/ GRATEFUL / I / ME / KINDNESS / VISIT / LAST MONTH / YOUR FACTORY...

8. / grateful / I / me / kindness / visit / last month / your factory / A. I’m grateful for your kindness to me when I visited your factory last month. B. I’m grateful with your kindness to me when I visited your factory last month. C. I’m grateful of your kindness to me when I visited your factory last month. D. I’m grateful at your kindness to me when I visited your factory last month. PART III : READING ( 6.0 pts ) Question 7 : Read the passage below then pick out ONE best option ( A,B,C or D ) in each question : I left school at fifteen. I was an academically bright lad who was urged by some of his teachers not to leave, but I wanted out, to see life, and I didn’t want to reach beyond the expectation of the friends who left school with me. I worked for a year in a laundry, as a van-boy delivering dry cleaning. On turning sixteen I applied to be, and eventually began working as, a trainee heating engineer with a medium-sized company in East Belfast. The first months were boring. The work was not demanding but I found the environment of the factory annoying. I remember my first week .I left the factory to meet up with a friend and I realized that I had forgotten to collect my wages. My friend thought I was an idiot. After many months working in the factory, I was sent off to college to study for my Certificate in Heating Engineering. I found the classroom routine unpleasant and I remember feeling a sense of limitation. Five years of this- to end up as a heating engineer and continue with that for the foreseeable future was not an exciting thought. Although I had left school against the advice of my teachers I had, without telling anyone, tried to continue my studies in literature at evening classes. It was a boring walk from one end of the city to another and to sit amongst adults was confusing. I was the youngest in the class, so the companionship I knew at school was absent. I put up with it for a short period. It was too long a walk on cold winter’s nights and it was hard to concentrate on Shakespeare with wet shoes and soaking trousers. So I carried on reading books and started writing poetry at home. By chance, I won some prizes and literary awards in national competitions. A young woman from a TV company came to the college one day. She told me in the quiet of the corridor that I had won a national poetry award. I stared at her in astonishment and disbelief. She wanted to make a short film about me, to which I said: ‘ No, I couldn’t do that.’ Not that I had any real excuse. I was just frightened. She eventually persuadedme that I should do it the following day. Off I went to Shaws Bridge, on the outskirts of Belfast.They made a short film of me reading one of my poems and I was forever after occupied with a fascination for words.I wondered what I should do after this, and decided some weeks later that I could not stand the idea of spending the rest of my days dealing with pipes. So one evening, I hesitatingly told my parents that I wanted to return to school.They were shocked and, I think, a little afraid but they did not try to persuade me not to. They wanted to know if I was sure, if I knew what it meant and whether I was aware that if I gave up my training it would be very difficult to get a good job.But nothing could put me off, and they pursued the matter no further.