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Analysing language for effect
10th grade (Year 11 in England) · 16 questions · Common Core: RL.9-10.4, RL.11-12.4 · England: GCSE English Language Paper 1 Q2, GCSE English Language Paper 2 Q3
Name
Date
Score/ 16
The Gardener's Ledger
My father kept two books. The first was the ledger in which he recorded every coin that passed through the shop: the price of flour, the cost of the new awning, the debts that customers swore they would settle by Friday. He wrote in it every evening, in a small, upright hand, and he never let anyone else touch it.
The second book I did not discover until after he died. It was a cheap school exercise book, its cover soft with handling, hidden at the back of the shed behind the seed trays. Inside, in the same upright hand, he had recorded something quite different: the date the first snowdrop appeared each year; the night a fox had dug up the tulips; the morning, in 1987, when "M. laughed at the robin on the spade and said it was the bravest bird in England." M. was my mother. I had never heard my father mention her laugh.
For forty years, it seemed, he had been keeping accounts of another kind – of small, unprofitable things that added up to a life. The shop ledger balanced to the penny. The garden book did not balance at all. There were gaps of months, sometimes years. In 1993, the year my mother died, there is only one entry: "Rain."
I used to think my father was a man who cared only for what could be counted. I sat in that cold shed until the light went, reading his small, careful sentences, and understood that I had been reading the wrong book.
Question 1
Read "The Gardener's Ledger". What does the narrator mean by "keeping accounts of another kind"?
- A. hiding money from the family
- B. counting the plants for sale
- C. running a second shop
- D. recording things that mattered emotionally rather than financially
Question 2
Read "The Gardener's Ledger". "The shop ledger balanced to the penny. The garden book did not balance at all." What is the effect of this contrast?
- A. It shows the garden was untidy.
- B. It shows the father was bad at maths.
- C. It proves the shop was failing.
- D. It suggests life and love cannot be neatly measured like money.
Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)
The harbour did not so much wake as surrender to the morning. Fog lay over the water like a damp grey blanket that someone had forgotten to fold, and the fishing boats nodded at their moorings, half-asleep, their ropes creaking in complaint.
Old Tomas was already there. He was always there. He sat on an upturned crate at the end of the quay, mending a net with fingers that had long ago stopped feeling the cold. His knife flashed, paused, flashed again. Every so often he lifted his head and sniffed the air, as if the sea had written him a letter only he could read.
Behind him, the town stirred reluctantly. A shutter rattled up. A dog barked twice and thought better of it. Somewhere a kettle began its thin, rising whistle. The smell of bread drifted from the bakery on Water Lane and mixed with the older, deeper smells of salt, diesel and fish.
Then the sun arrived. It did not rise so much as break through – one bright blade splitting the fog, then another, until the whole harbour was suddenly ablaze. The water turned from slate to copper. Gulls exploded upward from the harbour wall, screaming. The boats seemed to sit up straighter.
Tomas did not look up. He tied off the last knot, tested it with a sharp tug, and laid the net across his knees like a sleeping cat. Only then did he raise his eyes to the brightening sea, and for a moment, just a moment, his face softened into something very close to a smile.
Question 3
Read "Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)". "The harbour did not so much wake as surrender to the morning." What does the word "surrender" suggest?
- A. The harbour is attacked by enemies.
- B. The harbour gives in to the day slowly and unwillingly.
- C. The harbour is excited for the day.
- D. The harbour is closing for good.
Question 4
Read "Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)". Which phrase best shows the dramatic change brought by the sun?
- A. "his knife flashed, paused, flashed again."
- B. "The water turned from slate to copper."
- C. "Old Tomas was already there."
- D. "A shutter rattled up."
Inheritance
When my aunt died she left me her piano, which was the one thing in her house I had never wanted. It was an upright of dark, scarred wood, too large for any room it had ever stood in, and it had been out of tune for as long as I could remember. As a child, I had been made to sit at it every Thursday while she counted the beats aloud in a voice like a ruler rapping a desk. I had hated it with the pure, uncomplicated hatred of a nine-year-old.
The removal men groaned it up the three flights to my flat and left it in the hall, where it blocked the light from the only window. For a month I edged around it sideways, as one edges around a guest who has outstayed their welcome. I told friends I would sell it. I photographed it twice for the listing and deleted the pictures both times.
