Learning a craft

Source A: a newly written contemporary non-fiction-style account.

“My first pottery class met on Thursday in a converted garage. There were eight learners and one tutor. We each received a lump of clay and were asked to make a simple bowl. I had watched several videos before arriving and expected that to help. After ten minutes, my bowl resembled a collapsed hat. The tutor did not rescue it. She asked me to slow down and feel where the wall was becoming too thin.

The clay refused my hurry. When I pushed, it buckled; when I tried to lift it, it sagged between my fingers with magnificent indifference. On a screen, the process had looked obedient. In my hands it argued back. Gradually I stopped chasing the shape in my head and paid attention to the shape on the table. It was uneven, but it stood. I had made something that could hold water, provided nobody demanded that it do so elegantly.

I am used to work that can be corrected by pressing a key. This lesson offered no such clean escape: every attempted improvement left a trace. That was frustrating, then oddly reassuring. I could see my mistakes and the effort that followed them. When the tutor praised one carefully joined edge, I believed her more readily than I would have believed a compliment about the whole bowl. It was a small, specific success, and unmistakably mine.”

Source B: a newly written letter in a nineteenth-century voice. This is a period-voice simulation, not an archival document.

“Dear Father, I have completed my first month in the cabinet-maker's workshop. My tasks are still humble: sweeping, sharpening and carrying timber. The master says that a person who cannot maintain a tool has no business blaming it. I had hoped to begin upon a cabinet almost immediately, and confess that my present employment has tried my patience. Yet I am beginning to understand that the finished object conceals a multitude of preparations.

Yesterday I was permitted to plane the edge of a small board. The first strokes left ridges. The master ran his hand along them, adjusted the blade and returned the plane to me. He did not deliver a speech upon diligence; the wood had already done so. By the afternoon I had produced a smooth edge, and the thin curls gathered at my feet seemed a more satisfactory reward than any praise.

The hours are long, and I cannot claim to enjoy every one of them. There are evenings when the smell of timber follows me even into sleep. Nevertheless, I should now be ashamed to sell work whose faults I had merely hidden. A joint must hold when the maker is no longer present to explain it. If I learn that lesson properly, perhaps the cabinets will follow in their time.”

Refer only to the first paragraph of Source A. Select exactly FOUR true statements. Write their four letters in the answer box.

A. The writer has never watched a pottery video.

B. The first bowl is perfect.

C. The tutor immediately makes the bowl for the writer.

D. There are eight learners.

E. The class meets on Thursday.

F. The first task is a bowl.

G. There are eight tutors.

H. The venue used to be a garage.