Higher

Close Reading Guide & Practice

Using your own wordso Putting something in your own words shows that you have understood the meaning.o The front of your exam paper will say “attempt all the questions, using your own words

as far as possible.”o Some questions might state “in your own words” but even if it doesn’t you should still

attempt to use your own words.o Quoting or using words from the passage will not gain you any marks unless the

question specifically asks you to quote.

Using your own words means you might have to:

o Explain what a word or expression in the passage means.o Explain what point the writer is making.o Show that you understand a piece of information from the passage.

Practice Questions

1. The consensus on what constitutes public good manners has broken down to the extent that Transport for London is now running a multimillion-pound campaign just to remind us not to eat stinking burgers on the Tube and to give up our bus seats for old folk.

I suppose we should be grateful that, instead of threatening more penalties, they are calling upon our better nature. The Government, on the other hand, seems to live under the delusion that if just one more pleasure is prohibited, another set of draconian rules introduced, 1,000 more speed cameras installed, a CCTV mounted on every corner, human beings will at last fall into line.

What, according to the writer, is the fundamental difference in approach between Transport for London and the Government? 2 marks

2. The film Wall-E is over-rated. After the first 20 minutes, the Pixar animation is essentially a standard Disney cartoon. It is technically brilliant, slick and witty, but it follows the well-worn formula of cute anthropomorphic creatures (albeit robots instead of animals) struggling against overwhelming odds, finding love, winning through and delivering the anticipated charge of sentimental uplift.

But those first 20 minutes are really something. It is not just the relative courage of the dystopian vision of an uninhabitable earth or the visual richness of the imagery. It is the fact that a company as mainstream as Disney has returned to wordless story-telling. The fascination of Wall-E is that it is stunning up to the point when dialogue is introduced, after which it becomes clever but familiar entertainment.

Why does the writer prefer the first 20 minutes of the film to the rest of it? 4 marks

3. And this week, reading how some protestors had been arrested trying to prevent ancient woodland being destroyed to make way for a three-mile link road to Hastings, I thought: yes, I’d go to prison for a tree. Indeed, the protesters who are digging tunnels in the mud and standing before the diggers are not “eco-warriors” or “hippies”. Among them are young families, retired folk and ordinary dog-walkers. “Local grandmothers”, it was reported, came to swing in giant hammocks strung between the 400 year old oaks.

According to the writer, in what ways are the protestors different from how we might expect them to be? 2 marks

4. There have been other wars since 1918, and in all of them combatants have had to endure privation, discomfort, misery, the loss of comrades and appalling injuries. Even so, the First World War continues to exert a powerful grip upon our collective imagination. In Britain the international catastrophe that was the First World War has been adopted as a peculiarly national trauma.

What does the writer suggest is surprising about the way people in Britain view the First World War? 3 marks

5. How did we get here? How did we get to a point where shopping became the premier leisure activity, where we gladly boarded the work-to-spend treadmill, the insatiable pursuit of “more”, which resulted in there being, for example, 121 mobile phones for every 100 people in the UK? Does it even matter? Shopping doesn’t kill anyone, it keeps the economy going and provides one in six jobs. If it makes people happy, why not leave them to it?

Why, according to the writer, might consumerism be considered harmless? 2 marks

6. That the Bond stories are “modern myths” has often been asserted, and there’s quite a bit to this. The Bond books and films have become twentieth-century folk epics. They are the same basic stories that have been passed down through the centuries but with the hero and the villain adapted to our technological age. No longer is it the Devil’s power that people fear but the new demons of machinery and atomic power. The evil vampire has exchanged his castle for the villainous Dr. No’s subterranean laboratory, his fangs for Dr. No’s steel claws, and his unholy source of power for Dr. No’s atomic reactor. In the same vein, Bond’s gadgets are simply modernised versions of things like magic swords and spears, helmets of invisibility, and indestructible shields.

a) According to the writer in lines 38–41 (“That . . . technological age.”), why can the James Bond books and films be described as “twentieth-century folk epics”? 2 marks

b) Explain how the writer exemplifies this idea in the rest of the paragraph. 2 marks

7. Never mind that the universal presence of adequate heating has almost eliminated those perennial scourges of the poor—bronchitis and pneumonia—which once took the very young and the very old in huge numbers every winter. Never mind that the generous use of hot water and detergent, particularly when combined in a washing machine for the laundering of bed linen and clothing, has virtually eliminated the infestations of body lice and fleas (which once carried plague) that used to be a commonplace feature of poverty. Never mind that the private car, the Green Public Enemy Number One, has given ordinary families freedom and flexibility that would have been inconceivable in previous generations.

