Unseen Text Practice 1: Prose Fiction — Answers
Answer sheet with model answers and success criteria for the Year 11 reading comprehension comprehension exercise.
Year 11 · English · Reading Comprehension
Unseen Text Practice 1: Prose Fiction — Answers
Stimulus text
Read the extract twice. On the second reading, mark the turning point, two images and one structural feature. Then answer the questions, writing to the marks indicated.
Night Window (original prose extract, approx. 520 words)
The roadhouse at Tullamurra Creek closed at ten, officially. Unofficially it closed when Noor's father fell asleep in the office chair with the radio murmuring the cricket from somewhere across the world, and that was usually closer to midnight. Until then the lights stayed on, the pie warmer hummed, and Noor sat behind the counter with her chemistry textbook open to the same page it had been open to for an hour.
Outside, the highway did what it always did. Headlights grew out of the dark, swelled, and passed. Most of them did not slow. The ones that did were road trains, mainly, and the drivers came in smelling of diesel and sweet coffee, and they called her 'love' and bought things they did not seem to want: a packet of mints, a newspaper two days old.
At twenty past eleven a ute pulled in and did not park under the lights. Noor watched the shape of it, the engine ticking as it cooled. Nobody got out. She closed the textbook.
Her father had a rule about this. If they don't come in, you don't go out. He had said it the way he said most things, once, flatly, as though it were a fact about weather. He had not said what to do if they just sat there.
Ten minutes. The pie warmer clicked off and on. In the office the commentator said something about a change of bowling and her father did not stir.
Noor went to the window and stood where the driver could see her: a girl in a green polo shirt with the roadhouse's name on it, arms folded, not afraid. She felt, as she did it, how much of it was performance, and how little that mattered. The important thing was to be seen standing there.
The ute's door opened. A woman got out. She was older than Noor's mother would have been, and she was holding a child's shoe, just one, and she walked up to the glass and stood on the other side of it, and for a moment they looked at each other through their own reflections.
'I'm sorry,' the woman said. Noor could not hear it but she could see it. 'I didn't know where else to stop.'
Noor unlocked the door. Later she would not be able to say why. It was not the shoe, exactly, or the woman's face, which was ordinary and tired. It was that the woman had waited. She had sat in the dark for ten minutes deciding whether to ask for help, and Noor knew what that was like; she had been doing it, in her own way, since February.
Behind her, the radio went on describing a game that nobody in the building was listening to. Her father slept with his mouth slightly open and his hand on the desk, near the phone, the way he had slept every night since the funeral, as if waiting for it to ring.
'Come in,' Noor said. 'There's tea.' And she put the kettle on, and did not wake him.
Questions
Write in full sentences. Marks are shown for each question; use them to judge how much to write.
- Afirst person, narrated by Noor
- Bthird person limited, staying close to Noor's thoughts
- Cthird person omniscient, moving between all characters
- Dsecond person, addressing the reader as 'you'
Answer: third person limited, staying close to Noor's thoughts
The narration uses 'she' and 'Noor' but gives us only Noor's perceptions and thoughts ('Noor knew what that was like'); we never enter the father's or the woman's minds.
Answer: The purchases are an excuse for contact: the roadhouse offers company, light and a brief human exchange on a long, dark highway, not goods. It establishes early that people stop here for reasons they do not state.
Answer: The rule ('If they don't come in, you don't go out') shows he is protective and practical. Saying it 'once, flatly, as though it were a fact about weather' suggests a man of few words who treats danger as unarguable and routine, and who does not discuss feelings or exceptions. It also hints at emotional withdrawal.
Model answer: Both are background sounds that mark time without changing anything, so they stretch the ten minutes of waiting. The pie warmer that 'clicked off and on' and the commentator noting 'a change of bowling' are trivial and repetitive, which makes the silence of the parked ute more threatening by contrast. The sentence fragment 'Ten minutes.' isolates the wait, and the father's failure to 'stir' leaves Noor alone with the decision.
Model answer: The glass both separates and connects the two characters. Seeing each other 'through their own reflections' suggests that each woman recognises something of herself in the other: both are alone in the dark, waiting, unsure whether to ask for or offer help. The image prepares the reader for Noor's decision, which is based on recognition ('Noor knew what that was like') rather than on the shoe or the woman's face.
Answer: Her mother has died, probably in February of that year. Evidence: the woman is 'older than Noor's mother would have been' (the conditional implies the mother is no longer alive), Noor has been deciding whether to ask for help 'since February', and the father has slept by the phone 'every night since the funeral'.
Model answer: The paragraph moves by elimination: 'It was not the shoe, exactly, or the woman's face', and each rejected reason is a visible, obvious one. The sentence that finally supplies the reason, 'It was that the woman had waited', is short and plain, which gives it the weight of a discovery. The reason is then deepened by the comparison with Noor's own months of hesitation 'since February'. The structure reveals that Noor's choice is driven by empathy she has not yet put into words: she recognises her own grief in a stranger's hesitation. The contradiction between 'would not be able to say why' and the explanation that follows shows the gap between what a person understands and what they can articulate.
Answer: It shows Noor taking on the adult role her father has withdrawn from, quietly and without blame. Letting him sleep is an act of care as well as independence; she breaks his rule but protects him from having to know. The understated ending leaves the reader with the sense that the household's roles have shifted.
- Athe ute pulls in and does not park under the lights
- BNoor goes to the window and chooses to be seen standing there
- Cthe woman says 'I'm sorry'
- DNoor puts the kettle on
Answer: Noor goes to the window and chooses to be seen standing there
Noor's decision to stand in the window is her first active choice; everything before it is waiting, and everything after follows from it. The later moments are consequences of this one.
Model answer: The writer uses a close third-person perspective and a pattern of small, concrete details to suggest that Noor's decision to help the stranger grows out of her own unspoken grief. Because the narration stays with Noor's perceptions, the reader shares her watchfulness: the ute 'did not park under the lights', the 'engine ticking as it cooled', the father who 'did not stir'. Detail stands in for feeling throughout, so that grief is never named but is present in the chemistry textbook 'open to the same page' for an hour and in the father's hand resting 'near the phone ... as if waiting for it to ring'. The single child's shoe the woman carries works the same way: an object that implies a loss the text never explains. When Noor recognises that the woman 'had waited', the perspective allows the reader to understand the link before Noor can state it, since she 'would not be able to say why'. The image of the two women looking at each other 'through their own reflections' makes the connection visible: in helping the stranger, Noor is also answering her own months of hesitation 'since February'. The ending, in which she 'did not wake him', completes the shift: grief has made her the one who opens the door.
Success criteria:
- Opens with a direct answer to the question that names both perspective and detail
- Explains how the limited third-person perspective shapes what the reader knows and feels
- Analyses at least three concrete details or images with their effect
- Makes the link between grief and the decision to help explicit, using evidence
- Uses precise analytical verbs and embeds short quotations
- Ends with a sentence that states the overall idea rather than summarising
Marking tips
- Give credit for correct method even when the final answer slips — the working shows where the thinking went right.
- For open-ended tasks, use the success criteria as a checklist rather than looking for one "right" answer.
- Celebrate what went well first, then pick one thing to work on next.
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