From A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat

Question 1

What is the genre of this piece?

Answer 1

Travel writing

Question 2

‘Wacky Races’

Answer 2

Allusion

Cartoon

Question 3

‘Lads’

Answer 3

Informal/colloquial

Question 4

‘For eternity’

Answer 4

metaphor + hyperbole

Question 5

‘Perched’

Answer 5

Connotations of anticipation and instability

Question 6

‘Fired up’

Answer 6

Metaphor

Question 7

‘Rather silly’

Answer 7

Informal/colloquial

Question 8

‘Only action was a villager on a wobbly bicycle’

Answer 8

Anticlimax

Question 9

Notes about speech

Answer 9

Unparagraphed

Makes the piece more fast paced

Question 10

‘Roaring up in their wake’

Answer 10

Metaphor

Question 11

‘Dwarfed’

Answer 11

Metaphor

Question 12

‘Achieve speeds of up to 40 kph’

Answer 12

Facts

Question 13

‘Jockeys perched’

Answer 13

Repeated verb - provides cohesion

Question 14

‘Energetically, although not cruelly’

Answer 14

Shows caring

Question 15

‘Tooting’, ‘Rattles’

Answer 15

Onomatopoeia

Question 16

‘Vehicles jostled’

Answer 16

Personification

Question 17

‘(Like maracas, a metal container filled with dried beans)

Answer 17

Provides explanation for reader without directly interrupting flow of text

Question 18

‘Swerve’

Answer 18

Chaotic connotations

Question 19

‘This was Formula One without rules…’

Answer 19

Analogy, allows reader to understand more easily

Question 20

‘Survival of the fittest’

Answer 20

Allusion

Question 21

‘Quick reflexes…; Nerves of steel, and an effective horn’

Answer 21

List of 3, contributes to fast pace of paragraph

Question 22

‘Growing more colourful’

Answer 22

Euphemism, lightens mood

Question 23

Notes on sentence structures/variations

Answer 23

Long sentences used to build up to bigger events, short sentences to increase pace

Question 24

‘The finishing line, the hospital gate’

Answer 24

Ironic + humorous

Question 25

‘The race was over’

Answer 25

Short sentence, emphasis

Question 26

‘And then the trouble began.’

Answer 26

Conjunction, short sentence for emphasis

Question 27

‘I assumed’

Answer 27

Implies that original thought was wrong, engages reading by challenging conventional ideas

Question 28

‘…Fists were out and tempers rising’

Answer 28

Contrast of a concrete noun followed by an abstract noun, gives a better sense of tension at the time

Question 29

‘Swallowed up by the crowd’

Answer 29

Personification, implies that the crowd is very large and dangerous

Question 30

‘…I’m underage!’

Answer 30

Punch line of the paragraph, emphatic, humorous

Question 31

‘Could have caused problems’

Answer 31

Understatement, deliberately vague to be funnier