Time: allow about 45 minutes for these 24 questions. The real Part B is 70 questions, designed for 3 hours with up to 6 available.
Read each selection right through first, for what it is doing, before answering anything.
Choose the best of the four answers. More than one may be partly true; the right one is the one the selection supports most fully.
Use the following information to answer questions 1 to 8.
The following is an excerpt from a short story.
- For eleven years my father kept the boat under a tarpaulin at the side of the house, and every spring he said this was the year. He would lift one corner of the canvas the way you check on someone sleeping. The hull was sound. He told us that often, as though soundness were the difficulty. In April he bought marine varnish and set it on the shelf beside last year's tin, unopened, and the year before that. My mother stopped asking. I did not, for a long time, because I thought the asking was a kindness — that a question kept the thing alive. I was nineteen before it occurred to me that he might have wanted permission to let it go, and that every spring I had failed to give it.
1. The father's habit of lifting “one corner of the canvas” suggests that he
- A. approaches the boat with a care that avoids fully confronting it
- B. is checking the hull for damage after the winter
- C. intends to begin work on the boat that day
- D. has forgotten what condition the boat is in
2. The narrator's remark that his father told them the hull was sound “as though soundness were the difficulty” implies that
- A. the boat required repairs the father could not afford
- B. the obstacle was never the condition of the boat
- C. the father was mistaken about the hull
- D. the family doubted the father's judgment
3. The detail of the unopened tins of varnish primarily serves to
- A. suggest that the boat was beyond repair
- B. establish the season in which the story takes place
- C. measure the passing of years through an accumulating object
- D. show that the father was careless with money
4. The statement “My mother stopped asking” is placed immediately after the tins most likely to
- A. explain why the father never began the work
- B. introduce a conflict between the parents
- C. indicate that she had lost interest in the family
- D. contrast her conclusion with the narrator's persistence
5. The narrator's belief that “a question kept the thing alive” reveals that he
- A. understood his asking as an act of hope on his father's behalf
- B. enjoyed reminding his father of an unfinished task
- C. believed the boat could still be restored
- D. had been asked by his mother to keep raising it
6. The last sentence changes the meaning of the passage mainly by
- A. explaining why the family moved away
- B. reframing the narrator's kindness as an obstacle
- C. revealing that the father eventually finished the boat
- D. introducing a new character's point of view
7. The narrator's tone throughout the excerpt is best described as
- A. detached and clinical
- B. nostalgic and untroubled
- C. reflective and self-questioning
- D. bitter and accusing
8. Which statement best expresses an idea developed in this excerpt?
- A. Neglected possessions come to dominate a household
- B. Children rarely understand their parents' ambitions
- C. Practical problems are usually harder to solve than emotional ones
- D. Support offered with the best intentions can prevent someone from letting go
Use the following information to answer questions 9 to 16.
The following poem was written for this examination.
- Inventory
- The kitchen drawer keeps what the house cannot use:
- keys to a door replaced two owners ago,
- batteries we test by touching to the tongue,
- a warranty for a machine already hauled away.
- My mother calls it the drawer of maybe.
- She is not sentimental. She is simply
- unwilling to declare a thing finished
- while some part of it still fits a lock somewhere.
- When we cleared the house I kept the drawer entire,
- carried it out to the car like a tray of water,
- and set it on the seat where a person would sit.
9. The list in the first stanza is composed mainly of objects that
- A. have outlived the thing they belonged to
- B. the family intends to repair
- C. were bought recently and never used
- D. the mother has forgotten she owns
10. The phrase “the drawer of maybe” functions in the poem as
- A. a description of where valuables are kept
- B. a name that converts indecision into a household fact
- C. a criticism of the mother's untidiness
- D. evidence that the family is superstitious
11. The line break after “She is simply” most likely serves to
- A. show that the sentence was left unfinished
- B. mark the end of the poem's argument
- C. delay the explanation so that “unwilling” lands with weight
- D. indicate a change of speaker
12. The clause “while some part of it still fits a lock somewhere” suggests that the mother
- A. keeps a record of which keys open which doors
- B. believes the family will return to the old house
- C. is planning to replace the locks
- D. refuses to call something useless while any use remains imaginable
13. The simile “like a tray of water” conveys that the speaker carries the drawer
- A. with a care out of proportion to the objects inside it
- B. with difficulty because of its weight
- C. carelessly, spilling some of the contents
- D. in order to wash the items it contains
14. The final line, placing the drawer “where a person would sit”, most strongly implies that
- A. the speaker expects someone to join them
- B. the drawer has taken on the significance of a person
- C. there was no room for it anywhere else in the car
- D. the family had already left the house
15. The poem's title is significant because an inventory is usually
- A. written by a stranger to the household
- B. compiled after something has been lost
- C. a practical record, which contrasts with the emotional weight the poem finds
