Take this Quiz: National 5 English: Critical Reading of Prose and Drama | Zestly

Question 1

A short story is told throughout by a boy of nine, who reports what the adults around him say without understanding it, while the reader understands it perfectly well. What does the writer gain from this narrative choice?

Accepted Answer

A gap between what the narrator knows and what the reader knows, which lets the reader see things the narrator cannot.

Answer

A way of hiding the ending until the last page.

Answer

A guarantee that everything the reader is told is true.

Answer

A faster-moving plot, because a child notices less.

Question 2

In a novel, the narrator insists repeatedly that he was never angry, while every scene shows him shouting. What should the reader conclude about this narrator?

Accepted Answer

That the narrator's account cannot be taken at face value, and the gap between what he says and what he does is the point.

Answer

That the writer has made a mistake in the drafting.

Answer

That the other characters are lying about him.

Answer

That the narrator's anger is justified by events.

Question 3

A character in a play never finishes a sentence when her husband is in the room, but speaks fluently to everyone else. What is the playwright showing through this behaviour?

Accepted Answer

Something about the relationship, conveyed through behaviour rather than through anyone saying it.

Answer

That the playwright wanted to shorten the scene.

Answer

That she is naturally shy with everyone.

Answer

That she has a speech difficulty.

Question 4

A novel opens in a town where the mine has closed, the shops are boarded and the young have left. The story that follows is about a family arguing over whether to stay. What is the setting doing here?

Answer

Providing historical information the reader needs.

Answer

Making the story more depressing for its own sake.

Answer

Showing that the writer knows the area well.

Answer

Creating the pressure the family is arguing under, so the place is a cause of the conflict rather than a backdrop to it.

Question 5

A short story tells its events out of order, opening with a funeral and only revealing at the end who has died and why. What does this structure achieve?

Answer

It saves the writer from having to describe the death.

Answer

It shows that the events did not really happen.

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It makes the reader read the earlier scenes looking for the cause, so understanding arrives with the last page rather than the first.

Answer

It confuses the reader, which is a fault in the writing.