Living with the Alpine Fault — Non-fiction Comprehension — Answers
Answer sheet with model answers and success criteria for the Year 10 reading comprehension comprehension exercise.
Year 10 · English · Reading Comprehension
Living with the Alpine Fault — Non-fiction Comprehension — Answers
Part A — Find the facts
Answer: The Pacific Plate and the Australian Plate.
Answer: 1717.
- Aevery 30 years
- Broughly every 300 years
- Cevery 3,000 years
- Devery year
Answer: roughly every 300 years
The evidence shows it has ruptured 'on average roughly every 300 years'.
Answer: A 75 per cent chance that the fault will rupture within the next 50 years, probably producing an earthquake of around magnitude 8.
Part B — Explain and interpret
Answer: The fault stays locked while strain builds, then ruptures. Each rupture pushes the land up as well as sideways, and over millions of years these movements have raised the mountains.
Answer: Layers of sediment in swamps and lakes that record shaking and flooding; the ages of trees that began growing after earlier forests were destroyed.
Answer: A high probability over a long period tells us the event is likely, but not exactly when it will happen, so it is a reason to prepare rather than to panic.
Answer: Those roads, bridges and power lines connect the towns to the rest of the country, so damage could cut them off from supplies and help.
Part C — Writer's craft
Answer: It turns an abstract measurement into something familiar and shows how slow the movement is, which makes the build-up of strain over centuries easier to understand.
Answer: It moves from describing danger to a calm, reassuring and practical tone focused on preparation. The writer wants readers to take the risk seriously without being frightened, and to act.
- Acertain to happen
- Bvery unlikely
- Calready over
- Dimpossible to measure
Answer: certain to happen
The writer says disaster is not 'inevitable', meaning not certain.
Part D — Write about it
Model answer: Preparing for an Alpine Fault earthquake is the most sensible response because the risk is real but its timing is uncertain. The evidence from sediment layers and tree ages shows the fault has ruptured roughly every 300 years, and with the last rupture in 1717, a 2021 study estimated a 75 per cent chance of a rupture within 50 years. Ignoring this would leave communities exposed to shaking, landslides and the loss of roads that connect West Coast towns. Yet living in fear is pointless, because no one can say which year it will happen. Programmes such as AF8 show the alternative: planning supply routes, reaching isolated towns and making sure households can look after themselves for several days.
Success criteria:
- Clear answer to the question
- Uses evidence and statistics from across the text
- Explains why both ignoring and fearing the risk are unhelpful
- Logical, formal structure
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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