These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. Passages marked “written by Marlbridge” are original; the references to Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890) concern a public-domain work. 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 telegram arrived on a Tuesday. By Friday Anna had sold the house, and by the following spring she had stopped reading the newspaper altogether.
The passage most clearly uses
- (A) expansion of a single moment.
- (B) stream of consciousness.
- (C) a flashback to an earlier life.
- (D) compression, summarising a long period in a few clauses and so moving quickly past it.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). Weeks and months pass in one sentence, which hurries the story and suggests change that is swift and perhaps painful.
- (A) is the opposite: no moment is dwelt on.
- (B) is wrong: there is no flow of thought.
- (C) is wrong: the passage moves forward in time.
Question 2 (multiple choice · core)
Passage written by Marlbridge.
The bell rang once. Then nobody moved. A fly crossed the window. A spoon, set down by someone, sang against its saucer for a long, thin moment.
The passage most likely slows the pace by
- (A) using long, complex sentences throughout.
- (B) dwelling on small, ordinary details such as the fly and the spoon, which stretch a tense moment.
- (C) summarising several years.
- (D) using a flashback.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). The narrator lingers on tiny events and sounds while “nobody moved”, so the moment seems longer.
- (A) is incorrect: the sentences are short.
- (C) is the opposite of what happens: no years are summarised.
- (D) is wrong: the narration stays in the present moment.
Question 3 (multiple choice · core)
In Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890), the final sentence reveals that “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.” The most likely effect is to
- (A) show that the story’s earlier events are irrelevant.
- (B) confirm that the escape was real.
- (C) introduce a new character.
- (D) reveal that the long escape took place in a moment of imagination, changing the reader’s understanding of the earlier narrative and creating a sense of tragic irony.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). The reveal reorders the story: what seemed an escape becomes a vision during the instant of death. The earlier hope becomes painful.
- (A) is the opposite: the earlier events become more meaningful.
- (B) contradicts the sentence.
- (C) misreads the sentence, which concerns the same character.
Question 4 (multiple choice · core)
Setting written by Marlbridge. For most of a story, a woman, Mara, cheerfully packs her belongings, humming as she wraps each cup in newspaper. In the final paragraph the reader learns that the house is to be demolished the next morning. Which statement best describes the effect of this order of information?
- (A) It makes the earlier packing irrelevant.
- (B) It slows the pace of the story.
- (C) It proves that Mara is unreliable.
- (D) It reframes the earlier details, so that her cheerfulness becomes poignant and the care for each cup takes on new meaning.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). A late reveal can change the significance of earlier details, evoking sympathy that the opening did not show.
- (A) is wrong: the details gain significance.
- (B) says nothing about the effect of the reveal; the question concerns the order of information, not speed.
- (C) is not supported: no inconsistency in her account is suggested.
Question 5 (multiple choice · core)
Which passage would most increase the pace?
- (A) “He ran. The door was shut. He pushed. It gave.”
- (B) A single sentence that gathers five subordinate clauses before reaching its verb.
- (C) A paragraph of reflective memory about the door.
- (D) A long description of the door’s carving.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). Short, plain sentences of action carry the reader quickly through events.
- (B) delays the main action.
- (C) interrupts the action with reflection.
- (D) dwells on detail, which slows the narrative.
Question 6 (multiple choice · stretch)
A writer wants to convey that a long period passed in which very little changed. Which technique is best suited?
- (A) A slow-motion scene of one conversation.
- (B) A summary such as “Winters came and went, and the shop stayed as it was.”
- (C) A detailed description of a single object.
- (D) A sudden flashback.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). Summary compresses time and implies sameness.
- (A) and (C) expand a moment and would suggest importance.
- (D) interrupts chronology, which is not the point.
Question 7 (written response · core)
Passage written by Marlbridge.
The auctioneer lifted the clock. “What am I bid?” Nobody bid. Mrs Corrie, in the third row, held her purse in both hands as though it had begun to rattle. “Do I hear a pound?” The clock ticked on the rostrum, loud as a small hammer, its brass face turned a little to the room, and Mrs Corrie felt the whole of her husband’s forty years come down the room towards her on that tick, and rise, and wait. “A pound,” said she.
Write a paragraph of about 120 to 150 words explaining how the writer controls pace and what effect it has.
Answer and explanation
Model response. The writer slows the pace to dramatise a decision that takes only seconds. Short exchanges, “What am I bid?” and “Nobody bid”, set up a silence that the narrator then fills with detail: Mrs Corrie’s purse held “as though it had begun to rattle”, and the ticking clock “loud as a small hammer”. The long final sentence expands one tick into forty years, with “come down the room towards her”, “rise” and “wait”, so that time seems suspended while memory floods the moment. The abruptness of her reply, “A pound,” releases the tension in two words. The expansion makes the bid feel enormously weighty, and shows that the clock stands for her husband’s life.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (6 points).
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | Identifies the real-time brevity of the event (a bid) |
| 2 | Identifies the slowing detail (the purse, the ticking clock) |
| 3 | Identifies the long final sentence as expansion, with a quotation |
| 4 | Identifies the abrupt, short ending as release |
| 5 | Explains the effect (tension; the emotional weight of the bid) |
| 6 | Uses precise quotation and clear analytic language |
Question 8 (written response · core)
Versions written by Marlbridge.
Version A. Tom hid the money beneath the cellar floor. He told no one. The next day the bailiffs came, and he said, with perfect calm, that he had nothing to hide.
Version B. The bailiffs came, and Tom said, with perfect calm, that he had nothing to hide. Only afterwards does the reader learn that he had hidden the money beneath the cellar floor the night before.
Which version creates more tension when the bailiffs come? Explain in three or four sentences how the order of information produces the effect.
Answer and explanation
Model response. Version A creates more tension at the moment of the bailiffs’ visit. Because the reader already knows where the money is, Tom’s calm statement becomes dramatically ironic: the reader watches him lie and waits for the bailiffs to find out. In Version B the reader shares the bailiffs’ ignorance and learns the truth only afterwards, so the tension is replaced by surprise and a reinterpretation of Tom’s calm. The order of information decides whether the reader feels anticipation (A) or retrospective shock (B).
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points). One point for choosing a version with a reason; one for explaining dramatic irony or anticipation in A; one for explaining surprise or reinterpretation in B; one for linking the effect to the order of information. A well-argued case for Version B (surprise creates a different kind of tension) also earns credit.
Question 9 (written response · stretch)
Choose a short story you know well, or use Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890). In 120 to 150 words, explain how its order of information or its pacing shapes the reader’s response.
Answer and explanation
Model response (Owl Creek Bridge). Bierce opens with a man about to be hanged and holds the reader inside that moment before moving back to his past. In the third part, the escape is narrated in extended, vivid detail: the sensations of the water, the sounds, the journey home. The expansion of what seems minutes into many paragraphs makes the reader share the character’s hope. The final sentence, announcing that he is dead with a broken neck beneath the bridge, shows that the escape occupied only an instant of imagination. The pacing, expanded in the third part and then cut short in one sentence, produces a sharp reversal. The reader’s earlier hope turns tragic, and the story’s structure becomes its meaning.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points). One point for identifying a specific structural or pacing choice; one for saying what is revealed or withheld and when; one for explaining the effect on the reader’s feeling; one for explaining how a late detail changes the meaning of earlier parts. Any well-supported story earns credit.
How did you do?
- 8 to 9 correct or well-supported answers: Move on to the Topic 7.4 study guide.
- 5 to 7: Re-read the factors table and the order-of-information method 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.