These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. Passages are short extracts from public-domain poems (author, title and date given) or original poems written by Marlbridge, labelled as such. Mark points are a suggested Marlbridge rubric, not an official scoring guideline. Questions 1 to 6 are multiple choice; Questions 7 and 8 are written responses. Allow about 45 minutes. No calculator is needed.
Question 1 (multiple choice · foundation)
In Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Spring and Fall” (written 1880), the speaker asks, “Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving?” What is the most likely effect of the coined word “unleaving”?
- (A) It shows that the speaker does not know the correct word for what happens to trees in autumn.
- (B) It makes the line easier to read quickly, because it is shorter than “the leaves falling”.
- (C) It indicates that the trees are growing new leaves in the spring.
- (D) It makes the falling of leaves sound like a loss and a departure at once, because “leaving” suggests both foliage and going away.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). “Unleaving” reverses “leafing” (putting out leaves) and also echoes “leaving”, so the word holds the physical event and the sense of departure together. That prepares the poem’s move from leaves to human loss.
- (A) is unsupported; the poem’s diction is deliberate and elsewhere equally inventive (“wanwood”, “leafmeal”).
- (B) is wrong because the coinage slows the reader down; it is not a shortcut, and the poem’s meaning depends on its strangeness.
- (C) contradicts the context: the leaves are falling, which is why Margaret is grieving.
Question 2 (multiple choice · core)
In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” (1890 printing), death “kindly stopped for me” and the drive is made “For his civility”. Which interpretation best accounts for these words?
- (A) They show that the speaker is calm and affectionate, and nothing in the poem challenges this.
- (B) They prove that the speaker has met death before and is not frightened of him.
- (C) They connote courtesy and courtship, but they also suggest that the speaker was not given a choice, which makes the politeness faintly unsettling.
- (D) They are literal descriptions of a driver who really did stop for the speaker.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). “Kindly” and “civility” belong to the language of manners and courtship, which makes death seem a polite caller. The title and first line, however, show that she did not stop for him; he stopped for her, so the courtesy hides the fact that she has no option. The ambiguity is the point.
- (A) ignores the poem’s closing “surmised”, which suggests a late and uneasy discovery.
- (B) has no evidence; the poem implies a first journey (“Since then ’t is centuries”).
- (D) misreads a personification as literal.
Question 3 (multiple choice · core)
Read this passage, written by Marlbridge.
By six the stalls were hunched beneath their tarps,
the last lamps coughing out a yellow light;
a woman counted coins in careful stacks
and tucked them, one by one, against the night.
How do the words “hunched”, “coughing” and “tucked” shape the speaker’s attitude?
- (A) They show that the speaker dislikes the market and wants to leave it.
- (B) They give the market the qualities of a tired, vulnerable body, which invites sympathy for the woman’s small, protective care.
- (C) They create a tone of fear by suggesting that the market is dangerous.
- (D) They are neutral descriptions that add no tone to the stanza.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). Each verb borrows a bodily action: hunched shoulders, a cough, tucking something in as one tucks in a child. The connotations of tiredness, illness and tenderness make the scene feel fragile, and the woman’s carefulness reads as protection against “the night”.
- (A) is unsupported: the final image is of gentle, careful handling.
- (C) goes beyond the evidence; the words suggest weariness and care, not menace.
- (D) is wrong because ordinary alternatives (“stood”, “dimmed”, “put”) would produce a flat tone.
Question 4 (multiple choice · core)
In “Spring and Fall”, the speaker says, “Sorrow’s springs are the same”. Which reading shows how ambiguity works here?
- (A) “Springs” means coiled metal, which shows the speaker is describing a machine.
- (B) “Springs” is a mistake for “spring”.
- (C) “Springs” can mean the sources from which sorrow rises and the season, which links the line to the title and suggests sorrow cannot be separated from the cycle of the year.
- (D) “Springs” can only mean a season, so the speaker is saying that sorrow comes in spring.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). The word supports two defensible meanings, and the poem’s title (“Spring and Fall”) makes the seasonal meaning available while the context of grief supports the meaning of a source.
- (A) has no support in the context; a meaning must be consistent with the surrounding words.
- (B) treats a deliberate plural as an error.
- (D) closes down a meaning the context supports: sorrow has sources.
Question 5 (multiple choice · core)
The last two lines of “Spring and Fall” are “It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for.” What does the word “blight” contribute?
- (A) It shows that the speaker is angry with Margaret for grieving.
- (B) It applies the language of plant disease to human life, so autumn loss and human mortality are linked.
- (C) It repeats the meaning of “leaves” and adds nothing.
- (D) It introduces a new topic, the failure of farming, that the poem has not considered.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). “Blight” is a plant disease; used of “man”, it suggests mortality is a condition people are “born for”. That links the trees and the child.
