FORMATIVE TEST

A. READ THE FOLLOWING STORY THEN ANSWER THE QUESTIONS ABOUT IT.

She awoke on Saturday morning feeling as gray and empty as the sky outside her window. She had a
bunch of stuff to do today, but it would be just an empty person doing it. She didn’t know why she
felt this way. Some days were worse than others. The grayness, the emptiness, as if she were just the
dry hollow husk of something that was supposed to be a life.
Then her mother appeared at the bedroom door. Her father was looking over her mother’s shoulder.
“Happy birthday, JoAnne,” said her mother brightly. “Today’s your big day.”
“You’re Sweet Sixteen now,” said her father, his voice filled with pride. “Happy birthday, Sweetheart.”
“Thanks,” she managed to say, sitting up in bed.
Her mother and father stepped into her room.
“We want to take you out to a farm today,” said her mother. “There is something special there, waiting
for you.”
“The weather report on the radio calls for sunshine by noon,” said her father. “We thought we’d take a
picnic.”
The gray, empty person regarded these two adults from a quiet distance. They wanted to take her to a
farm, with a picnic basket, in the sunshine.
“All right,” she said. “What time do you want to go?”
“How about first I make some pancakes?” suggested her father. “Then we roll by ten.”
“All right.”
She could see that her mother and father were delighted that she had agreed to come with them. She
liked to see them happy together. They both worked so hard at their jobs, and they were usually so
tired. Now they wanted a picnic in the sunshine. A birthday picnic.
Sixteen. And very empty, very gray.

They drove in her father’s red Jeep—she in the passenger seat up front, her mother in the back seat,
her father very chipper as he followed the country roads—for about half an hour, then they turned
into a farm with acres of tall, brown corn.
Tall from a good summer, brown because it was early autumn now.
Her father followed a long driveway between vast fields of corn, to a two-story farmhouse, white with
red trim. She and her mother and father were greeted by a young farmer and his wife, and their two
small kids, and some goats.
But they hadn’t come to see the goats.
The farmer, Wayne, and his wife, Mary, their little boy on his father’s shoulders, their little girl on her
mother’s shoulders, now led JoAnne and her parents to a field much smaller than the fields of corn, a
field filled with neat rows of what she knew were some sort of solar panels.
The sun was just beginning to break through the clouds—she could see scattered patches of blue
overhead—when she heard Mary say, “These are Trackers, JoAnne. They can swing back and forth,
and they can tilt up and tilt down, so that they track the sun from dawn to dusk.”
She saw that, yes, all of the Trackers held their solar panels flat toward the sun. The way she would
hold her hand up to the sun, if she wanted to warm her palm and fingers.
“We’ve got eight rows,” said Wayne, “with twenty-five Trackers in most rows, so in all we’ve got
roughly two hundred clean machines harvesting the sun.”
JoAnne followed Mary between two long rows of Trackers—they were the size of a large apple tree,
the big flat panel covered with smaller solar panels—until they stood in front of, as Mary said,
“Tracker seventeen, row six.”
JoAnne’s father and mother stepped forward.
“This is your Tracker, Sweetheart,” said her father.
“Happy birthday, JoAnne,” said her mother. “This is what we want to give you on your sixteenth
birthday. Something filled with hope for the future.”
 “Something that . . .” Her father tried to find the words. “Your Tracker will follow the sun every day.
When you wake up, your Tracker will be waking up too. All day, even on a cloudy day, this beautiful
machine will turn sunshine into electricity. It sends the electricity through a cable buried in the ground
to a substation, which connects to the grid. So that your sunshine is added to the power that we will
use today in our homes and our offices and our schools. Every day, JoAnne, you add your dose of
sunshine.”
She was feeling less gray. She glanced up at the yellow sun, still a morning sun, low in the autumn sky.
She asked Mary, “Is this Tracker harvesting sunshine right now?” “Yes, it is.”
“And is it turning that sunshine into electricity? Right now?”
“Yes, it is. Right now.”
JoAnne looked at her mother and her father, and felt something enormous in her heart. “This is my
birthday present?”
“Do you like it?” asked her mother, with hope in her eyes.
“Yes,” said JoAnne. “I never would have thought of it. Solar stuff always seemed so technical. But now
that I’m here in a big field of . . . 21st century sunflowers . . . I think that a Tracker . . . could be . . . a
perfect birthday present.”
She smiled, “Thank you, Mother. Thank you, Father. I never before had my very own dose of sunshine.
And I never before could give that dose of sunshine to the world. Every day, every day, for weeks and
months and years, I will give a steady dose of clean energy to the world.”
“Happy birthday, World,” her father said.
She was feeling . . . not empty anymore. She wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something—some
purpose—that was beginning to fill her up. With energy.

1. What is the story about?

2. Who are the characters?

3. When did the story take place?

4. What was Joanne’s feeling before she went to the farm with her parents?

5. Why did her parents give her solar panels as birthday present?

6. How was the ending of the story?

7. What do you learn from the story?

8. Mention 2 sentences using simple past, past continuous, and past perfect.

9. Mention sentences using adjective clause.

10. Mention some adjective stated in the story above.

B. FILL THE BLANK WITH THE APPROPPRIATE FORM OF PAST TENSE (SIMPLE PAST,
PAST CONTINUOUS, OR PAST PERFECT).
1. Satya …… (leave) the school last year.

2. Rani …….. (drink) a cup of espresso this morning.

3. They …… (write) the letter before the postman came.

4. We …. (drive) to Las Vegas when the police stopped us in highway.

5. Tom …. (walking) towards the field when a dog chased after him.

6. Yesterday at nine Greg …… (work) in front of his computer.

7. Before their mother got home, the boys …….. (already/finish) their homework.

8. While the plumber ……..(repair) the washing machine, I …….(watch) the news.

9. A plumber ……. (come) to our house yesterday and fixed some old water pipes.

10. The children played soccer in the backyard after they ……(wash) their dirty legs.