Two stories about flying, revisited

The young seagull. He is afraid because he feels his wings will not hold him up. His brothers and sisters fly easily; his family taunts him for not flying with them. He wants to fly, but fear stops him.

How he flies. He is hungry. His mother flies near with a piece of fish in her beak, just out of reach, then moves away. Mad with hunger, he dives at the fish, falls, and finds his wings working. He has flown. His mother's trick worked: the hunger was the plan.

The tricky question (Q4). Which is not true of the seagull? The intended answer is (a) he was lazy: he was afraid, not lazy. But look at (c), 'his mother, father, brothers and sisters helped him fly'. That is not true either: the others only mocked him; only his mother's trick helped. In the true/false set, 'he flew on his own to get the food' is true: he made the dive himself.

The Black Aeroplane. A pilot flies his old Dakota home to England for breakfast. He flies into storm clouds; his instruments and radio fail. A black aeroplane with no lights appears and guides him down. When he asks about it at the control centre, the woman there says no other plane was flying that night. Who was it? The story never says: it stays a mystery.

Write your own MCQs. Make five questions on the story: events, people, reasons and results. A good MCQ has one clearly right answer and wrong options that sound possible to someone who has not read carefully. Example: 'Why did the pilot fly into the storm?' Right: he wanted to get home. A good wrong option: 'Paris Control told him to.'