Using your own words as far as possible, summarise the benefits of technology. 3 marks

Summarising Questionso Again, these should be simple – the answer is already in the passage!o The question is asking you to pick out the key ideas only in order to summarise a

section of the text. o Don’t go into detail – only pick out what is important and be general.o Write summaries in your own words.o Answers should be short and to the point.

Practice Questions

1. How hard would it be to go a week without Google? Or, to up the ante, without Facebook, Twitter or Google? It’s not impossible, but even for a moderate internet user it would be a genuine pain. Forgoing Google is inconvenient; forgoing Facebook or Twitter is to give up whole categories of online activity. When you think about it, it’s almost certainly harder to avoid the Internet’s dominant firms than to bypass McDonald’s or Starbucks and the others that dominate what was once called the real world.

The Internet has long been a model for what the free market is supposed to look like: competition in its purest form. Yet with a few exceptions, the main sectors in most of the world are controlled by one dominant company. Google owns search; Facebook runs social networking; eBay rules auctions; Apple dominates online music; Amazon controls books and retail; and so on.

If the internet was only yesterday an area of free-wheeling competition, how did things get this way? Could it be – contrary to its reputation – that a free market in the context of the Internet engenders monopoly, not competition?

What key point is the writer making about the Internet in these paragraphs? 1 mark

2. There is something frankly adolescent about the need to define sporting heroes, politicians, popstars, or celebrity cooks by their nationality first and their achievements second. Surely by now we have outgrown the mentality that saw the need to report the sinking of the Titanic with the headline “Aberdeen man dies in liner tragedy” or to detect a centilitre of Scottish blood in a newly elected American president, thus showing that he owes his achievements less to his grasp of democratic principles than to his fortune in having had a great uncle from Stornoway.

What key point is the writer making in this paragraph about Scottish people? 1 mark

3. The cost of cleaning up the mess at Fukushima is going to be immense – early estimates put it as one trillion yen for the reactors alone. Then, there are all the businesses that will have to be compensated for losses. Add in the damage to exports – America has now banned the import of Japanese milk and vegetables – plus the cost of relocating families whose homes are contaminated and you have another trillion or two. But the biggest bill will come from the rest of the nuclear industry. Japan has 55 nuclear power plants and those that aren’t actually closed forthwith will need billions spent on additional safety measures. The long tail of a nuclear accident stretches across decades. Estimates of the cost of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 vary around 3200bn, and the sarcophagus that was built around the still radioactive mass is already needing to be replaced. By comparison, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a fleeting event.

Summarise the reasons for the immense financial cost of the damage to the Fukushima reactor. 5 marks

4. Never mind that the universal presence of adequate heating has almost eliminated those perennial scourges of the poor—bronchitis and pneumonia—which once took the very young and the very old in huge numbers every winter. Never mind that the generous use of hot water and detergent, particularly when combined in a washing machine for the laundering of bed linen and clothing, has virtually eliminated the infestations of body lice and fleas (which once carried plague) that used to be a commonplace feature of poverty. Never mind that the private car, the Green Public Enemy Number One, has given ordinary families freedom and flexibility that would have been inconceivable in previous generations.

Using your own words as far as possible, summarise the benefits of technology as described in these lines. 3 marks

5. With an eye to the future, Owen Paterson, the UK environment secretary, has been urging families to buy British food. Choosing to buy fewer imports would reduce the relentless pressure British farmers are under to churn out more for less. Paterson’s vision is of a more eco-friendly way of eating, based on locally-produced, seasonal fruit and vegetables and, crucially, British meat.

But, as I discovered when I began looking into the way food is produced, increasingly powerful forces are pulling us in the opposite direction. We have become addicted to cheap meat, fish and dairy products from supply lines that stretch across the globe. On the plus side, it means that supermarkets can sell whole chickens for as little as £3. Things that were once delicacies, such as smoked salmon, are now as cheap as chips. On the downside, cheap chicken and farmed fish are fatty and flaccid. Industrially reared farm animals — 50 billion

of them a year worldwide — are kept permanently indoors, treated like machines and pumped with drugs.

In your own words, summarise the differences between UK Government food policy and consumer wishes. 4 marks

Context questionso You might be asked to show you understand a particular word, phrase or expression –

you should be able to work this out from what surrounds the particular word or phrase in the passage.

o Context questions might be worded in various ways, but you should always approach a context question strategically following this two-part formula:

“_________” means _________. The context makes this clear as it says…

First, explain the meaning of the word, phrase or expression. Then explain how you understood the meaning from the rest of the text. You must quote from the text for the second part of the question and explain how they helped you understand the meaning.

Practice Questions

1. Silverstein was implacable in pursuing his revenge. After years of patient searching he had finally come face to face with his father's tormentor, and he showed no mercy.

Using the context, explain the meaning of "implacable" in these lines. 2 marks

2. For two days the general vacillated. Should he give the order to advance, or should he allow his men to cling to their sturdy line of defence? This hesitation was to prove fateful.

