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Comprehension: Explicit and Implicit Meaning: Question 6

Syllabus R1, R2

Multiple choice 1 mark

Read the following passage, then answer the question.

Oscar hadn't meant to stop, but his bicycle seemed to slow of its own accord outside number fourteen. The house looked smaller than he remembered, though he supposed that was simply what happened to childhood places. What surprised him was everything else: the front garden, once his mother's pride, was now a tangle of waist-high grass threaded through with bindweed, and the low wall he used to walk along like a tightrope had crumbled at one corner into a heap of loose brick.

A stack of unopened post, swollen with rain, leaned against the door beneath a letterbox that no longer closed properly. Green mould crept up the drainpipe in a long, uneven stain, and one of the upstairs curtains, the blue ones from his old bedroom, hung at an angle, as though someone had pulled at it once and never bothered to straighten it again. Beside the gate, a faded FOR SALE sign, its corner flapping loose, looked as if it had been there for more than one summer.

Oscar took a photograph on his phone, though he wasn't sure why, and cycled on before anyone could see him staring.

Which of the following best describes what the details in the passage suggest about the house?

Choose an answer to check it, then compare with the worked solution below.
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Worked solution

Why B is correct

Every specific detail in the passage points in the same direction. The garden has grown wild “waist-high,” the wall has crumbled, and, crucially, the post is unopened and swollen with rain, which means no one has collected it for some time; a letterbox that “no longer closed properly” and a curtain left askew “as though someone had pulled at it once and never bothered to straighten it again” both suggest nobody has touched the house in a while. The FOR SALE sign is faded and has clearly “been there for more than one summer” rather than recently appearing. Together, these accumulated details describe a house that has been standing empty and neglected for some time, which is option B.

Why the other options are wrong

  • A (recently sold) misreads the sign’s worn, long-standing condition as evidence of a recent event.
  • C (being renovated) ignores that every detail shows decline (mould, crumbling brick, unopened post), not improvement.
  • D (busy family) could explain an untidy garden alone, but not the unopened post and non-functioning letterbox, which show no one is currently receiving mail there at all.