Unseen Text Practice 3: Nonfiction / Speech — Answers
Answer sheet with model answers and success criteria for the Year 12 reading comprehension comprehension exercise.
Year 12 · English · Reading Comprehension
Unseen Text Practice 3: Nonfiction / Speech — Answers
Stimulus text
Read the speech twice. On the second reading, mark where the speaker concedes a point, where she attacks the report, and where she turns to personal story. Then answer the questions, writing to the marks indicated.
'The Last Free Room' (original speech, approx. 500 words). Context: a fictional Year 12 student, Ines Varga, addresses the ordinary meeting of the fictional Kelloway Shire Council, which is considering a report recommending that the town's library be closed and its services moved to a 'community hub' in the larger town of Brennan.
Councillors, thank you for the three minutes. I will try to use them well, which is more than I can say for the first fourteen years of my life, most of which I spent in the building you are proposing to close.
I should say at the start that I am not here to tell you the library is lovely. You know it is lovely. You have seen the children's corner with the whale painted on the wall, and you have seen the leak above it, and you have seen the quote for fixing the roof, and I understand that the quote is the reason we are here.
So let me talk about the number that is not on the quote.
Every weekday afternoon between half past three and six, there are somewhere between twenty and forty teenagers in that building. I have counted. They are not all reading. Some of them are charging their phones. Some are doing homework because home is loud, or cold, or forty minutes away on a bus that has already left. Some are there because it is the only room in this town where a sixteen-year-old can sit for two hours without buying anything and without anyone asking what they are doing.
That is what the library is. It is not a building full of books. It is the last free room.
The report in front of you says the service can be 'consolidated' into the community hub in Brennan, twenty-five kilometres away. I have read the report. It uses the word 'access' eleven times. I would like to ask the people who wrote it when they last caught the 4:10 bus to Brennan, and whether they noticed that there is no 4:10 bus to Brennan.
I am not naive. I know the roof costs money and I know the shire does not print it. But I also know what you have spent money on. The new signage at the entrance to town cost more than this roof. It says 'Kelloway: A Great Place to Grow'. I walk past it every morning on the way to the building you are closing, and every morning I think: grow into what?
Councillors, I will finish with this. In Year 7 I did not have a computer at home. I wrote every assignment for two years on the second machine from the left, the one with the sticky E. I got into the course I wanted on the strength of those assignments. I am not special. There is a kid in Year 7 right now sitting at that same machine, and you are about to turn it off.
You can fix a roof. You cannot easily give a town back the room where its children learnt to be alone with a book, or with each other, or with their own thoughts.
Keep the library open. Fix the roof. Put a bucket under the whale if you have to. But do not take away the last free room.
Thank you.
Questions
Write in full sentences and quote the speech. Marks are shown for each question.
- Ainform the council about library opening hours
- Bpersuade the council to keep the library open and fund the roof repair
- Centertain the audience with stories about the town
- Dexplain how the library's computers work
Answer: persuade the council to keep the library open and fund the roof repair
The speech builds to a direct call to action: 'Keep the library open. Fix the roof.' Everything before it supports that demand.
Answer: The self-deprecating joke makes her sound candid and unthreatening, which disarms a formal audience, while the mention of 'fourteen years' spent in the library quietly establishes her authority: she speaks as someone the library shaped. The tone is confident but not hostile.
Answer: The anaphora moves from the charming (the whale) to the problem (the leak) to the cost (the quote), acknowledging the council's knowledge and conceding the real issue before arguing. This concession makes the speaker appear fair and reasonable, and it clears away the obvious counter-argument so that she can introduce 'the number that is not on the quote'.
Model answer: The precise time frame ('between half past three and six') and numbers ('twenty and forty teenagers') give the claim the texture of data, and the blunt 'I have counted' asserts first-hand authority that the report lacks. The speaker then lists reasons in a tricolon of hardship, 'loud, or cold, or forty minutes away', which turns statistics into lives and invites sympathy without pleading. The detail that students can sit 'without buying anything' reframes the library as a social necessity rather than a leisure service, which is a logical and an emotional appeal at once.
Answer: The short sentences and the paragraph's brevity slow the speech and give the redefinition weight, as a slogan or thesis. The antithesis ('not a building full of books ... the last free room') shifts the debate from a service that can be relocated to a space that cannot be replaced, and 'last' adds urgency.
Model answer: She quotes its bureaucratic language ('consolidated') and counts its use of 'access' ('eleven times'), exposing a gap between the word and the reality. The rhetorical question about when the authors 'last caught the 4:10 bus to Brennan', followed by the ironic reveal that 'there is no 4:10 bus to Brennan', turns the report's key term against it with humour, so that the audience laughs at the report rather than at her. 'I have read the report' also positions her as better informed than its defenders.
Answer: A rhetorical question that turns the town's own slogan ('A Great Place to Grow') against the council. By juxtaposing the expensive signage with the closing library, the speaker exposes a contradiction in the council's priorities and leaves the question hanging so the councillors must answer it themselves.
Model answer: The anecdote is specific and physical: the exact machine, the 'sticky E', the two years of assignments. These details make the story believable and memorable, and they show the library's effect on a real life rather than asserting it. The claim that she 'got into the course I wanted' supplies a concrete outcome, giving the emotional appeal a logical backbone. 'I am not special' is strategically important: it prevents the councillors from dismissing her as an exception and transfers the story to 'a kid in Year 7 right now'. The final clause, 'you are about to turn it off', makes the council the direct agent of harm to that child, so the anecdote ends as an accusation disguised as a memory.
- Abitter and accusatory throughout
- Bcandid and controlled, moving between humour, concession and urgency
- Cformal and detached
- Dnostalgic and sentimental
Answer: candid and controlled, moving between humour, concession and urgency
The speaker jokes, concedes the cost, attacks the report with irony and ends with urgency, but never loses control; the modality rises steadily to the final imperatives.
Model answer: The speech is highly effective because its three kinds of appeal reinforce one another rather than competing, and because the speaker controls the order in which they arrive. She begins ethically, establishing credibility through candour ('I am not here to tell you the library is lovely') and through concession: by granting that 'the quote is the reason we are here', she shows she understands the council's position, which earns her the right to challenge it. The logical appeal follows, built from first-hand data ('I have counted') and from exposing the report's hollow vocabulary, where 'access' is repeated 'eleven times' but 'there is no 4:10 bus to Brennan'. The comparison with the signage that 'cost more than this roof' supplies a concrete financial counter-argument, so the speech cannot be dismissed as merely sentimental. Only then does she turn to emotion, through the anecdote of 'the sticky E' and the image of 'a kid in Year 7 right now' at the same machine; because the logical ground has been prepared, the feeling lands as evidence rather than manipulation. The redefinition of the library as 'the last free room' fuses all three appeals in a single phrase. If the speech has a weakness, it is that the financial problem is not solved, only reframed ('Put a bucket under the whale'), but as a three-minute address designed to shift priorities rather than budgets, it succeeds: it leaves the council with a question, 'grow into what?', that it can no longer avoid.
Success criteria:
- States a clear judgement about effectiveness in the opening sentence
- Identifies and illustrates all three kinds of appeal with specific quotations
- Explains how the appeals work together and in what order
- Analyses at least three techniques (e.g. concession, irony, anecdote, antithesis) with effect
- Acknowledges a limit or counter-view and weighs it
- Ends with an overall evaluation linked to the speech's purpose and audience
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.