Part 3

Questions 11-15
For each question choose the correct answer.

The Photograph on the Wall

When I was a child, my grandmother had a small black-and-white photograph hanging in her kitchen. It showed a young man standing beside a motorcycle on a country road, squinting into the sun. He looked happy, I always thought, but also a little unsure, as if someone had just called his name and he had turned around at the exact moment the picture was taken.

I asked my grandmother about the photograph many times over the years. Her answer was always the same: ‘That’s your grandfather, before I met him.’ Then she would change the subject. I learned not to ask again, but I never stopped being curious.

My grandfather died when I was six. I had only a few memories of him: the smell of oil and metal in his workshop, his laugh, and the way he could whistle through his teeth. The man in the photograph seemed younger and freer than the grandfather I remembered. I wanted to know his story, but my grandmother clearly preferred not to tell it.

Last spring, my grandmother moved out of the house she had lived in for over fifty years. I helped her pack boxes in the kitchen, and when I took the photograph off the wall, she paused and looked at it for a long moment. Then she said, quietly, ‘He rode that motorcycle all the way from the coast to come and find me.’

She sat down at the kitchen table and began to talk. She told me that my grandfather had been a delivery rider before the war, taking packages between villages on his motorcycle. One day he arrived at her parents’ farm with a parcel and saw her in the garden. He came back the following week without any package to deliver. He just wanted to see her again.

Over the next hour, she told me dozens of stories I had never heard. Some were funny, some were sad, and a few surprised me so much that I laughed out loud. It was as though the young man in the photograph had finally stepped out of the frame and become a real person. I learned that my grandfather loved dancing but was terrible at it, that he once tried to build a boat, and that he wrote my grandmother a letter every single week until she agreed to marry him.

I had spent years wondering about that photograph. In the end, the person who knew him best just needed the right moment to share his story. I still have the photograph. It sits on my own kitchen wall now, and it makes me smile every time I look at it.

11 What does the writer say about the photograph in her grandmother’s kitchen?
A It was the only picture her grandmother owned.
B The young man in it appeared to be laughing at the camera.
C It had been taken before her grandparents met.
D The writer thought the man looked confident.

12 Why did the writer stop asking her grandmother about the photograph?
A She lost interest in it as she grew older.
B Her grandmother seemed unwilling to talk about it.
C Her mother told her not to mention it again.
D She was worried she would upset her grandfather.

13 How did the grandmother react when the writer took the photograph off the wall?
A She asked the writer to put it back where it had been.
B She took it from the writer’s hands and held it herself.
C She looked at it briefly, then told the writer to carry on working.
D She stopped what she was doing and seemed lost in thought for a moment.

14 What did the writer discover about her grandfather during that conversation?
A He had always wanted to become a professional dancer.
B He had first visited the farm for a work-related reason.
C He had been a soldier during the war.
D He had written to her grandmother before they ever met.

15 Which of the following best captures what the writer learned from this experience?
A Old photographs rarely show what a person was really like.
B Sometimes people need time before they are ready to share memories.
C It is better to learn about family history from books than from relatives.
D You should always ask difficult questions while you still have the chance.

For this task: Answers with explanations :: Vocabulary