Selecting and Using Evidence for a Purpose: Question 9
Syllabus R5
Read the passage, then answer the question that follows.
By the fourth week at the rehabilitation centre, the young fox in enclosure three could walk without any visible limp, and volunteers had started calling her 'the quick one' because she reached her food bowl before the door had even finished sliding open. Callum, the senior vet technician, examined her hind leg carefully under low light each morning, running a thumb slowly along the healed fracture line to check for any give in the bone.
He noted in the centre's log that the X-ray from ten days earlier showed the bone had knitted cleanly, with none of the irregular calcification that sometimes signals a fracture healing under strain. Even so, he wrote that he was not yet willing to recommend her for release, since a fox that had spent four weeks recovering on a soft, flat enclosure floor had not been tested on the kind of broken, uneven ground she would need to sprint across within days of returning to the wild. Two other technicians, keen to free up the enclosure for a barn owl due to arrive that Friday, thought she looked ready to go.
Which of the following is the CORRECTLY selected piece of evidence (a short, exact quotation from the passage) that best supports the point that Callum doubted the fox was ready for release, despite her healthy appearance? [1]
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Worked solution
Assessment focus
This question tests the mechanics of a well-chosen quotation, not just correct content. A properly selected piece of evidence must be short (a precise phrase, not a sprawling extract), exact (word-for-word from the text, not a paraphrase), and relevant (actually about the stated point), all three at once.
Why D is correct
“not yet willing to recommend her for release” is taken word-for-word from the passage, is short enough to be a precise, quotable phrase, and is directly about Callum’s professional doubt, exactly the point the question asks for.
Why the distractors are wrong
- A captures the right idea but is a paraphrase. “wasn’t ready for the wild yet” does not appear anywhere in the passage in that wording, so it fails the requirement for an exact quotation.
- B is genuinely exact wording from the passage and is on the correct topic, but it reproduces almost the whole sentence rather than the short, precise phrase the question asks for. Length here is a weakness, not a strength.
- C is short and exact, but it is about the fox’s nickname among volunteers, not about Callum’s doubt. A plausible-looking option only because it is genuinely quoted from the text.
Mark scheme
- 1 mark for selecting D.
- 0 marks for any other option. No partial credit, since this is a discrete single-answer selection question.