These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. Passages marked “written by Marlbridge” are original; Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour (1894) and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown (1835) are public-domain works. The mark points are a suggested Marlbridge rubric, not an official scoring guideline. Allow about 50 minutes.
Question 1 (multiple choice · core)
Which is the strongest thesis statement about Chopin’s The Story of an Hour?
- (A) By moving Mrs Mallard from a conventional outburst of grief to a private room where spring presses in, Chopin presents her joy as natural and long suppressed, so that the ending’s irony condemns a marriage that leaves no space for the self.
- (B) Chopin uses the window, the weather and irony.
- (C) Mrs Mallard is told that her husband has died, and then she dies.
- (D) The Story of an Hour is a short story about a woman.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). It makes a defensible interpretation, previews a line of reasoning and states what the ending means.
- (B) lists devices without a claim.
- (C) is a summary of events.
- (D) is a general description.
Question 2 (multiple choice · core)
Which sentence is an example of discussing an alternative interpretation?
- (A) Mrs Mallard is in a room.
- (B) Chopin was a writer.
- (C) A reader might take her joy as callous, but the narrator’s insistence on her husband’s tenderness rules out that reading.
- (D) The window is open.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). It states another reading and answers it with evidence.
- (A) and (D) are descriptive details.
- (B) is a general fact that does not engage with an interpretation.
Question 3 (multiple choice · core)
Which sentence best explains the significance of an interpretation in a broader context?
- (A) The story is about a woman.
- (B) The story’s quarrel is with an institution in which a “private will” is imposed in the name of love, and so it questions a social arrangement beyond the single marriage.
- (C) Many people like short stories.
- (D) Chopin was born in the nineteenth century.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). It links the interpretation to a wider idea and rests on a phrase from the text.
- (A) states the obvious.
- (C) is a general preference, not a context for the interpretation.
- (D) is biographical information that does not connect to the argument.
Question 4 (multiple choice · stretch)
A writer wants an analogy to clarify the argument that Mrs Mallard’s freedom arrives only a moment before it is removed. Which analogy is most apt?
- (A) She is like a prisoner who is handed the key just as the door is nailed shut.
- (B) She is like a cat on a windowsill.
- (C) She is like a bus timetable.
- (D) She is like a hat.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). It parallels the structure of the situation, freedom offered and withdrawn, and it clarifies the irony.
- (B) is a vague image that does not mirror the situation.
- (C) and (D) are unrelated and would distract.
Question 5 (multiple choice · core)
Which commentary best integrates evidence, claim and thesis?
- (A) The quotation shows that she is happy.
- (B) The phrase “blind persistence” moves blame from one man to a custom, which supports the claim that the marriage is kind but constraining and shows why the ending condemns a structure and not a person.
- (C) She is happy, as the quotation says.
- (D) Chopin writes well.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). It interprets a specific phrase, links it to a claim and then to the thesis.
- (A) and (C) restate the evidence.
- (D) is an unsupported general comment.
Question 6 (multiple choice · core)
While writing, a student finds that two of her best quotations contradict her thesis. The best action is to
- (A) revise the thesis so that it accounts for the evidence.
- (B) ignore the quotations.
- (C) delete the essay.
- (D) add more adjectives to the thesis.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). Developing an interpretation is recursive; evidence can reshape the claim.
- (B) ignores evidence and weakens the argument.
- (C) is an overreaction.
- (D) does not address the contradiction.
Question 7 (written response · core)
Passage written by Marlbridge.
Mr Hollis had lived in the Elm Court flats for thirty-one years, and in all that time the lift had been out of order for perhaps thirty days. This did not prevent him from pressing the button each morning with the polite expression of a man who knows how these things go. When the new management removed the lift altogether and put a plant in the shaft, he looked at the plant for some time and said that it was very healthy. On the stairs he rested at every landing, and told each landing, in a low voice, that he was only admiring the view.
(a) Write a thesis of one or two sentences analysing how the narrator presents Mr Hollis’s attitude to disappointment. (b) Name one sophistication move you could add to the essay and say how.
Answer and explanation
Model response. (a) “By letting Mr Hollis meet each failure of the building with courteous cheer, the narrator turns politeness into a form of endurance that is both comic and quietly dignified, and so suggests that civility can be a way of surviving neglect.”
(b) Alternative interpretation: a reader might see his politeness as self-deception or as a refusal to complain that lets the management off the hook; the essay could answer this by pointing to his low-voiced remarks to the landings, which suggest awareness of the situation and a deliberate choice to keep his dignity. Broader context: the essay could link his case to the way residents in neglected buildings are expected to put up with failures.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points).
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | The thesis makes an interpretive claim about the character’s attitude, not a summary |
| 2 | The thesis is defensible and specific to the passage |
| 3 | The thesis says what the presentation suggests (a significance) |
| 4 | A sophistication move is named and tied to specific evidence from the passage |
Question 8 (written response · core)
Claim and evidence written by Marlbridge. Claim: “Mr Hollis’s politeness is a deliberate choice, not blindness.” Evidence: when the lift is replaced by a plant, “he looked at the plant for some time and said that it was very healthy.”
Write commentary of three or four sentences that includes an alternative interpretation and answers it.
Answer and explanation
Model response. The phrase “for some time” shows that Mr Hollis takes in the absurdity of the plant, so his remark that it is “very healthy” reads as a chosen response, not a failure to see. A reader might suppose that he is simply naive and has not understood that the lift is gone. However, the time he spends looking suggests recognition, and the mildness of his comment turns a loss into a courtesy. His politeness is therefore an act of control, which supports the claim that it is deliberate.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points). One point for interpreting the detail “for some time”; one for stating the alternative (naivety); one for answering it with evidence; one for connecting back to the claim (deliberate choice).
Question 9 (written response · stretch)
Choose a short story you know well, or use Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown (1835), whose ending asks whether Brown “only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting”. Write a thesis, a three-claim line of reasoning and one sophistication move, and say why the move is justified.
Answer and explanation
Model response (Young Goodman Brown).
- Thesis: “By leaving it unclear whether Brown’s night in the forest was real or a dream, Hawthorne suggests that what destroys Brown is not a particular sin but his loss of trust in the people around him.”
- Claim 1: The forest scenes are written with details that could belong to a dream, so that their truth is never settled.
- Claim 2: Brown’s actions after the night are the same whether or not it was a dream: he turns away from his wife and neighbours.
- Claim 3: The story’s last paragraph records the lasting effect on his life (“a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative” man), which makes loss of trust the real consequence.
- Sophistication move (alternative interpretation): “A reader might insist that the witch-meeting really took place and that the village is corrupt; but the narrator’s question, ‘Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest … ?’, and the unchanged behaviour of the village the next morning make the truth of the night secondary to its effect on him.”
- Why justified: it answers the most natural competing reading with evidence from the text and strengthens the claim that trust, not sin, is the story’s concern.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points). One point for a defensible, specific thesis; one for three claims that build; one for a named sophistication move supported by evidence; one for a justification that ties the move to the argument. Any well-supported story earns credit.
How did you do?
- 8 to 9 correct or well-supported answers: Move on to the Topic 7.8 study guide.
- 5 to 7: Re-read the sophistication-moves table and the commentary chain 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.