Use this diagnostic to find which Unit 9 topics to revisit: at least one short question for each of Topics 9.1 to 9.7.
These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. Passages are original, written by Marlbridge, or short extracts from public-domain works (author, title and date given). The diagnostic is not calibrated and gives no predicted score.
How to take it. Allow 40 minutes. Answer every question before opening any answer. No calculator is needed. Questions 1 to 8 are multiple choice; Questions 9 and 10 need a short written answer.
Read this passage, “The Orchard”, written by Marlbridge. Questions 1, 2 and 9 refer to it.
Mrs Alder had refused every offer for the orchard: not from sentiment, she said, but because the trees were the only things in the parish that kept their word. When the frost took the blossom in April she said it was the weather’s business. When her nephew came in June with the survey papers she let him talk, set out the tea things, and did not say no. In August she walked to the orchard alone and stood among the trees a long time. She still said nothing. But on Monday she sent for the surveyor.
Question 1 (multiple choice · 9.1)
Which statement best describes the change in Mrs Alder?
- (A) She becomes cruel to her nephew.
- (B) She has no change: she was always willing to sell.
- (C) She moves from a refusal justified as principle to a decision to sell, and the passage suggests that her professed reasons (the trees “kept their word”) disguised a feeling, which the frost and her solitary vigil wear down.
- (D) She forgets about the orchard.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). The baseline is the principled refusal; the pressures are the frost and the nephew’s visit; the response is sending for the surveyor. The change is traced through events and her silence.
- (A) has no evidence: she sets out tea for her nephew.
- (B) contradicts the opening: she had refused every offer.
- (D) is contradicted by her long, silent stay among the trees.
If you missed it: 9.1 study guide.
Question 2 (multiple choice · 9.1)
The nephew arrives with papers, talks, drinks his tea, and does not appear again. In a longer work, why might he remain unchanged?
- (A) As a minor character he serves the plot and the main character’s decision, so the narrative does not focus on any change in him.
- (B) He has already changed before the passage.
- (C) Nephews cannot change.
- (D) The writer forgot him.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). Minor characters often remain unchanged because the narrative does not centre on them; they exist to advance the plot or interact with a major character.
- (B) has no textual support.
- (C) states an absurd rule.
- (D) assumes a mistake where there is a function.
If you missed it: 9.1 study guide.
Question 3 (multiple choice · 9.2)
In Chapter 31 of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Huck tries to pray after writing a letter betraying Jim, and says: “deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it.” What does this reveal about Huck?
- (A) That he does not believe in prayer at all.
- (B) That his conscience, built on his own experience of Jim, is already working against the morality he has been taught.
- (C) That he is deceiving the reader.
- (D) That he is certain he is doing the right thing.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). Huck cannot “pray a lie”: his sense of what is true outweighs what he has been taught. The line is early evidence of the complexity that his later choice confirms.
- (A) misreads his failure to pray as unbelief.
- (C) is wrong; Huck is sincere with the reader.
- (D) is contradicted by “knowed it was a lie”.
If you missed it: 9.2 study guide.
Question 4 (multiple choice · 9.3)
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), when the creature comes to life, Victor says “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” What is the function of this moment?
- (A) It reverses Victor’s ambition into revulsion, and sets up the central conflict by showing him refusing responsibility for what he has made.
- (B) It is the end of the novel.
- (C) It describes the laboratory.
- (D) It shows that Victor is a good scientist.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). The moment changes Victor’s situation and sets competing values (ambition versus responsibility) against each other; it also leads into the pursuit and the killings that follow.
- (B) is wrong: it occurs early.
- (C) describes content only and ignores function.
- (D) misreads the emotion.
If you missed it: 9.3 study guide.
Question 5 (multiple choice · 9.4)
Read this passage, written by Marlbridge.
Tomorrow the bridge would open. Everyone in the village had a view about that, and no one had mentioned the ferryman, who sat on the empty jetty mending a line that no longer had anywhere to go.
Which statement best identifies the conflict?
- (A) There is no conflict because nothing is said.
- (B) A storm threatens the jetty.
- (C) A social conflict between a changing community (progress) and one man’s livelihood, which the passage shows through the villagers’ silence and the ferryman’s useless task.
- (D) A fight between the ferryman and the villagers.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). The opposing forces are progress and a way of life; the conflict is implied by what is not said (“no one had mentioned the ferryman”) and by the line that “no longer had anywhere to go”.
