Questions in the gallery
Original opinion extract, written for practice.
A child who asks why a statue has no nose has noticed the statue. Before we tell her to lower her voice, perhaps we might answer. I have seen adults move through a gallery with the solemn expression of people afraid to reveal that they are not already experts. The child has supplied the useful sentence we were all avoiding. This does not mean she should climb the plinth or shout over somebody else’s explanation. It means curiosity should not be confused with bad manners merely because it arrives in an unpolished form. A museum which welcomes school groups must welcome questions that are shorter, stranger and more direct than its labels. Otherwise we are inviting children to admire a room in which their own thoughts are not allowed to make a sound.
Use your own words to evaluate the writer’s attitude to children asking questions in museums. Give details from the extract to justify your answer.
100 exam-style questions on CIE IGCSE English Language 5.2 Section A Directed Writing (40 marks), covering 5.2.1 Question structure and stimulus texts, 5.2.2 Question 1(a) analysis and evaluation of the text(s), and 5.2.3 Question 1(b) directed writing task. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.