- D. a list of valuable property, which the objects clearly are
16. Which statement best describes the development of the speaker's thinking across the poem?
- A. From irritation with his mother, to acceptance, to indifference
- B. From grief, to anger, to resignation
- C. From describing a house, to describing a journey, to describing a person
- D. From cataloguing objects, to defending a habit, to enacting it himself
Use the following information to answer questions 17 to 21.
The following is a description of a photograph that accompanied a magazine article.
- A woman stands in the doorway of a house, facing away from the camera, looking into a room that is out of frame. She occupies the left third of the picture. The rest of the photograph is the empty hallway she is standing in: bare floorboards, a rectangle of light from a window we cannot see, and a light patch on the wall where a picture once hung. The photograph is in colour, but the hallway is so washed out that only the woman's red sleeve carries any saturation. The caption reads: “After.”
17. Placing the woman in the left third of the frame primarily emphasizes
- A. the emptiness of the space that surrounds her
- B. her authority over the household
- C. the photographer's distance from the subject
- D. the time of day the photograph was taken
18. The light patch on the wall functions as
- A. the photographer's primary light source
- B. evidence of something removed, without the photograph showing what
- C. a flaw in the photographic exposure
- D. an indication that the house is newly built
19. The red sleeve draws attention mainly because
- A. it is positioned at the centre of the frame
- B. it matches the colour of the floorboards
- C. it is the only saturated colour in a washed-out image
- D. red is conventionally associated with danger
20. The one-word caption “After” most significantly
- A. identifies when the photograph was taken
- B. names the woman in the doorway
- C. explains why the hallway is empty
- D. invites the viewer to imagine a before that the image withholds
21. The decision to photograph the woman from behind, facing a room the viewer cannot see, mainly has the effect of
- A. aligning the viewer with her position while withholding what she sees
- B. concealing her identity for legal reasons
- C. suggesting that she is about to leave the house
- D. demonstrating the photographer's technical skill
Use the following information to answer questions 22 to 24.
Answer the following questions by considering Selections I, II and III together.
22. An idea shared by all three selections is that
- A. memory becomes less reliable as time passes
- B. attachment often attaches itself to objects and spaces rather than to people directly
- C. families are reluctant to discuss their difficulties openly
- D. possessions lose their meaning once they are no longer useful
23. Selection III differs from Selections I and II chiefly in that it
- A. presents an event rather than a state of affairs
- B. offers a resolution the others withhold
- C. conveys its idea through composition rather than through a speaker's reflection
- D. concerns a family while the others do not
24. The endings of Selection I and Selection II are alike in that both
- A. return to the image with which the text opened
- B. address the reader directly for the first time
- C. resolve the tension the text has established
- D. recast what came before them in a single final gesture or realization
Answer key · Sample diploma exam
English 30-1 · maddyhelps.com
Multiple choice
1. A · 2. B · 3. C · 4. D · 5. A · 6. B · 7. C · 8. D · 9. A · 10. B · 11. C · 12. D · 13. A · 14. B · 15. C · 16. D · 17. A · 18. B · 19. C · 20. D · 21. A · 22. B · 23. C · 24. D
Numerical response
Question 1 — A. approaches the boat with a care that avoids fully confronting it
The comparison to checking on someone sleeping makes the gesture tender and cautious — he looks, but not for long and not at all of it. Reading it as a practical inspection ignores the comparison the sentence is built on.
Question 2 — B. the obstacle was never the condition of the boat
The phrasing dismisses the stated reason: if soundness is not the difficulty, something unstated is. The story never names it, which is why the sentence works by implication.
Question 3 — C. measure the passing of years through an accumulating object
Each tin is a year that did not happen, stacked where they can be counted. The detail does the work a summary sentence would have done, and does it without comment.