Using the context, explain the meaning of "vacillated" in these lines. 2 marks

3. Oliver's first play at the Edinburgh Festival was only a qualified success. True, the critics, including some who were frequently disdainful of new writers, were lavish in their praise, and the houses were pleasingly full in the first week. But by the second week the numbers attending had inexplicably fallen away and the show was lucky to break even.

Using the context, explain the meaning of "qualified" in these lines. 3 marks

4. A young woman rushes by at a semi-trot. On her shoulder is an eco tote-bag bearing the slogan “All You Need is Love”. But she evidently doesn’t subscribe to this ideology; she is laden with branded carrier bags. What she really needs, it seems, are more shoes, skirts, scarves, belts. How often do you go clothes shopping, I ask when I catch her up. “Most lunch

breaks and every weekend ideally,” she says. Why? She eyes me dubiously: “Because I love it.”

Explain what the writer means, in the context of these lines, when she says the young woman “doesn’t subscribe to this ideology”. 2 marks

5. Glasgow’s constant proclamation of its present success story is justified on the basis that it benefits the city: confidence will breed confidence, tourists will visit, businesses will relocate and students will enrol. But, despite the gains this approach has brought for Glasgow and cities like it, there are signs that the wind is starting to come out of the sails. What felt radical when Dublin, Barcelona and Glasgow embarked on the city makeover path in the late 1980s and early 1990s, now feels derivative and is delivering diminishing returns. When every city has commissioned a celebrity architect and pedestrianised a cultural quarter, distinctiveness is reduced to a formula.

What does the writer mean by the words “radical” and “derivative” in his discussion of city development? 2 marks

Link questionso You may be asked how a sentence creates an effective link between two paragraphs.o To answer these questions fully, you must show how one part of the sentence links

back to the previous paragraph and show how another part of the sentence links forward to the new paragraph.

o There is a formula you can use to answer this type of question:

The word/phrase “________” links back to ________, which was discussed in the previous paragraph.

The word/phrase “________” introduces the idea of ________, which is explored in the next paragraph.

Practice Questions

1. My mother was born near Gloucester, in the early 1880s. Through her father, John Light, she had some mysterious connection with the Castle, half-forgotten, but implying a blood-link somewhere. Indeed it was said that an ancestor led the murder of Edward II.

But whatever the illicit grandeurs of her forebears, Mother was born to quite ordinary poverty. When she was about thirteen years old her mother was taken ill, so she had to leave school for good. She had her five young brothers and her father to look after, and there was no one else to help.

Show how the first sentence in the second paragraph acts as a link in the argument. 2 marks

2. And when I hear politicians—most of them comfortably off—trying to deny enlightenment and pleasure to “working class” people, I reach for my megaphone. Maybe Tommy Tattoo and his mates do use cheap flights to the sunshine as an extension of their binge-drinking opportunities, but for thousands of people whose parents would never have ventured beyond Blackpool or Rothesay, air travel has been a social revelation.

So, before we all give the eco-lobby’s anti-flying agenda the unconditional benefit of the doubt, can we just review their strategy as a whole?

Remember, it is not just air travel that the green tax lobby is trying to control: it is a restriction on any mobility. Clamping down on one form of movement, as the glib reformers have discovered, simply creates intolerable pressure on the others. Londoners, for example, had just become accustomed to the idea that they would have to pay an £8 congestion charge to drive into their own city when they discovered that the fares on commuter rail and underground services had been hiked up with the intention of driving away customers from

the public transport system—now grossly overcrowded as a result of people having been forced off the roads by the congestion charge.

Referring to specific words and/or phrases, show how the sentence “So, before . . . as a whole?” (paragraph 3) performs a linking function in the writer’s argument. 2 marks

3. So what do you do at these Olympics? Cherry-pick moments of glory and grace, and hope you have not been deceived? What, when you really think about it, is the alternative? You could reel back the years of Olympic history and, sure, only a dead soul would not feel surges of excitement: Seb Coe coming back at Steve Ovett in Moscow; Carl Lewis winning gold in Atlanta in 1996 with his last jump; Michael Johnson in his gold shoes after Muhammad Ali came blinking into the spotlight and lit the flame.

But nowadays only a fool digs into the past without questioning, however fleetingly, what was true and what was false. You couldn’t go through the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and ever abandon the need to ask that question. There was never a betrayal like Ben Johnson’s. He took us to the stars with that 100 metres run, which etched disbelief on the face of second-placed Carl Lewis. He shattered the world record, and you knew when it happened you would never forget the coiled power that was released so astonishingly. And then, in the grey dawn of the following day, you saw him exposed as a drugs cheat, hustled to the airport, a stunned, inarticulate man, who for the rest of his life will say, in a halting voice forever invaded by bitterness, that he committed athletics’ only unforgivable sin—being caught.