- (A) has no basis; the tone throughout is gentle and instructive.
- (C) is wrong because “blight” adds the idea of sickness and inherited decay that “leaves” does not.
- (D) misreads the image; the poem does not discuss farming.
Question 6 (multiple choice · stretch)
A student writes about “kindly” in Dickinson’s poem. Which version best revises a first claim in the light of ambiguous evidence, rather than merely acknowledging an alternative?
- (A) “‘Kindly’ means kind. This is clear.”
- (B) “‘Kindly’ makes death seem gentle. Some readers might see it differently.”
- (C) “‘Kindly’ is a word with many meanings, so the poem cannot be understood.”
- (D) “‘Kindly’ makes death seem gentle, but ‘civility’ is also a mere formality, so the poem’s calm is only on the surface and the courtesy may be a form of control.”
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). The student uses the second meaning of “civility” to change the claim: the calm is now seen as a surface under which the speaker lacks a choice.
- (A) ignores any ambiguity.
- (B) only acknowledges that others might disagree; the claim does not change.
- (C) turns ambiguity into an excuse for no claim at all, which earns nothing.
Question 7 (written response · core)
Write a paragraph of about 150 words explaining how Dickinson’s word choices in the first two stanzas of “Because I could not stop for Death” shape the speaker’s attitude toward death. Refer to at least two specific words or phrases from this selection: “kindly”, “The carriage held but just ourselves / And Immortality”, “he knew no haste”, “For his civility”.
Answer and explanation
Sample response (written by Marlbridge). Dickinson’s diction presents death as a courteous companion, but the courtesy carries an edge. “Kindly” and “civility” draw on the language of manners and courtship, so death seems a gentleman who “stopped for me”, and the carriage that “held but just ourselves / And Immortality” gives the journey an almost intimate privacy. “He knew no haste” slows the poem so the speaker’s attitude seems calm and accepting. Yet the first line says she “could not stop”; death had to stop for her, so these polite words conceal that she has no choice. The speaker puts away “My labor, and my leisure too”, which suggests that being courteous costs her everything she has. Her serenity is therefore partly the politeness death imposes, and the poem begins its argument that death’s gentleness is a form of control.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | A defensible claim about the speaker’s attitude that goes beyond “death is kind”. |
| 2 | At least two specific words or phrases correctly quoted. |
| 3 | Explains connotations (manners, courtship, slowness) and not just meanings. |
| 4 | Handles the tension (calm versus loss of choice) and ties it to the poem’s meaning. |
Question 8 (written response · stretch)
Read this poem, “After the Auction”, written by Marlbridge.
They sold the dresser first, and then the clock;
the buyers handled both as if they’d bear
no history. I watched the dealer knock
the brass, and listen. He was pleased. The air
was thick with dust. My mother, by the door,
let go the chair she’d held for forty years,
and said, “It’s only wood.” She said no more,
and folded up her hands, and bore her tears.
In a paragraph of about 150 words, explain how the speaker’s word choices, including any ambiguity, convey a complex attitude toward the sale.
Answer and explanation
What a strong answer does. It notices the speaker’s quiet, controlled diction (“handled”, “knock”, “listen”, “pleased”) that treats the objects as goods, against the mother’s years-long attachment; it explores the ambiguity of “bear” and “bore”, and the effect of the mother’s understatement.
Sample response (written by Marlbridge). The speaker’s diction sets two ways of seeing the furniture against each other. The buyers “handled” and “knock[ed]” it and the dealer is “pleased”, verbs and adjectives that treat the dresser and clock as stock. Against this, the mother “let go” the chair, a phrase that can mean she released it or that she allowed it to be taken, and the phrase “held for forty years” gives it the weight of a life. Her words, “It’s only wood”, reduce the objects to material, but the speaker’s report that she “said no more” and “bore her tears” shows the understatement is a defence. “Bore” means endured, and “bear” earlier in the poem echoes it: the buyers think the objects “bear / no history”, while the mother is the one who bears it. The speaker’s attitude is therefore protective and sad, noticing grief that the mother refuses to name.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | A defensible claim about the speaker’s attitude (not just “it is sad”). |
| 2 | Accurate quotation of at least two words or phrases. |
| 3 | Explanation of connotation or ambiguity (for example “let go”, “bear/bore”, “only wood”). |
| 4 | Links word choice to the whole poem’s meaning and tone. |
How did you do?
- Questions 1 to 6 correct: well done; move to the 8.3 study guide.
- Missed 1, 3 or 5: reread the connotation section in the study guide.
- Missed 2, 4 or 6: practise the Reading A, Reading B, Tension, Revised claim template on two words from any poem.
- Written responses below 3 points: rewrite using the weak-versus-strong table.