These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. The poem is William Blake’s “London” (1794, public domain); the prompts, sample answers and rubrics were written by Marlbridge. 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 50 minutes. No calculator is needed.
Read “London” by William Blake (1794). Spelling and punctuation follow a nineteenth-century printing; some editions write “thro’” for “through”.
I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.In every cry of every man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.
Question 1 (multiple choice · foundation)
A student wants to support the claim that the speaker presents the people of London as marked by the city. Which choice of evidence is best?
- (A) “I wander”
- (B) “Marks of weakness, marks of woe”
- (C) The title, “London”
- (D) The whole first stanza, copied out.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). It is the smallest unit that carries the claim: the repetition of “marks” lets the student analyse how the people are branded.
- (A) is a plain statement of action and does not bear on the claim.
- (C) names the place but supplies no detail about the people.
- (D) is too much; the unfocused block gives the student nothing specific to analyse.
Question 2 (multiple choice · core)
Which sentence integrates a quotation most effectively?
- (A) The speaker claims to hear “the mind-forged manacles” in every voice, which implies that the people have helped to make their own captivity.
- (B) “mind-forged manacles”.
- (C) The speaker says. “The mind-forged manacles I hear” this shows people are trapped.
- (D) The speaker heard “the mind-forged manacles” and Blake was angry.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). The quotation is embedded in a grammatical sentence, in the present tense, with accurate wording and a clause of commentary.
- (B) is a fragment with no explanation.
- (C) has a broken sentence and no embedding.
- (D) shifts tense and mixes the speaker with the poet without reason, and the commentary is thin.
Question 3 (multiple choice · core)
How should a student quote two lines of the poem inside a sentence in a timed essay?
- (A) Ignore the line break and run the words together without punctuation.
- (B) Replace the line break with a comma and capital letter.
- (C) Add line numbers in brackets after every word.
- (D) Mark the line break with a slash and spaces: “How the chimney-sweeper’s cry / Every blackening church appals”.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). A slash with spaces on each side is the usual way to show a line break in running text, and it keeps the poet’s wording intact.
- (A) hides the line break, which can matter to your analysis.
- (B) changes the poet’s punctuation.
- (C) is cumbersome and unnecessary in a timed essay.
Question 4 (multiple choice · core)
A student’s thesis is “The poem moves from observation to accusation.” The body paragraphs quote only from the first stanza. What is the main weakness?
- (A) The quotations are too short.
- (B) The evidence is insufficient for the claim: it supports observation but offers nothing from later stanzas to show the shift to accusation.
- (C) The student should have quoted the title.
- (D) The thesis is not defensible.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). Sufficiency depends on quantity and quality in relation to the line of reasoning. A claim about movement across the poem needs evidence from more than one part.
- (A) is wrong because short quotations are good practice.
- (C) would not provide evidence of accusation.
- (D) is wrong because the thesis can be argued; it is the support that is thin.
Question 5 (multiple choice · core)
A student writes: “However, ‘Runs in blood down palace-walls’ complicates the idea that the speaker is only a bystander, since the image makes him a witness who passes judgement.” What job is this evidence doing?
- (A) It is not doing any job.
- (B) Illustrating a claim already made.
- (C) Qualifying an earlier claim by complicating it.
- (D) Clarifying a difficult word.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). “However… complicates” shows the evidence limiting and refining an earlier claim (that the speaker is a bystander). That is the function of qualification.
- (A) is wrong: the sentence has a clear job.
- (B) would be correct only if the sentence simply showed the claim in a concrete case.
- (D) does not apply: no word is being defined.
Question 6 (multiple choice · core)
Which rewrite best corrects the errors in this sentence, so that the meaning is clear? “Blake use many images that makes the reader feel the speaker anger because they is everywhere in the poem and it effects it.”
- (A) “Many images, anger, poem.”
- (B) “Blake uses many images, that makes the reader feel the speakers anger.”
- (C) “Blake use many images and its anger.”
- (D) “Blake uses many images that make the reader feel the speaker’s anger, because the images appear throughout the poem and affect its tone.”
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). It fixes subject-verb agreement (“uses”, “make”), the possessive (“speaker’s”), the pronoun reference (“the images”) and the confusion of “effects” and “affect”.
- (A) is a list of fragments.
- (B) leaves agreement and punctuation errors.
- (C) is ungrammatical and loses meaning.
Question 7 (written response · core)
Build an evidence ledger for the claim: The speaker moves from what he sees to what he hears, which makes him a witness to hidden oppression. List four short quotations from the poem that support the claim, say what job each does (illustrate, clarify, exemplify, associate, amplify or qualify), and name one tempting piece of evidence you would reject, with a reason.
Answer and explanation
Sample ledger (written by Marlbridge).
| Quotation | Job | Why it fits |
|---|---|---|
| “A mark in every face I meet” | Illustrates | Shows the speaker’s first mode: seeing faces |
| “The mind-forged manacles I hear” | Amplifies | Marks the shift from seeing to hearing, and the oppression is invisible |
| “the chimney-sweeper’s cry” | Exemplifies | A concrete instance of a sound that carries accusation |
| “through midnight streets I hear” | Amplifies / associates | Repeats “hear” and sets the listening at night, when much is hidden |
Rejected: “I wander through each chartered street”. It establishes the setting, but it does not show hearing or hidden oppression, so it would be vivid but irrelevant.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | Four accurate quotations, each short. |
| 2 | Each fits the claim (the shift from seeing to hearing). |
| 3 | Each is assigned a plausible job. |
| 4 | A rejected piece of evidence is justified by relevance to the claim. |
Question 8 (written response · stretch)
Write one body paragraph (about 150 words) for the claim: In the last two stanzas, the speaker’s accusation reaches the institutions and the intimate bonds of London. Integrate at least three short quotations and explain how each supports the claim. End with a link to a thesis of your choice.
Answer and explanation
Sample response (written by Marlbridge). In the last two stanzas the accusation moves from public institutions to private life. The sweeper’s cry makes “every blackening church” appal, and the soldier’s sigh “Runs in blood down palace-walls”, so the church and the palace are stained by the suffering they permit. Then the speaker turns to “midnight streets”, where “the youthful harlot’s curse / Blasts the new-born infant’s tear”. The verb “Blasts” is violent, and the pairing of a curse with a newborn’s tear places corruption at the very start of life. The final phrase, “the marriage hearse”, fuses a wedding carriage with a funeral one, so even the union that should secure hope is touched by death. The accusation therefore spreads from buildings to bodies, which supports the thesis that the speaker sees the city as a system that passes suffering through every generation.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | Opens with a claim that matches the prompt and advances the argument. |
| 2 | At least three accurate, short, embedded quotations. |
| 3 | Commentary explains the effect of specific words (for example “Blasts”, “marriage hearse”) and links each to the claim. |
| 4 | Clear composition (present tense, accurate mechanics) and a link to a thesis. |
How did you do?
- Questions 1 to 6 correct: try the Unit 8 diagnostic.
- Missed 1, 2 or 3: reread “Choosing evidence” and “Integrating quotations” in the study guide.
- Missed 4 or 5: practise naming the job of each quotation and checking that evidence is spread across the poem.
- Missed 6: write five sentences about a poem and proofread them for agreement, tense and pronouns.
- Written responses below 3 points: cut quotations to words and phrases, then add commentary.