Referring to specific words and/or phrases, show how the sentence “But nowadays . . . false.” (paragraph 2) performs a linking function in the writer’s argument. 2 marks

4. Critics also deplore the outcome—industrialised shopping malls, mass advertising, the manipulation of desire by producers and retailers—as if the consumers at the other end of all this effort were just brainwashed dolts colluding unwittingly in the destruction of their spiritual life and the interpersonal relationships which are central to their happiness. Shopping on this scale and with this degree of commitment, critics believe, is a form of psychosis.

There is a partial truth in this condemnation, but it too quickly casts the individual shopper as an empty vessel morally corroded by the dark forces of anonymous markets. Critics of shopping are so busy delivering their views that they rarely have the time to surrender to savouring that moment when they might unexpectedly enhance their lives by finding another diverting item on which to spend money—in short, by shopping.

My experience of shopping in Hong Kong recently has made me realise that shopping is enormous fun and profoundly satisfying. I’d dashed in to buy cheap gifts for my family and

had intended to spend no more than 30 minutes. Instead, I found myself drawn into the heady delights of shopping. Choosing between a cornucopia of famous watch brands, not one of which costs more than £4, is an experience I defy anybody not to enjoy. And on top of that, you can pick and mix every detail: case, colour, buckle, strap. I was shopping as my daughter’s shop—giving myself over to the minutiae of the experience.

Referring to specific words and/or phrases, show how paragraph 2 performs a linking function in the writer’s argument. 2 marks

5. At school Alistair had shown exceptional promise. He had excelled as a scholar, as a musician and on the games field; his popularity and talent had made him an obvious choice for head boy in his last year.

His university career made a sad contrast to the years as a golden boy. A baffling lack of commitment saw him fail his first year exams, and after a nervous breakdown early in his second year, he dropped out altogether.

Show how the first sentence in paragraph 2 acts as a link. 2 marks

6. It’s summer vacation. The kids have acres of time to fill. So, of course, they’re in the basement playing some video game that involves either weapons or skateboards. Who can doubt that their minds are turning into chipped beef on toast as they sit in the dim light, their educations and social lives leaking away? As a conscientious parent, I feel a gravitational pull to say these words: “Turn that off and read a book!” Or play piano, or run outside, or get in a street fight. Anything but play more video games.

Except apparently that kind of thinking is all wrong. It is about to become as dated as the four basic food groups, the philosophy of spare the rod and spoil the child, and asbestos as a safety feature. Video games might be about the best thing your kids can do to ensure their future success. Better, even, than reading. Which feels a lot like the moment in Sleeper when Woody Allen finds out that in 2173, cream pies and hot fudge are health foods.

Referring to specific words and phrases, show how the sentence “Except that…all wrong” acts as a link between the two paragraphs. 2 marks

Word-choice questions

o Certain words are deliberately chosen by the author to create a particular effect or suggest a particular meaning.

o To be able to answer a word-choice question effectively, you must know and understand the difference between a denotation and connotation of a word.

o The denotation is the basic, straightforward meaning of a word – its definition.o The connotation is what the word implies or suggests.

“ ___________” suggests __________.

Word Denotation ConnotationUnderweight Thin A clinical or medical term,

being seen as in need of treatment.

Skinny Thin In an unattractive way, suggesting something angular and/or bony.

Slim Thin In an attractive way, suggesting a smooth, elegant appearance.

Practice Questions

1. We had a power cut on Tuesday evening. I sat in the dark, oddly relaxed. No e-mail. No telly. Not enough torchlight to read by.

Meanwhile, my younger son thrashed from room to room, between Wii console, computer and TV, fretting that the shows he had Sky-plussed wouldn’t record, scrabbling to see how much charge was left in his brother’s laptop so that he might, at very least, watch a movie.

When I laughed at his techno-junkie despair he exclaimed in white-hot fury: “It’s all right for you. To me it’s…it’s like living in poverty.”

Show how the writer’s word choice in the second paragraph conveys how much the loss of electricity affected the writer’s son. 2 marks

2. When I was a teenager, I spent almost three years straight in psychiatric hospitals being treated for severe anorexia nervosa. Unlike some newspaper columnists, I do not feel

compelled to talk about my personal experiences with the mental health profession in every article I write. In fact, I try to avoid talking about them altogether, mainly because I hope that I have something more to offer than my history.

However, the nonsense that has been spouted of late in the media about eating disorders is too ubiquitous and too stupid, even by the low standards of the media’s usual coverage of the illness. And while I would never claim that my personal experience makes me an expert on the subject, maybe it gives me a different perspective than, say, a lazy news reporter churning out clichés under a deadline or a columnist in search of easy outrage.

