These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. Passages are short extracts from public-domain works (author, title and date given) or an original prose passage 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 50 minutes. No calculator is needed.
Question 1 (multiple choice · foundation)
Which of the following best explains why an event is significant to a longer work?
- (A) It changes the situation or what the reader understands about the central conflict, for example by forcing a choice or colliding competing values.
- (B) It is the longest scene in the work.
- (C) It involves the most characters.
- (D) It is the first event described.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). Significance is about what changes and what the event reveals about the conflict, not about length or position.
- (B) and (C) confuse size with importance.
- (D) confuses order with significance; the first event may be minor.
Question 2 (multiple choice · core)
In Chapter 39 of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861), Magwitch tells Pip, “I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done it!” and Pip’s abhorrence is such that it “could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast”. What is the main function of this event?
- (A) It shows that Pip is wealthy.
- (B) It concludes the novel.
- (C) It introduces Magwitch for the first time.
- (D) It reverses Pip’s assumption about his benefactor and collides his gentility with the labour and gratitude of a man he despises, turning the novel from a story of rise into a moral test.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). The event changes what Pip knows and exposes the values (gentility versus gratitude) that the novel has been setting against each other.
- (A) is true but trivial; it does not describe the event’s function.
- (B) is wrong; much of the novel follows.
- (C) is wrong: Magwitch appears in the opening chapter.
Question 3 (multiple choice · core)
In Chapter 34 of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Darcy’s proposal includes his “sense of her inferiority, of its being a degradation”, and Elizabeth answers that he is “the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry”. Which statement best identifies the competing values?
- (A) Darcy’s class pride, which stains even his declaration, against Elizabeth’s self-respect and her unexamined prejudice.
- (B) Love against hate.
- (C) Wealth against poverty, with no other values involved.
- (D) Country life against town life.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). The scene puts pride and prejudice in a single exchange: the proposal contains his sense of rank, and her refusal draws on dignity and a belief about him she has not tested.
- (B) is too simple: Darcy does love, and Elizabeth’s anger is tied to pride, not hatred.
- (C) ignores the dignity and prejudice that are at the heart of the exchange.
- (D) is not what the scene concerns.
Question 4 (multiple choice · core)
Read this passage, written by Marlbridge.
At the harvest supper, Tomasz stood to give the toast his father had given for forty years. The room waited. He lifted his glass and said, instead, “To the mill, which is sold.” Nobody moved. His mother set down her fork. Across the table his uncle, who had counted on the mill, began slowly to fold his napkin, corner to corner, as if a decision were hidden in the fold.
Which statement best explains the function of this event in a longer work?
- (A) It shows that Tomasz is a poor speaker.
- (B) It describes the food at the supper.
- (C) It introduces a new setting.
- (D) It disrupts a long tradition with an announcement that collides loyalty to family custom with Tomasz’s decision, changing relationships and creating anticipation about the uncle’s reaction.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). The toast was ritual, so breaking it makes the announcement a collision of tradition and decision. The stillness (“Nobody moved”) and the uncle’s folding napkin build anticipation.
- (A) misreads a deliberate break as incompetence.
- (B) is irrelevant to the passage’s function.
- (C) is wrong; the setting is a familiar one.
Question 5 (multiple choice · core)
A student writes, “Darcy’s proposal creates suspense.” Which revision best supports that claim?
- (A) “The proposal is exciting.”
- (B) “Elizabeth refuses.”
- (C) “Earlier misjudgments between Darcy and Elizabeth (his slight at the ball, her belief in Wickham’s story) accumulate until the proposal arrives, so the reader senses a clash is coming and the refusal releases the tension.”
- (D) “Suspense is when you wait.”
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). It names the earlier events that accumulate and says how the proposal resolves the anticipation they create.
- (A) states a feeling.
- (B) restates the content.
- (D) defines a word without using the work.
Question 6 (multiple choice · stretch)
Which sentence about a significant event shows function and not only content?
- (A) “Pip is visited by Magwitch in Chapter 39.”
- (B) “Magwitch is a convict.”
- (C) “The scene is in Pip’s rooms in London.”
- (D) “The visit overturns Pip’s assumption about his benefactor and forces him to measure his gentility against the man who paid for it.”
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). It says what the event does (overturns an assumption, forces a measurement of values).
- (A), (B) and (C) report what happens or where, and they do not explain the event’s function.
Question 7 (written response · core)
Write a paragraph of about 150 words explaining the function of Magwitch’s revelation in Chapter 39 of Great Expectations. Include what changes, the values in collision and one short quotation.
Answer and explanation
Sample response (written by Marlbridge). Magwitch’s revelation reverses the assumption on which Pip has built his life. Pip believes that Miss Havisham is his benefactor, so he sees his rise as a stage in a romance of refinement. When Magwitch says, “I’ve made a gentleman on you!”, Pip learns that his fortune comes from a convict he once helped, and he feels “the abhorrence in which I held the man”. The event collides two value systems: Pip’s gentility, which depends on rank and polish, and Magwitch’s loyalty, expressed in years of labour (“I worked hard, that you should be above work”). Because the earlier chapters have accumulated Pip’s shame of Joe and his dreams of status, the reversal is also a judgement on those values. It turns the novel from a story of rise into a test of whether Pip can learn to value what he has despised.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | States what changes (benefactor, Pip’s expectation and understanding). |
| 2 | Identifies the values in collision (gentility versus gratitude and labour). |
| 3 | Uses at least one accurate quotation. |
| 4 | Explains the function for the whole work (reversal, moral test), not just the scene. |
Question 8 (written response · stretch)
Using the passage about Tomasz (Question 4), write a paragraph of about 150 words explaining the function of the toast scene in a longer work. Refer to specific details.
Answer and explanation
Sample response (written by Marlbridge). The toast scene changes the situation by breaking a ritual that has held the family together. The toast his father gave “for forty years” carries loyalty to custom, and Tomasz replaces it with “To the mill, which is sold”, so the scene collides tradition with a decision that puts the family’s livelihood in doubt. The reactions build anticipation: “Nobody moved”, his mother “set down her fork”, and the uncle, who “had counted on the mill”, folds his napkin “as if a decision were hidden in the fold”. The slow, small gestures suggest that the real consequences have not yet arrived. In a longer work this event would be a turning point: it forces each character to choose between loyalty and adaptation, and it sets up the conflict between Tomasz and his uncle that the rest of the story must resolve.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | Identifies what changes (ritual broken, mill sold). |
| 2 | Names the competing values (tradition and loyalty versus decision and survival). |
| 3 | Uses at least two accurate details. |
| 4 | Explains function (turning point, anticipation, setting up conflict). |
How did you do?
- Questions 1 to 6 correct: move to the 9.4 study guide.
- Missed 1 or 6: reread the distinction between content and function in the study guide.
- Missed 2, 3 or 4: practise naming what changes and the values in collision.
- Missed 5: practise tracing build-up: list the earlier events that make a later one matter.
- Written responses below 3 points: write one sentence of content and one of function, and keep the second.