no angry outburst.

“What’s the idea, pastor?” Muriuki asked.

Mwaura had not seen Muriuki for months. He angrily snapped, “get thee behind the lord, Satan!” that was the language the devil would understand best. Mwaura then calmly talked about the evils lately evident in the village since the devil took residence. School fees that remaindered un paid, wives who now hardly got a cent to run their homes, kids who went in the tattered shirts. He was soon reduced to tears, and the women were moved but not the men. They took their mugs.

“Why didn’t at least build your bar far from my church?” he asked turning to Muriuki. The pastor then wiped his brows, asked those who would follow him so as to conclude the sermon in God’s own house. He was surprised to see his audience only a little bigger than before when he at last settled at the pulpit.

In a short while, the drunken started rushing in led by the terrorist! They knelt down piously.

“Hands up!” Outside, a shot rang into the air. Everybody stood up. At the door a young white soldier stood pointing his bayoneted rifle all over the church.

“Produce him reverend,” he commanded. “I’ll count one minute.”

“Young man,” reverend Mwaura fired back in English, “get out. This is not place to be soiled by sinners of any color. Were I to believe that any in the Lord’s congregation came here with designs to wreck my service, I would throw them out myself. Don’t you worship God where you come from that you should burst in like this? Look at your boots!”

The soldier looked at the pound of mud on each boot and felt a little ashamed that he should storm in like that. He left as the pastor continued praying amidst whippers of admiration. Reverend Mwaura looked up again and this time almost collapsed. Only a few minutes ago he had the largest audience in months. But once again, Muriuki’s was beating the lord.

 

 

Respond to each of the following tasks about the text:

1. Human beings may not at all be trusted creatures. Even in the religious world, some still find challenges to balance between evil and goodness. As a result, most Christians have lived double standardized lives as they struggle to balance between goodness and evil. With close reference to the passage, point out what makes reverend Mwaura a good Christian and show what kind of man he

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. In life, people and events are often influenced by their locations or They are affected by the activities that happen in their surroundings. These impact their way of life and their response to specific social, cultural, economic and religious events. Referring to the describe the location of reverend Mwaura’s church and show how the location influence his actions in the passage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. There’s an old saying that writers or everything written is never in a vacuum, for it will always have some or entirely total connection to the society. Using the knowledge of the passage, explain the similarities between reverend Mwaura and the pastors in your contemporary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. In the world, not man is perfect. Huma beings are termed as weak creatures, who must blender, falter and derail. Referring to the passage, point out the human weakness the writer seeks to expose in the text and show how best can they be curbed?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. “Arise, follow For today we are going to take the word right into the house.” Said Reverend Mwaura to the Christian folks.

(Report Reverend Mwaura’s words)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. People face different experiences and challenges in the execution of their duties and responsibilities. They encounter and deal with people of different manners, understanding and perceptions. Despite that, they have to execute their duties. However, others give up along the way. What lessons would you pass on to have been learnt from the passage?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TURN OVER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SECTION B

Either:

Item 3.

 

A section of your school community believes the internet is more of an advantage than it is a disadvantage to students. However, the more conservative ones completely write the internet off because of the negative impact social media has had on the young generation. Write a presentation of the advantages and disadvantages of the internet to students with the intention emphasizing its positive contribution.

Or Item 4.

You have collected and read at least two articles or stories in a newspaper or magazine about parents and their children expressing opinions of what parents expect of their children at home. It also presents the responsibilities of both boys and girls at home and in the community. Thus, you realize that you have been mistreated in one way or the other. Write to the family department affairs of your local police complaining about the mistreatment you have faced at home.

 

 

 

 

 

END