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Evaluating Viewpoint, Argument and Bias: Question 5

Syllabus R3, R4

Multiple choice 1 mark

Read the following opinion piece, then answer the question below.

Ask any employer what today's school leavers lack, and the answer is rarely knowledge. It is experience of the real world beyond a classroom desk. That is why every secondary school in the country should require students to complete twenty hours of community volunteering before they can collect their final certificate.

Volunteering teaches things no textbook can: how to turn up on time when no one is grading you for it, how to work alongside people twenty, forty or sixty years older than you, and how to keep going on a task that offers no exam mark at the end of it. A charity coordinator I spoke to in Redfield put it simply: teenagers who had volunteered in her food bank were, in her words, "unrecognisable" within a term, more confident, more reliable, more willing to help without being asked twice.

Critics will say that making volunteering compulsory defeats its purpose, since true volunteering must be freely chosen. But is an hour of French grammar any more "freely chosen" by a fourteen-year-old? School has never been optional, so why should this one experience, proven to build character that lasts a lifetime, be treated any differently?

Twenty hours. That is all it takes to turn a self-absorbed teenager into a young adult who understands that the world does not revolve around them.

Which persuasive technique does the writer mainly use in the sentence: "But is an hour of French grammar any more 'freely chosen' by a fourteen-year-old?"

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

Step 1: Read the sentence for its function, not just its grammar

The sentence “But is an hour of French grammar any more ‘freely chosen’ by a fourteen-year-old?” is phrased as a question, but the writer is not genuinely uncertain and does not expect the reader to answer. It is placed straight after the critics’ objection (“true volunteering must be freely chosen”) specifically to undermine that objection by implication.

Step 2: Eliminate the distractors

  • B (statistic): There is no number or figure in this sentence.
  • C (anecdote): This sentence makes a general comparison about school subjects, not a specific personal story. The Redfield charity coordinator example earlier in the passage is the anecdote, not this sentence.
  • D (direct address): The sentence does not use “you”; it refers to “a fourteen-year-old” in the third person.

Step 3: Confirm the technique

By comparing compulsory volunteering to compulsory French grammar lessons, the question invites the reader to conclude that if school itself is never “freely chosen,” objecting to volunteering on those grounds is inconsistent, without the writer ever having to state that conclusion directly. This is the defining feature of a rhetorical question.

Final answer

Option A, rhetorical question, is the technique used in this sentence.