Read the following excerpt from ‘The Scholarship Jacket’ and answer the questions that follow. Each question carries one score.

Read the following excerpt from ‘The Scholarship Jacket’ and answer the questions that follow. Each question carries one score. 

We couldn’t participate in sports at school because there were registration fees, uniform costs, and trips out of town (so) even though our family was quite agile and athletic there would never be a school sports jacket for us. This one the scholarship jacket was our only chance. 

In May, close to graduation spring fever had struck as usual with a vengeance. No one paid any attention in class; instead we stared out of the windows and at each other, wanting to speed up the last few weeks of school. I despaired every time I looked in the mirror. Pencil thin, not a curve anywhere. I was called ‘beanpole’ and ‘string bean’ and I knew that’s what I looked like.’ That really wasn’t much for a fourteen-year-old to work with, I thought, as I absentmindedly wandered from my history class to the gym... 

I. Why couldn’t the narrator participate in sports at school ? 

II. Pick out the sentence which tells us that the narrator was athletic by nature. 

III. ‘No one paid any attention in class; instead we stared out of the windows and at each other.....’ Why does the narrator say so? 

IV. Why did the narrator feel despair every time she looked into the mirror ? 

V. Find out the word from the passage which means ‘the ability to move quickly.’ 

VI. What were the narrator’s nicknames ?