Show how the writer’s word choice in the second paragraph makes clear her contempt for sections of the media. 2 marks

3. Reading books enriches the mind; playing video games deadens it—you can’t get much more conventional than the conventional wisdom that kids today would be better off spending more time reading books, and less time zoning out in front of their video games.

Analyse how the writer’s word choice emphasises the “conventional wisdom” that reading books is better than playing video games. 2 marks

4. After school and in the playground, away from the teachers’ eyes, sweets and chocolates were traded. They became the marks of rebellion and the statements of independence. Eating foods they suspected the grown-ups would rather they didn’t, made those foods ever so much more enticing. They weren’t just food but food plus attitude.

Show how the writer’s word choice makes clear the children’s attitude to the school ban. 2 marks

5. If you hail from Glasgow you will have friends or relatives whose roots lie in the Irish Republic. You will have Jewish friends or colleagues whose grandparents, a good number of them Polish or Russian, may have fled persecution in Europe. You will eat in premises run by Italian or French proprietors. It is a diverse cultural heritage enriched now by a vibrant Asian population and a smaller but significant Chinese one.

Referring to one example of effective word choice, show how the writer makes clear her positive attitude to the people she is describing. 2 marks

6. Yet if you sweep away the apoplectic froth and the self-interested posturing and look at the reality, the “threat to the countryside” recedes dramatically. Yes, we do occupy a crowded little island. But what makes it seem crowded is that 98 per cent of us live on 7 per

cent of the land. Britain is still overwhelmingly green. Just 11 per cent of our nation is classified as urban.

Show how the writer’s word choice emphasises his view that the threat to the countryside is much less serious that the English middle class suggest. 2 marks

7. Is your journey really necessary? Who would have thought that, in the absence of world war and in the midst of unprecedented prosperity, politicians would be telling us not to travel? Just as working people have begun to enjoy the freedoms that the better-off have known for generations—the experience of other cultures, other cuisines, other climates—they are threatened with having those liberating possibilities priced out of their reach.

And when I hear politicians—most of them comfortably off—trying to deny enlightenment and pleasure to “working class” people, I reach for my megaphone. Maybe Tommy Tattoo and his mates do use cheap flights to the sunshine as an extension of their binge-drinking opportunities, but for thousands of people whose parents would never have ventured beyond Blackpool or Rothesay, air travel has been a social revelation.

Show how the writer’s word choice conveys the strength of her commitment to air travel for all. 2 marks

Imagery questionso Writers will use imagery to show the way one thing is like another.o It’s not the same as a description, which tells us what something is like.o Ask yourself what is being compared to what and identify the technique (simile,

metaphor, personification…)o Think about how the two things being compared are similar and show that you

understand how the writer uses this to make a point.

o Identify the imageo Identify the root of the imageo Explain the root of the image (denotation)o Connect back to what it was compared to using the connotations

“_____________” Just as ____[root of the image]______ is _____[denotation]______ so_____[compare back using connotations]______.

Practice Questions

1. Twitter is the latest social networking craze to have conquered the ageing mainstream media, and using it is like sending out a universal text message to the whole planet. For many, this orgy of technology-enhanced wittering is simply something that we indulge in during our spare time, but it’s not without its uses. Its coming of age is generally dated to the Mumbai terror attacks at the end of November, when minute-by-minute updates of the unfolding chaos zipped around the world from eye-witnesses armed with Twitter on their laptops and mobile phones. It was given another fillip on the geopolitical stage in January, when the Israeli Government used Twitter to snipe at the mainstream media and get across its reasons for invading Gaza.

Show how the writer uses imagery in this paragraph to support the points he is making about Twitter in general and the media in general. 2 marks

2. Britain now has the longest work hours in the developed world after the US – and in a recession, those of us with jobs scamper ever faster in our hamster-wheels. Yet the economists and thinkers of, say, the 1930s, assumed that once we had achieved abundance – once humans had all the food and clothes and heat and toys we could use – we would relax and work less. They thought that by now work would barely cover three days as we headed en masse for the beach and the concert hall.

Instead, the treadmill is whirling ever- faster. We don’t stop primarily because we are locked in an arms race with our colleagues. If we relax and become more human, we

fall behind the person in the next booth down, who is chasing faster. Work can be one of the richest and most rewarding experiences, but not like this.

Show how the writer’s imagery makes clear his disapproval of current working practices. 4 marks

3. A house like this became a dinosaur, occupying too much ground and demanding to be fed new sinks and drainpipes and a sea of electricity. Such a house became a fossil, stranded among neighbours long since chopped up into flats and bed-sitting rooms.

Comment on the effectiveness of one piece of imagery used in these lines. 2 marks.