- (A) misreads silence as absence; here it is part of the conflict.
- (B) has no textual support.
- (D) overstates: no fight is shown.
If you missed it: 9.4 study guide.
Question 6 (multiple choice · 9.5)
In Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861), the narrator says: “my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.” What does this reveal about the narrator’s perspective?
- (A) A scientific attitude.
- (B) A child’s unselfconscious view, with no adult comment.
- (C) Hostility to the dead.
- (D) An adult looking back with amused irony at the way a child formed ideas from the shapes of tombstone letters, shown by the word “unreasonably”.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). “Unreasonably” is the adult narrator’s judgement on the child’s reasoning, so the sentence has the ironic distance of retrospect.
- (A) misreads comedy as science.
- (B) ignores the evaluative word “unreasonably”.
- (C) has no support in the sentence.
If you missed it: 9.5 study guide.
Question 7 (multiple choice · 9.6)
Prompt (written by Marlbridge): Choose a novel or play in which a character’s ambition has consequences for others. Analyse how the consequences contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole. Which is the best thesis?
- (A) “Ambition is a theme in Macbeth.”
- (B) “In Macbeth, Shakespeare makes the consequences of ambition fall on those nearest to it, Lady Macbeth, Banquo and Macduff’s family, so the play argues that ambition destroys the relationships on which any lasting rule depends.”
- (C) “The play shows ambition leading to consequences for others.”
- (D) “In Macbeth, Macbeth is ambitious and kills people.”
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). It names the work, makes a defensible claim about what the consequences mean for the whole play, and implies a line of reasoning.
- (A) is a topic, not a claim.
- (C) restates the prompt.
- (D) summarises.
If you missed it: 9.6 study guide.
Question 8 (multiple choice · 9.7)
For the thesis in Question 7(B), which set of evidence is best?
- (A) A paragraph on the witches’ prophecy only.
- (B) A summary of the play, act by act.
- (C) Three paragraphs on the banquet scene.
- (D) Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking in Act 5 (“What, will these hands ne’er be clean?”), the murder of Banquo and the banquet ghost in the middle, and the killing of Macduff’s family, with commentary on how each damages a relationship.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). It draws on the middle and end of the play, uses a quotation the student can recall, and gives each piece of evidence a job in the line of reasoning.
- (A) addresses the cause of ambition, not its consequences for others.
- (B) is summary, not selected evidence.
- (C) draws on one scene.
If you missed it: 9.7 study guide.
Question 9 (written response · 9.2 and 9.5)
Using “The Orchard”, write about 70 to 90 words explaining how details and diction in the passage reveal Mrs Alder’s complexity.
Answer and explanation
Sample response (written by Marlbridge). Mrs Alder’s speech and conduct pull apart. She claims the trees “kept their word”, presenting her refusal as principle, but the narrator reports that she “walked to the orchard alone and stood among the trees a long time”, an action that suggests feeling more than principle. Her silence (“She still said nothing”) shows that the decision to sell costs her something she will not admit. The plain, restrained diction leaves the reader to infer a conflict between loyalty and practicality that she conceals even from her nephew.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (3 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | Identifies the tension (principle versus feeling, speech versus action). |
| 2 | Uses at least two accurate details or quotations. |
| 3 | Explains what the details reveal about her values. |
Question 10 (written response · 9.6)
Prompt (written by Marlbridge): A character’s silence can reveal as much as speech. Choose a novel or play in which a character’s silence contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Analyse how it does so. Write a thesis and two claims for a work you know well.
Answer and explanation
Sample response (written by Marlbridge), using Pride and Prejudice.
Thesis: “In Pride and Prejudice, Austen uses silence as a measure of misjudgment: what Darcy and Elizabeth do not say is as revealing as what they do, and the novel’s resolution comes only when each speaks plainly.”
Claims:
- Elizabeth’s silence at Darcy’s first proposal (“She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent”) shows the shock and prejudice that prevent her from seeing him clearly.
- Darcy’s reserve in the early chapters hides his feelings and his actions, so silence feeds misunderstanding until the letter breaks it.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (3 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | A defensible thesis that names a work and responds to the prompt. |
| 2 | Two distinct claims, each provable with accurate evidence. |
| 3 | The claims are ordered logically and together defend the thesis. |
If you missed it: 9.6 study guide.