It was during a power cut in February that I finally lifted the lid. I could not have said why. The flat was cold and dark and silent, and perhaps I simply wanted to hear something. I pressed middle C. It was flat, of course – everything about that piano was slightly flat – but the note hung in the hall far longer than I expected, and something in the slowness of its fading undid me.
I played the only piece I still knew, a dull exercise in C major that my aunt had made me repeat a hundred times. My fingers found it before my mind did. Halfway through, I realised I was counting under my breath, in her rhythm, in her voice.
I have not had the piano tuned. People ask me why, and I tell them I haven't got round to it, which is true in the way that most convenient answers are true. The other reason is harder to explain. Every flat note is exactly as she left it. I am not ready to correct her yet.
Question 5
Read "Inheritance". In paragraph 2, the narrator edges around the piano "as one edges around a guest who has outstayed their welcome". What does this suggest?
- A. He enjoys having visitors.
- B. The piano feels like an awkward, unwanted presence that he avoids confronting.
- C. The piano is too heavy to move.
- D. The piano belongs to a friend.
The Quiet Infrastructure
When we speak of infrastructure, we tend to picture concrete and steel: bridges, railways, power lines. We rarely think of the public library. Yet libraries are a form of infrastructure as essential, in their way, as any road – and, because their work is quiet, they are easier to neglect.
Consider what a library actually provides. It offers free access not only to books but to the internet, to printers, to warm and safe space, to help with forms and applications, to activities for toddlers and to company for the isolated elderly. For a student without a quiet room at home, it is a study hall. For a job-seeker without a computer, it is an office. For a newly arrived family, it may be the first public institution that welcomes them without asking anything in return.
Critics argue that, in an age of smartphones, these functions are obsolete. Information is everywhere; why fund buildings full of paper? But the argument confuses access to information with access to opportunity. A phone cannot print a CV, provide a warm room on a winter afternoon or offer the patient guidance of a librarian who can tell a reliable source from a persuasive fake. Moreover, millions of people still lack reliable internet at home. To assume that everyone is connected is to design policy for the comfortable and forget the rest.
None of this means libraries should stand still. The best have already transformed themselves into community hubs, hosting coding clubs, repair cafés and citizenship classes. But transformation requires investment, and investment requires us to recognise libraries for what they are: not a nostalgic luxury, but part of the foundation on which a fair society is built.
A bridge that collapses makes headlines. A library that closes rarely does. Its users simply scatter, each a little more alone than before. That silence is precisely why we should pay attention.
Question 6
Read "The Quiet Infrastructure". What is the effect of the contrast between a bridge collapse and a library closure in the final paragraph?
- A. It highlights how the loss of libraries goes unnoticed despite real harm.
- B. It argues that the media should ignore bridges.
- C. It shows libraries are more dangerous than bridges.
- D. It suggests bridges should be built inside libraries.
Question 7
The waves gnawed at the cliffs, year after year, until whole fields slipped into the sea. What does "gnawed" suggest about the sea?
- A. It is like a hungry animal, slowly and relentlessly destroying the land.
- B. It is calm and gentle.
- C. It is shallow and warm.
- D. It is frozen.
Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)
The harbour did not so much wake as surrender to the morning. Fog lay over the water like a damp grey blanket that someone had forgotten to fold, and the fishing boats nodded at their moorings, half-asleep, their ropes creaking in complaint.
Old Tomas was already there. He was always there. He sat on an upturned crate at the end of the quay, mending a net with fingers that had long ago stopped feeling the cold. His knife flashed, paused, flashed again. Every so often he lifted his head and sniffed the air, as if the sea had written him a letter only he could read.
Behind him, the town stirred reluctantly. A shutter rattled up. A dog barked twice and thought better of it. Somewhere a kettle began its thin, rising whistle. The smell of bread drifted from the bakery on Water Lane and mixed with the older, deeper smells of salt, diesel and fish.
Then the sun arrived. It did not rise so much as break through – one bright blade splitting the fog, then another, until the whole harbour was suddenly ablaze. The water turned from slate to copper. Gulls exploded upward from the harbour wall, screaming. The boats seemed to sit up straighter.
Tomas did not look up. He tied off the last knot, tested it with a sharp tug, and laid the net across his knees like a sleeping cat. Only then did he raise his eyes to the brightening sea, and for a moment, just a moment, his face softened into something very close to a smile.
Question 8
Read "Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)". In paragraph 3, the dog "barked twice and thought better of it". What is the effect?
- A. It creates fear and panic.