4. The most powerful example of this trend is found in the world of video games. And the first and last thing that should be said about the experience of playing today’s video games, the thing you almost never hear, is that games are fiendishly, sometimes maddeningly, hard. The dirty little secret of gaming is how much time you spend not having fun. You may be frustrated; you may be confused or disorientated; you may be stuck. But when you put the game down and move back into the real world, you may find yourself mentally working through the problem you have been wrestling with, as though you were worrying a loose tooth.

Show how the writer conveys the difficulty of playing video games by his use of imagery. 2 marks.

5. Yet it is astonishing, given how much people love them — planting them to mark special moments or honour dead loved ones, measuring their lives by their seasonal changes — that officialdom loathes trees. Insurance companies fretting about subsidence would rather you took them all down just in case. Councils detest them, employing municipal butchers to hack away at whole groves. Embarrassed stumps with a couple of twigs are all that remain.

By referring to one example, analyse how the writer’s use of imagery emphasises her opposition to cutting down trees. 2 marks

6. Well, that’s just it. Turbo-consumerism—the age of instant gratification and voracious appetite for “stuff”—cannot make us happy and it never will. Every time we are seduced into buying one product, another appears that is “new”, “improved”, better than the one you have. Turbo-consumerism is the heroin of human happiness, reliant on the fact that our needs are never satisfied. A consumer society can’t allow us to stop shopping and be content because then the whole system would die. Instead it has to sell us just enough to

keep us going but never enough that our wants are satisfied. The brief high we feel is compensation for not having a richer, fuller life.

Analyse how the writer's use of imagery in these lines emphasises her criticism of consumerism. 3 marks

7. And all of these worlds overlap in space and time. London is different for all its people. They make the most of the elements in it that have meaning for them and ignore the rest. A city is an à la carte menu. That is what makes it different from a village, which has little room for tolerance and difference. And a great city is one in which as many people as possible can make the widest of choices from its menu. 

Show how the image of the “à la carte menu” illustrates the point the writer is making in these lines. 2 marks

Tone questionso Tone is easy to understand if you think of the way someone speaks. When you hear

someone speaking, you can tell if they are happy, sad, angry or excited.o The tone of a piece of writing reflects the attitude of the writer to his/her subject.o The most common tones that appear in exam questions are humorous, conversational,

matter-of-fact, flippant, critical and angry.o Tone questions can be answered using a mixture of the following, depending on the

question:1. Identify a tone.2. Quote words/phrases which create that tone.3. Explain how the words/phrases you have quoted create the tone.

o You should pay particular attention to the language being used – is it formal, or conversational? Is it literal or figurative? Have they used slang? Have they used rhetorical questions? Have they used any specific terminology that relates to the topic/subject of the article?

o When asked to identify a tone, it is not enough to say “positive” or “negative”. You must be more specific, i.e. happy, excited, critical or angry.

Practice Questions

1. Bond electrocutes people, harpoons them, strangles them, feeds them to piranha fish, dumps them into pits of boiling mud, explodes them with shark gun pellets, drops them off cliffs, throws them from airplanes, sets them on fire, and sometimes just shoots them. He doesn’t agonise over it later. He doesn’t wonder if he did the right thing. No, one of the things that characterises Bond is moral certainty. He knows who the bad guys are, and he knows they deserve it. Bond relies entirely on his own judgement, and is sure of his moral authority to punish evildoers.

Show how the writer creates both a humorous and a serious tone. In your answer you should refer to such features as sentence structure, word choice . . . 4 marks

2. The only solution—and I am just waiting for the politicians to recommend it explicitly—is for none of us to go anywhere. Stay at home and save the planet. But that would be a craven retreat from all the social, professional and cultural interactions that unrestricted mobility makes possible—and which, since the Renaissance, have made great cities the centres of intellectual progress.

Show how, in this paragraph, the writer creates a tone which conveys her disapproval of the “solution”. 2 marks

3. The politicians and the Establishment talk the language of “opportunity”, “choice” and “diversity” for the people of the city, but do not really believe in or practise them. They impose a set menu, rather than the choice offered “à la carte”, confident that they know best. For all the rhetoric about new ways of working, partnership and collaboration, there can still be a very old-fashioned top-down approach in parts of institutional Glasgow that retains a faith that experts and professionals must hold all the answers. There is an implicit belief that people are poor because of low aspirations and Glaswegians are unhealthy because they won’t accept responsibility, make the right choices and eat healthily.

Show how the writer’s use of language in this paragraph creates a tone of disapproval. 2 marks

4. At the same time the fetish with league tables has forced teachers to turn schools into fact-cramming, rote-learning factories in which narrowly focused lessons are reinforced by stacks of homework. Our education system is now as blinkered, as grindingly utilitarian, as in the era mocked by Dickens in Hard Times. Is it any wonder that so many school-leavers have no pastimes except shopping, watching telly and binge-drinking?

