A price beside the hours
Original non-fiction-style practice text.
The weaving cooperative displayed a price beside each blanket. Visitors often called the work expensive until one maker, Oona, began placing a second card beside it. That card recorded the time spent preparing the yarn, setting up the loom and weaving the pattern. It did not include a request for sympathy.
Oona wanted customers to understand what the price covered. A small blanket could require almost as much preparation as a large one. A simple-looking edge might involve careful changes which a finished photograph concealed. The cards did not persuade everyone to buy, and the cooperative did not increase prices when a visitor took longer to choose.
At the next market, one customer asked whether a plainer pattern would cost less. Oona could explain which stages would actually change. The conversation had moved from a judgement about an isolated number towards a decision about the work behind it. To her, that was the card's most useful result.
Explain why Oona regards the customer’s question about a plainer pattern as a useful result.
40 exam-style questions on CIE IGCSE English Language 4.2 Question 1 Comprehension (20 marks), covering 4.2.1 Comprehension response to Text A and 4.2.2 Short answers on explicit and implicit meanings. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.