- B. It adds gentle humour and reinforces the sleepy, reluctant mood.
- C. It suggests the town is noisy and lively.
- D. It shows the dog is dangerous.
The Gardener's Ledger
My father kept two books. The first was the ledger in which he recorded every coin that passed through the shop: the price of flour, the cost of the new awning, the debts that customers swore they would settle by Friday. He wrote in it every evening, in a small, upright hand, and he never let anyone else touch it.
The second book I did not discover until after he died. It was a cheap school exercise book, its cover soft with handling, hidden at the back of the shed behind the seed trays. Inside, in the same upright hand, he had recorded something quite different: the date the first snowdrop appeared each year; the night a fox had dug up the tulips; the morning, in 1987, when "M. laughed at the robin on the spade and said it was the bravest bird in England." M. was my mother. I had never heard my father mention her laugh.
For forty years, it seemed, he had been keeping accounts of another kind – of small, unprofitable things that added up to a life. The shop ledger balanced to the penny. The garden book did not balance at all. There were gaps of months, sometimes years. In 1993, the year my mother died, there is only one entry: "Rain."
I used to think my father was a man who cared only for what could be counted. I sat in that cold shed until the light went, reading his small, careful sentences, and understood that I had been reading the wrong book.
Question 9
Read "The Gardener's Ledger". What does the narrator mean by "keeping accounts of another kind"?
- A. hiding money from the family
- B. running a second shop
- C. counting the plants for sale
- D. recording things that mattered emotionally rather than financially
Question 10
Read "The Gardener's Ledger". "The shop ledger balanced to the penny. The garden book did not balance at all." What is the effect of this contrast?
- A. It shows the garden was untidy.
- B. It proves the shop was failing.
- C. It suggests life and love cannot be neatly measured like money.
- D. It shows the father was bad at maths.
Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)
The harbour did not so much wake as surrender to the morning. Fog lay over the water like a damp grey blanket that someone had forgotten to fold, and the fishing boats nodded at their moorings, half-asleep, their ropes creaking in complaint.
Old Tomas was already there. He was always there. He sat on an upturned crate at the end of the quay, mending a net with fingers that had long ago stopped feeling the cold. His knife flashed, paused, flashed again. Every so often he lifted his head and sniffed the air, as if the sea had written him a letter only he could read.
Behind him, the town stirred reluctantly. A shutter rattled up. A dog barked twice and thought better of it. Somewhere a kettle began its thin, rising whistle. The smell of bread drifted from the bakery on Water Lane and mixed with the older, deeper smells of salt, diesel and fish.
Then the sun arrived. It did not rise so much as break through – one bright blade splitting the fog, then another, until the whole harbour was suddenly ablaze. The water turned from slate to copper. Gulls exploded upward from the harbour wall, screaming. The boats seemed to sit up straighter.
Tomas did not look up. He tied off the last knot, tested it with a sharp tug, and laid the net across his knees like a sleeping cat. Only then did he raise his eyes to the brightening sea, and for a moment, just a moment, his face softened into something very close to a smile.
Question 11
Read "Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)". "The harbour did not so much wake as surrender to the morning." What does the word "surrender" suggest?
- A. The harbour is attacked by enemies.
- B. The harbour is closing for good.
- C. The harbour gives in to the day slowly and unwillingly.
- D. The harbour is excited for the day.
Question 12
Read "Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)". Which phrase best shows the dramatic change brought by the sun?
- A. "A shutter rattled up."
- B. "his knife flashed, paused, flashed again."
- C. "Old Tomas was already there."
- D. "The water turned from slate to copper."
Inheritance
When my aunt died she left me her piano, which was the one thing in her house I had never wanted. It was an upright of dark, scarred wood, too large for any room it had ever stood in, and it had been out of tune for as long as I could remember. As a child, I had been made to sit at it every Thursday while she counted the beats aloud in a voice like a ruler rapping a desk. I had hated it with the pure, uncomplicated hatred of a nine-year-old.
The removal men groaned it up the three flights to my flat and left it in the hall, where it blocked the light from the only window. For a month I edged around it sideways, as one edges around a guest who has outstayed their welcome. I told friends I would sell it. I photographed it twice for the listing and deleted the pictures both times.
It was during a power cut in February that I finally lifted the lid. I could not have said why. The flat was cold and dark and silent, and perhaps I simply wanted to hear something. I pressed middle C. It was flat, of course – everything about that piano was slightly flat – but the note hung in the hall far longer than I expected, and something in the slowness of its fading undid me.