Show how the writer’s angry tone is conveyed. 2 marks

5. If you want to promote health and fitness, you’re almost certainly better off channelling funds directly to those whom you’d like to see get off their backsides, rather than those who are already hardly ever on them. People say our Olympians inspire people to get out and do it themselves, but most sporting spectacles inspire people to do no more than order a pizza and slump in front of the telly. To mix my metaphors, for the trickle-down effect argument to hold any water, you’d need some evidence that sporting performance at elite level has some relation to wider sporting participation. But evidence for this is thin on the ground.

Show how the writer’s dismissive tone about the claim (that the promotion of elite sports is good for the health and wellbeing of the nation) is made clear. 2 marks

6. The fears from the right stem from suspicions that this is just another route for foreigners to ‘flood’ into the country and be a ‘drain’ on resources. To that I say, such posturing is too monstrous to address.

The objections from the liberal left are just as shocking. Pundit after pundit drones on about the perils of ‘snatching’ children from their ‘culture’. To that I say, go and stand in the orphanages of the world’s most dispossessed; look, sniff, smell and don’t – don’t you dare – tell me that, in this context, the word ‘culture’ is other than an obscenity.

Show how the writer’s contemptuous tone is created in these paragraphs. 2 marks

EXAMPLES OF TONE

1. Humorous/comical: where the author finds the subject funny and hopes the reader will too. This might be expressed by making jokes, and using techniques such as hyperbole (extreme exaggeration).

2. A flippant tone is where he writer shows an irreverent (i.e. disrespectful/mocking/light-hearted) attitude towards something that is usually taken seriously – “death and all that jazz”, “she’s popped her clogs”.

3. A chatty or conversational tone suggests the writer is talking to or confiding in a friend. The writer might use slang, abbreviations and short sentences as though talking to a friend. Often personal comments will be included.

4. An effusive, or enthusiastic, tone might be used for something the writer feels passionately about, particularly in a positive way. It often sounds as though the writer is ‘gushing’ about their subject, e.g. “the magnificent craftsmanship”, “that wonderful island”.

5. Irony is one of the most important techniques to convey tone. It is the name given to the figure of speech where an author might say the opposite of what he/she really means – if a teacher were to say “I can’t wait to get back to school” during the summer holidays, we could presume he/she was being ironic.

6. A satirical tone is an extreme form of irony. The writer is being funny, but is really ridiculing quite aggressively their subject. An example of this might be Spitting Image, a satirical political show which appeared light-hearted but was actually mocking the government very severely.

7. A serious tone is obviously needed for serious purposes – a funeral speech, or a speech following a great tragedy for instance.

8. An emotive tone aims to stir up emotions such as anger, pity or sympathy. Strong, emotional words are used expressing extremes of feeling.

9. An argumentative/persuasive tone uses positive expressions, such as ‘biggest’, ‘best’ and is very typical of adverts persuading you to buy. Emotive language may be used. When it is an opinion that is being put forward, rhetorical questions and the use of first person are common techniques employed.

10. Sentence structure questions o Understanding punctuation is essential for answering questions on sentence structure.

Ensure you know the different punctuation marks and their uses – there’s a list at the end of this section to help you.

o Sentence structure is not the same as sentence content. How the sentence is made and built up is the structure.

o To answer a sentence structure question, you should consider the following techniques and their effect:

Statements A sentence that tells you something and ends in a full stop. Most sentences are statements. Writing that is made up of statements alone may have a calm or impersonal tone.

Questions A sentence that asks you something and ends with a question mark. A question may challenge the reader to think about the topic or show the writer’s uncertainty/doubt in what he is stating. Remember, rhetorical questions do not expect an answer. These questions are often present in emotive or persuasive writing and aim to stir up strong feelings in the reader.

Commands These instruct you to do something. They are used when the writer tries to create the effect of talking directly to the reader, creating a conversational tone.

Exclamations These express excitement or surprise, creating an emotive or dramatic tone.

Minor sentences These are short sentences that do not contain a verb and are used to create impact, such as a tense or dramatic mood. They are typical of informal language, such as direct speech.

Length: long or short Long sentences that contain several verbs are called complex sentences. The more verbs, the more complex the sentence, the more formal the language is.

Short sentences with only one verb are simple sentences. These are typical of speech and aim to communicate information quickly and directly.

Word order Words might be put in a particular order to add emphasis. A reversal of normal word order is called inversion, e.g. “back we

went” instead of “we went back”. In this case, the emphasis is put on the word “back”.

Listing Think about what is being listed and what the list suggest. For example, a list of verbs such as “I came, I saw, I conquered” creates a sense of action.

Repetition As above, think about what is being repeated and what this repetition suggests. Using the example above, the repetition of the word “I” suggests the speaker is egotistical and dominating.

