These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. Passages marked “written by Marlbridge” are original; the opening line of Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat (1897) and the reference to Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party (1922) concern public-domain works. The mark points are a suggested Marlbridge rubric, not an official scoring guideline. Allow about 45 minutes.
Question 1 (multiple choice · foundation)
Passage written by Marlbridge.
The new house smelled of paint and nothing else. Marta walked through its rooms touching the walls with two fingers, as if checking whether anything lived in them.
The details most strongly suggest that
- (A) the house is nearly finished and she is inspecting the work.
- (B) the setting feels empty of history and warmth, and Marta’s tentative touch shows that she does not yet feel at home.
- (C) Marta dislikes the colour of the walls.
- (D) the house is haunted.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). “Paint and nothing else” and the test for whether “anything lived in them” convey emptiness; her gesture shows distance and hesitancy.
- (A) is a literal reading that ignores the figurative language.
- (C) has no support: colour is not mentioned.
- (D) takes “as if” literally.
Question 2 (multiple choice · core)
Passages written by Marlbridge.
Early: At the dinner table the voices overlapped, and she answered each question before it was finished.
Later: On the porch the silence was so complete that she heard her own pulse.
The change of setting most likely suggests
- (A) a shift from social pressure to private reckoning.
- (B) that she has stopped caring about her family.
- (C) a move back in time.
- (D) that the dinner has ended.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). The noisy table, where she is answering at speed, gives way to a silence in which she is aware of her own body: a move from external demands to internal awareness.
- (B) goes beyond the evidence: nothing says she stops caring.
- (C) is wrong: the passages move forward.
- (D) is true but does not explain the significance of the change.
Question 3 (multiple choice · core)
Passage written by Marlbridge.
The villa on the hill hummed with music; at the foot of the hill, the lane’s single lamp went out.
The contrast between the two settings most likely functions to
- (A) prove that music is more important than light.
- (B) establish a conflict between privilege and hardship, and to place any character who moves between them under pressure.
- (C) show that the villa is nearer the lane than the lamp.
- (D) describe the geography only.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). Music and light are set against the extinguished lamp, and the high and low positions reinforce the contrast in circumstances and values.
- (A) is an unsupported judgement.
- (C) misreads the contrast as a measure of distance.
- (D) ignores what the details suggest.
Question 4 (multiple choice · core)
Passage written by Marlbridge.
Every night he set a chair against the door of his lodgings. In the morning he told the landlady that the town was very friendly.
What does the character’s behaviour most likely reveal?
- (A) He is genuinely comfortable in the town.
- (B) The lodgings have too many chairs.
- (C) A gap between what he says about his surroundings and how he behaves in them, suggesting distrust or fear beneath his courtesy.
- (D) He plans to leave the town at once.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). His nightly barricade contradicts his public statement. How characters behave in their surroundings reveals their attitudes.
- (A) accepts his words and ignores his actions.
- (B) is irrelevant.
- (D) is not supported by the text.
Question 5 (multiple choice · core)
Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat (1897) begins, “None of them knew the colour of the sky.” This sentence most strongly suggests
- (A) that the men are blind.
- (B) that the weather is pleasant.
- (C) that the men are so absorbed in the struggle with the sea that they do not look up, and that the setting is large and indifferent.
- (D) that the sky is unimportant to the plot.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). The sentence implies that their attention is fixed on the waves and the boat, and the sky is beyond their concern. It begins to convey the values of the setting: survival and indifference.
- (A) takes the statement literally.
- (B) is contradicted by the tone, which suggests tension.
- (D) overlooks the way the sentence is used to characterise the men and the setting.
Question 6 (multiple choice · stretch)
Which sentence analyses a setting rather than merely describing it?
- (A) Rosa’s room has a window that faces a brick wall.
- (B) The house is on Cutler’s Row.
- (C) There are stairs in the hall.
