These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. Unless a source is credited, every passage was written by Marlbridge for this page. The rubrics are a suggested Marlbridge rubric to help you check your work; they are not an official scoring guideline. No calculator is needed.
Question 1 (multiple choice · foundation)
Why might a writer compare an unfamiliar subject to something familiar?
- (A) To avoid taking a position
- (B) To relate the argument to the audience’s own experience
- (C) To replace evidence entirely
- (D) To show off the writer’s vocabulary
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). Comparisons let an audience apply what they already know to a new subject.
- (A) A comparison usually supports a position.
- (C) A comparison can support evidence but does not replace it.
- (D) Showing off is not an argumentative purpose.
Question 2 (multiple choice · core)
A writer explains a school’s budget to parents by saying, “Think of the budget as a ship’s ballast: remove too much and the whole vessel rolls.” The comparison is most likely to fail if
- (A) the parents know little about ships and ballast.
- (B) the writer repeats it twice.
- (C) it is brief.
- (D) it supports the writer’s position.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). A comparison must be shared and understood. If the audience does not know what ballast does, nothing is transferred.
- (B) Repetition is not the cause of failure here.
- (C) Brevity is not a flaw.
- (D) Supporting the position is the point of a comparison.
Question 3 (multiple choice · core)
Which of the following is an analogy?
- (A) “The exam was a mountain.”
- (B) “She was as calm as a lake.”
- (C) “A town’s library is like a town’s heartbeat: when it slows, every other service feels the lack, and when it stops, the community notices only too late.”
- (D) “A boy once told me he never read.”
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). It extends a comparison across several matching points (slowing, other services, stopping, noticing), which is what makes it an analogy.
- (A) is a metaphor.
- (B) is a simile.
- (D) is an anecdote (a short report of an experience).
Question 4 (multiple choice · core)
A writer compares a new tax to “a leaking tap”. Which statement best describes what such a comparison might hide?
- (A) That taps exist
- (B) That a leak is a small, steady loss, whereas the tax may be large or beneficial
- (C) That the writer has an audience
- (D) That language is figurative
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). The comparison frames the tax as a minor, wasteful drip, which may hide its size or any benefit it provides.
- (A) is irrelevant to the persuasive effect.
- (C) is not hidden; every writer has an audience.
- (D) is not hidden either: figurative language is visible.
Question 5 (multiple choice · stretch)
A writer must explain why a team needs every member to practise regularly. The audience is a group of eleven-year-old swimmers. Which comparison would be most effective?
- (A) “A team is a syndicate: each partner’s contribution is pooled.”
- (B) “A relay team is like a chain of lanes: if one swimmer is slow, the whole race loses time.”
- (C) “A team is an organism, and each member a cell.”
- (D) “A team is a parliament of equals.”
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). The audience swims, so relay racing is familiar, and the comparison matches the argument (one slow leg affects the result).
- (A) requires knowledge of business terms.
- (C) uses a biological image that may not be familiar and does not clearly link to practice.
- (D) uses a political image that is unlikely to be meaningful to eleven-year-olds.
Question 6 (constructed response · core)
Read the passage below, written by Marlbridge.
“Starting a business is like planting an orchard. You do not eat in the first year, or in the second. But the person who waits, who prunes and waters and shelters the young trees from the frost, is the person who will one day pick fruit while the neighbours still wonder what they are waiting for.”
(a) Name the two sides of the comparison. (2 marks) (b) Explain what is transferred from the familiar side to the subject. (2 marks) (c) Explain why the comparison would suit an audience of rural small-business owners. (2 marks)
Sample answer and suggested rubric
(a) Subject: starting a business. Familiar side: planting an orchard. (b) The idea that rewards come only after long patient care, and that effort before any visible return is worthwhile. (c) Rural owners are likely to know how orchards work and the value of patience, so the comparison draws on experience they share, and it gives their own struggle a positive meaning.
| Mark | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | Names the subject correctly |
| 1 | Names the familiar side correctly |
| 1 | Identifies patience or delayed reward as transferred |
| 1 | Identifies care or perseverance as transferred, or the value attached |
| 1 | Says the audience shares or understands orchards |
| 1 | Links this to the audience’s values or situation |
Question 7 (constructed response · core)
Write a comparison (one to three sentences) that explains why people should check their sources before sharing news online. Your audience is a group of teenagers who play a lot of football. Name the form (simile, metaphor, analogy or anecdote) and explain why it suits the audience. (5 marks)
Sample answer and suggested rubric
Sample. “Sharing a story without checking it is like passing the ball without looking: you might be lucky, but the other team will probably pick it up, and then you have given away a goal.” Form: simile (or short analogy). Why it suits: footballers know that careless passes lose possession, so they can apply the idea of costly carelessness to sharing news.
| Mark | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | A comparison with an identifiable subject (sharing news) |
| 1 | A familiar side drawn from football |
| 1 | Transfers the idea of costly carelessness or the need to look first |
| 1 | Names the form correctly |
| 1 | Explains why it suits football players |
Question 8 (constructed response · stretch)
Booker T. Washington told an audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895 (public domain): “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”
Explain how the comparison works for this audience and what it might hide. (6 marks)
Sample answer and suggested rubric
Sample. The comparison sets the fingers and the hand beside the groups in society. Everyone knows that fingers are separate but belong to one hand, so the image is shared and understood. It transfers the idea that separation in social life can coexist with unity in shared progress, and it presents cooperation as natural and necessary for the whole. The audience, which included business and political leaders interested in the region’s economy, would find the appeal to “mutual progress” attractive. The comparison also hides things: a hand is a single body whose parts have equal need of each other, whereas the groups in society did not have equal power, so the image can make an unequal arrangement sound harmonious. A reader today should therefore treat it as an image shaped for its audience and moment, as well as a statement of belief.
| Mark | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | Identifies both sides (fingers and hand; social groups) |
| 1 | Explains that the image is shared and understood |
| 1 | Explains what is transferred (separate yet united) |
| 1 | Links it to the audience’s interests or values |
| 1 | Identifies something the comparison hides |
| 1 | Evaluates the effect or persuasiveness |
How did you do? If you missed Questions 1 to 5, reread “The forms a comparison can take” and “The condition: shared and understood”. If you lost marks in 6 to 8, check that you named both sides, what is transferred and why the audience understands it.