Climax This is when the words or ideas in a list have a sense of progress and end with the most powerful, leading to the effect of a climax. Again, this can be seen in the example for Listing.

Parenthesis Adds extra information, comment or clarification. Think about what the extra information inside the parenthesis is about and the effect of its inclusion.

Colons or semicolons Colons are normally used to introduce a list, an example or an explanation. Semicolons are used to divide sentences up into separate points or ideas.

Practice Questions

1. When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking people worried about how to feed the hungry. Now, in much of the world, the rich are thin, the poor are fat, and right-thinking people are worrying about obesity.

Identify two ways by which the sentence structure in these lines emphasises the change in concerns of “right-thinking people”. 2 marks

2. Yet if you sweep away the apoplectic froth and the self-interested posturing and look at the reality, the “threat to the countryside” recedes dramatically. Yes, we do occupy a crowded little island. But what makes it seem crowded is that 98 per cent of us live on 7 per cent of the land. Britain is still overwhelmingly green. Just 11 per cent of our nation is classified as urban.

Show how the writer’s sentence structure emphasises his view that the threat to the countryside is much less serious that the English middle class suggest. 2 marks

3. Is your journey really necessary? Who would have thought that, in the absence of world war and in the midst of unprecedented prosperity, politicians would be telling us not to travel? Just as working people have begun to enjoy the freedoms that the better-off have known for generations—the experience of other cultures, other cuisines, other climates—they are threatened with having those liberating possibilities priced out of their reach.

And when I hear politicians—most of them comfortably off—trying to deny enlightenment and pleasure to “working class” people, I reach for my megaphone. Maybe Tommy Tattoo and his mates do use cheap flights to the sunshine as an extension of their binge-drinking opportunities, but for thousands of people whose parents would never have ventured beyond Blackpool or Rothesay, air travel has been a social revelation.

Show how the writer’s sentence structure conveys the strength of her commitment to air travel for all. 2 marks

4. You see their traces in the Spitalfields district, where a French Huguenot chapel became, successively, a synagogue and a mosque, tracking the movement of waves of migrants from poverty to suburban comfort. London’s a place without an apparent structure that has proved extraordinarily successful at growing and changing. Its old residential core, sheltering in the approaches to its Tower of London fortress, has made the transition into the world’s busiest banking centre. Its market halls and power stations have become art galleries and piazzas. Its simple terraced streets, built for the clerks of the Great Western Railway in Southall, have become home to the largest Sikh community outside India.

Show how the sentence structure of the paragraph as a whole emphasises the idea of change. 2 marks

5. The most powerful example of this trend is found in the world of video games. And the first and last thing that should be said about the experience of playing today’s video games, the thing you almost never hear, is that games are fiendishly, sometimes maddeningly, hard. The dirty little secret of gaming is how much time you spend not having fun. You may be frustrated; you may be confused or disorientated; you may be stuck. But when you put the game down and move back into the real world, you may find yourself mentally working through the problem you have been wrestling with, as though you were worrying a loose tooth.

“. . . how much time you spend not having fun.” Show how the writer conveys the difficulty of playing video games by his use of sentence structure. 2 marks

6. My experience of shopping in Hong Kong recently has made me realise that shopping is enormous fun and profoundly satisfying. I’d dashed in to buy cheap gifts for my family and

had intended to spend no more than 30 minutes. Instead, I found myself drawn into the heady delights of shopping. Choosing between a cornucopia of famous watch brands, not one of which costs more than £4, is an experience I defy anybody not to enjoy. And on top of that, you can pick and mix every detail: case, colour, buckle, strap. I was shopping as my daughters shop—giving myself over to the minutiae of the experience.

On three floors almost every shop you pass excites another taste or way you might express yourself. Binoculars and telescopes; pocket DVD players; walking sticks; silk wall hangings; leather belts; mirrors; porcelain figurines—it was endless. The bargain prices were an invitation to the recognition that individuals have an infinity of wants, some of which we don’t even know about or have forgotten; I fell upon the binoculars with all the delight of a child. Much of the pleasure is not even the buying; it is acquiring the knowledge of the immense range of goods that exist that might satiate your possible wants. Shopping, as my daughters tell me, is life-affirming.

Show how the writer’s sentence structure conveys the pleasure of his shopping experience in Hong Kong. 4 marks

PUNCTUATION

COMMA , to separate items in a list

PAIR OF COMMAS , … , To mark off an extra piece of information, the information goes between the commas

DASH - To introduce a list, example or explanation

PAIR OF DASHES - … - To mark off an extra piece of information, the information goes between the dashes

BRACKETS (…) To mark off an extra piece of information, the information goes between the brackets

COLON : To introduce a list, example or explanation

SEMI-COLON ;To finish off one part of a sentence or used instead of a comma to separate two ideas in a sentence or used to separate items in a list