I played the only piece I still knew, a dull exercise in C major that my aunt had made me repeat a hundred times. My fingers found it before my mind did. Halfway through, I realised I was counting under my breath, in her rhythm, in her voice.
I have not had the piano tuned. People ask me why, and I tell them I haven't got round to it, which is true in the way that most convenient answers are true. The other reason is harder to explain. Every flat note is exactly as she left it. I am not ready to correct her yet.
Question 13
Read "Inheritance". In paragraph 2, the narrator edges around the piano "as one edges around a guest who has outstayed their welcome". What does this suggest?
- A. The piano feels like an awkward, unwanted presence that he avoids confronting.
- B. The piano is too heavy to move.
- C. He enjoys having visitors.
- D. The piano belongs to a friend.
The Quiet Infrastructure
When we speak of infrastructure, we tend to picture concrete and steel: bridges, railways, power lines. We rarely think of the public library. Yet libraries are a form of infrastructure as essential, in their way, as any road – and, because their work is quiet, they are easier to neglect.
Consider what a library actually provides. It offers free access not only to books but to the internet, to printers, to warm and safe space, to help with forms and applications, to activities for toddlers and to company for the isolated elderly. For a student without a quiet room at home, it is a study hall. For a job-seeker without a computer, it is an office. For a newly arrived family, it may be the first public institution that welcomes them without asking anything in return.
Critics argue that, in an age of smartphones, these functions are obsolete. Information is everywhere; why fund buildings full of paper? But the argument confuses access to information with access to opportunity. A phone cannot print a CV, provide a warm room on a winter afternoon or offer the patient guidance of a librarian who can tell a reliable source from a persuasive fake. Moreover, millions of people still lack reliable internet at home. To assume that everyone is connected is to design policy for the comfortable and forget the rest.
None of this means libraries should stand still. The best have already transformed themselves into community hubs, hosting coding clubs, repair cafés and citizenship classes. But transformation requires investment, and investment requires us to recognise libraries for what they are: not a nostalgic luxury, but part of the foundation on which a fair society is built.
A bridge that collapses makes headlines. A library that closes rarely does. Its users simply scatter, each a little more alone than before. That silence is precisely why we should pay attention.
Question 14
Read "The Quiet Infrastructure". What is the effect of the contrast between a bridge collapse and a library closure in the final paragraph?
- A. It argues that the media should ignore bridges.
- B. It shows libraries are more dangerous than bridges.
- C. It highlights how the loss of libraries goes unnoticed despite real harm.
- D. It suggests bridges should be built inside libraries.
Question 15
A thin, apologetic sun crept over the hills. What is the effect of describing the sun as "apologetic"?
- A. It suggests a fierce heatwave.
- B. It means the sun is setting quickly.
- C. It shows it is midnight.
- D. It suggests weak, pale sunlight on a cold or gloomy day.
Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)
The harbour did not so much wake as surrender to the morning. Fog lay over the water like a damp grey blanket that someone had forgotten to fold, and the fishing boats nodded at their moorings, half-asleep, their ropes creaking in complaint.
Old Tomas was already there. He was always there. He sat on an upturned crate at the end of the quay, mending a net with fingers that had long ago stopped feeling the cold. His knife flashed, paused, flashed again. Every so often he lifted his head and sniffed the air, as if the sea had written him a letter only he could read.
Behind him, the town stirred reluctantly. A shutter rattled up. A dog barked twice and thought better of it. Somewhere a kettle began its thin, rising whistle. The smell of bread drifted from the bakery on Water Lane and mixed with the older, deeper smells of salt, diesel and fish.
Then the sun arrived. It did not rise so much as break through – one bright blade splitting the fog, then another, until the whole harbour was suddenly ablaze. The water turned from slate to copper. Gulls exploded upward from the harbour wall, screaming. The boats seemed to sit up straighter.
Tomas did not look up. He tied off the last knot, tested it with a sharp tug, and laid the net across his knees like a sleeping cat. Only then did he raise his eyes to the brightening sea, and for a moment, just a moment, his face softened into something very close to a smile.
Question 16
Read "Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)". In paragraph 3, the dog "barked twice and thought better of it". What is the effect?
- A. It creates fear and panic.
- B. It shows the dog is dangerous.
- C. It suggests the town is noisy and lively.
- D. It adds gentle humour and reinforces the sleepy, reluctant mood.
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