NCEA Level 2 English 91100 Close Reading free practice questions with answers

TEXT ONE — NARRATIVE PROSE Question One Drafts Two weeks after the funeral, Hana finally opened the study door. The room had kept her father’s shape the way a coat keeps the shape of a shoulder: the leather chair angled towards the window, the lamp with its crooked shade, a mug of tea gone to a skin of grey. Nothing had been moved, and nothing had been needed. It was the neatest room in the house, and it was the most unlived in. She meant only to find the insurance papers. Instead, she found the drawer. It was the bottom one, the one that stuck, and when she wrenched it open, a drift of paper slid forward as if it had been waiting to be asked. Letters. Dozens of them, in his small, upright hand, each one beginning with her

name. Dear Hana. Dear Hana, I have been thinking. Dear Hana, I hope you are well. Not one had a stamp. Not one had been sent. She read them standing, then sitting on the floor, her back against the cold radiator. Some stopped after a line: ‘I should have rung on your birthday.’ Others went on for pages and then ended mid-sentence, as though he had put down the pen to listen for something and never picked it up again. In one, he had crossed out the word ‘sorry’ so many times that the paper had worn through, and in its place was a small, neat hole, like a window. Outside, the afternoon thinned to a pale gold. A neighbour’s radio played something tinny and cheerful. Hana held the last letter up to the light. It was dated three days before he died, and it was only one sentence long: ‘I keep starting, because I do not know how to finish.’ She laughed, a short, startled sound, and then she was crying, and the study, which had kept its silence for so long, seemed to let out its breath. She did not take the papers. She took the drawer, carried it, heavy and awkward, down the hall and set it on the kitchen table, among the cups and the unopened cards. Then she found a pen. For a long moment, she stared at the blank page. Then, in her own looping, impatient hand, she wrote:

‘Dear Dad.’ And, because there was no one left to read it, she did not stop. Question One Analyse how the writer uses setting and symbolism to develop the idea of unfinished relationships in ‘Drafts’. Support your answer with evidence from the text. Planning space (not marked) Setting: the study as a preserved room. Symbols: the drawer, the unsent letters, the hole where ‘sorry’ was. Hana’s change at the end. Link each quotation to the idea of something left unfinished. Question One: your response Write your response on the lines. Use short quotations from the text as evidence.