IGCSE English Storyteller by Liz Lochhead

‘She sat down at the scoured table in the swept kitchen’ What technique used in these and subsequent lines suggest the quiet, whispering sound at the start of a bedtime story?

• Onomatopoeia

• Sibilance

• Diction

• Consonance

What do diction such as ‘scoured’ and ‘swept’ suggest about the jobs and lifestyles of the characters in the poem?

• They work in blue collar, office jobs

• They work in agriculture outdoors in the fields

• They are leisured, wealthy people who don't work

• They are poor, hard working manual labourers

What word might you use to describe the line break used to create a slight sense of suspense after the word 'held' in these lines:

"she’d have us waiting, held

breath, for the ending we knew by heart."

• Caesura

• Fricative

• Tactile

• Enjambment

Critics have suggested that choosing words such as 'delft' 'dresser' or 'swept kitchen' evoke a sense of fairytales such as Cinderella. What word can we use to describe this:

• The diction

• The dictionary

• The euphony

• The volta

The poem is not set in a specific historical time but in a general sense of the past which mixes realistic images with fantasy. How might we describe this style that Lochhead uses?

• Realistic magic

• Medieval realism

• Magical realism

• Magical medievalism

Which is the loudest example of onomatopoeia in the poem?

• Dissolved

• Clacked

• Darning

• Slovenly

Which of these lines links to the key idea of the poem that storytelling is important work that should be valued?

• By day they are invisible, but by night they fly free.

• no one could say the stories were useless

• Night in/ she’d have us waiting, held/ breath, for the ending we knew by heart.

• And every last crumb of daylight was salted away

What do we call the repetition of s sounds in these words from the first stanza: she sat, scoured, swept, beside, dresser, last, salted?

• Fricative

• Plosive

• Sibilance

• Euphony

What two activities are compared in the poem as an example of a figurative comparison?

• Weaving and cleaning

• Cleaning and storytelling

• Storytelling and cleaning

• Weaving and story telling

The final stanza of the poem turns from the image of the storyteller to the stories which are imagined as bats roosting in the heads of the children. What word can we use to describe this change?

• A turn or volta

• Figurative Comparison

• Euphony

• Magical realism