Question 4 — D. contrast her conclusion with the narrator's persistence
The next sentence begins “I did not”, so the two are set against each other deliberately. Juxtaposition is how the passage compares their responses without judging either.
Question 5 — A. understood his asking as an act of hope on his father's behalf
He calls the asking a kindness, so he saw it as sustaining something for his father, not pressing him. The final sentence then reverses that reading.
Question 6 — B. reframing the narrator's kindness as an obstacle
Everything before it presents the asking as generous. The final sentence proposes that it kept his father trapped, so the reader has to reread the whole passage against it — that reversal is the point of the ending.
Question 7 — C. reflective and self-questioning
He revisits his own behaviour and revises his understanding of it, which is reflection rather than blame. Nothing in the passage attacks the father, and “untroubled” is ruled out by the ending.
Question 8 — D. Support offered with the best intentions can prevent someone from letting go
The excerpt is built to arrive at the final recognition, so the controlling idea has to account for it. The others are true of one detail but not of the passage as a whole.
Question 9 — A. have outlived the thing they belonged to
A key to a replaced door, a warranty for a machine that is gone — each item names its own obsolescence. That shared quality is what makes them a list rather than a pile.
Question 10 — B. a name that converts indecision into a household fact
Naming the drawer makes the habit ordinary and shared — it stops being a failure to tidy and becomes something the household accepts. The speaker immediately defends her against the tidier reading.
Question 11 — C. delay the explanation so that “unwilling” lands with weight
Enjambment holds the reader over the gap, so the word that arrives after it carries emphasis. That word reframes the mother's habit as a decision rather than a failing.
Question 12 — D. refuses to call something useless while any use remains imaginable
The condition is deliberately vague — <i>some part</i>, <i>somewhere</i> — which is what makes it a principle rather than a plan. Reading it literally as a key-and-lock inventory misses that vagueness.
Question 13 — A. with a care out of proportion to the objects inside it
A tray of water demands absolute steadiness. Applying that care to a drawer of dead batteries is the point — the value is not in the objects.
Question 14 — B. the drawer has taken on the significance of a person
The poem could have said the passenger seat. Choosing to describe it as where a person would sit gives the drawer that status — and, by implication, marks who is missing.
Question 15 — C. a practical record, which contrasts with the emotional weight the poem finds
The word promises accounting and the poem delivers attachment. That gap between the title's register and the poem's feeling is doing the work.
Question 16 — D. From cataloguing objects, to defending a habit, to enacting it himself
Stanza one lists, stanza two explains and defends, stanza three shows the speaker doing the same thing on a larger scale. Tracking that movement is what a question about development asks for.
Question 17 — A. the emptiness of the space that surrounds her
Composition assigns meaning by proportion. Giving two thirds of the image to an empty hallway makes the absence the subject, with the woman as its measure.
Question 18 — B. evidence of something removed, without the photograph showing what
It is a mark left by what used to hang there — an absence made visible. Visual texts frequently argue through what is missing rather than what is present.
Question 19 — C. it is the only saturated colour in a washed-out image
Contrast, not convention, is doing the work here: a single saturated area in a desaturated image is where the eye goes. Naming the technique is what an analysis question wants.
Question 20 — D. invites the viewer to imagine a before that the image withholds
A caption anchors an image's meaning, and this one supplies a comparison that is never shown. The viewer supplies the missing half, which is exactly the effect intended.
Question 21 — A. aligning the viewer with her position while withholding what she sees
We stand where she stands and are denied what she looks at, so her attention becomes the subject rather than her expression. Framing decides what a viewer is and is not given.
Question 22 — B. attachment often attaches itself to objects and spaces rather than to people directly
A boat, a drawer and a mark on a wall each carry feeling that is really about a person or a life. The second option describes only the first selection, and the third is contradicted by all three.
Question 23 — C. conveys its idea through composition rather than through a speaker's reflection
Both written selections have a narrator who thinks aloud. The photograph has no narrator at all, so framing, colour and caption have to carry the meaning.
Question 24 — D. recast what came before them in a single final gesture or realization
The story's last sentence reverses the meaning of the narrator's questions, and the poem's last line turns the drawer into a passenger. Neither resolves anything — both reframe.