- (D) By making Rosa smooth each dress in a room whose only view is a brick wall a yard away, the narrator suggests a dignity that she keeps in confinement.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). It connects a detail of setting with the character’s behaviour and says what they suggest.
- (A), (B) and (C) describe details without interpretation.
Question 7 (written response · core)
Passage written by Marlbridge.
The waiting room was lit like a shop window and as impersonal. Mr Okoro took the chair nearest the door, folded his coat upon his knees and read the same poster about handwashing four times. Opposite, a child kicked the leg of a table in time with the clock. At each opening of the inner door he sat up, as if the room itself had asked him a question, and sat back, as if he had answered it wrongly.
Write a paragraph of about 120 to 150 words explaining how the setting and Mr Okoro’s behaviour reveal his state of mind.
Answer and explanation
Model response. The narrator makes the waiting room a place of exposure and impersonal routine. It is “lit like a shop window”, which suggests display and no privacy, and the child kicking the table “in time with the clock” emphasises the slow, measured passing of time. Mr Okoro’s behaviour reveals his anxiety: he chooses the chair “nearest the door”, reads the “same poster … four times” without absorbing it and sits up and back at each opening of the inner door. The simile “as if the room itself had asked him a question” shows him treating the setting as an examiner, and “as if he had answered it wrongly” shows his fear of bad news. The impersonality of the place intensifies his private dread.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (6 points).
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | Identifies what the setting conveys (impersonal exposure, slow time) |
| 2 | Uses at least one setting detail as evidence (“lit like a shop window”, the clock) |
| 3 | Uses Mr Okoro’s behaviour as evidence (chair near the door, rereading the poster) |
| 4 | Interprets the “as if the room had asked him a question” simile |
| 5 | States what the combination reveals (anxiety, fear of bad news) |
| 6 | Uses precise quotation and clear analytic language |
Question 8 (written response · core)
Passages written by Marlbridge. Two settings in one story:
At Aunt Hester’s the clocks were wound on Sundays and the curtains drawn by four.
On the pier, nobody asked what the time was.
In three or four sentences, explain how the contrast sets up a conflict of values and what position a character who moves between these settings might be in.
Answer and explanation
Model response. Aunt Hester’s house is governed by routine and propriety: clocks wound on a fixed day and curtains drawn at a set hour. The pier is a place of freedom from schedule, where time is not a demand. The contrast sets order and respectability against openness and spontaneity. A character who moves between the two would be caught between obligation and freedom, and the story could use that tension to explore which values the character will choose.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points). One point for reading the details of the first setting; one for reading the details of the second; one for naming the conflict of values (order against freedom, or similar); one for describing the position of a character between them.
Question 9 (written response · stretch)
Choose a short story you know well, or use Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party (1922), in which a young woman’s family holds a party at the top of a hill while a poor neighbour’s family mourns in the cottages below. In 120 to 150 words, explain how the settings relate to a central character.
Answer and explanation
Model response (The Garden Party). Mansfield contrasts the Sheridans’ sunlit, carefully prepared garden with the poor cottages in the lane below, and the contrast conveys a conflict of values: ease and ceremony against grief and hardship. Laura, the young woman at the centre, is placed between them. In the garden she feels the pull of the party and the family’s assumptions, but when she goes down to the cottages she meets a world that the party has ignored. Her unease and the way she is overcome by what she sees show that the setting of the lane has challenged the values of the setting she comes from. The movement between places is therefore also a movement in her understanding of herself and her family.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points). One point for identifying two settings with a detail each; one for naming the values or ideas each conveys; one for explaining how the character is placed between them or reveals an attitude in them; one for a conclusion about what the relationship shows. Any well-supported story earns credit.
How did you do?
- 8 to 9 correct or well-supported answers: Move on to the Topic 7.3 study guide.
- 5 to 7: Re-read the grid and the sections on contrast in the study guide and redo the written questions.
- 4 or fewer: Work through both worked examples again, then use the revision notes and checklist.