Close Reading – Answering Questions



Close Reading – Answering Questions

Word choice

• Quote in your answer – give specific examples of the word choice and describe it.

• DO NOT give one without the other. Don’t write about and describe the word choice without quoting it! Similarly, don’t quote the word choice and say nothing about it.

Imagery

• Remember imagery is anything that gives you a clear image inside your head when you read it (this doesn’t have to be a visual image, think about sounds and smells too). So that means a simile or a metaphor or even a single word may be an example of imagery.

• Always decode/decipher the image. Explain literally what is being described. Make it clear to the examiner what the image is.

• Then analyse and explain why it is relevant/important/effective.

Sentence Structure

• Sentence structure can refer to a variety of things including: Repetition, punctuation, parenthesis: (), , - -, word order (does the sentence seem inverted/backwards? Is a specific word or phrase put at the beginning of the sentence deliberately?), length of sentence.

• Always explain which of the above is used/important and explain its effect - think about why the author has made the sentence this short/repeated that word/used that punctuation.

Context

• One mark for explaining what the word you’re being asked about means.

• One mark for explaining how the other words and phrases helped you figure it out.

Link

• Explain what the “link sentence/phrase” has to do with what came before (usually in the previous paragraph) and how it lets you know what is about to come/be explained/be written about.

Tone

• Tone refers to how something is said, not what is said.

• Imagine the writer reading the passage aloud and explain what tone of voice they would have. What feelings/thoughts would be behind what they are saying?

• The most commonly used tones are: colloquial/chatty, humorous, serious, ironic, emotional, argumentative, persuasive, informal, tongue-in-cheek

• For chatty tones look out for abbreviations, slang, direct speech, questions, first person, exclamation marks etc.

• For humorous tones look for irony, exaggeration and alliteration

Evaluation Questions

• Ask you how good, effective, successful or appropriate a piece of writing is.

• You also have to justify and give reasons for your answer. This should be based mostly on the text, and will involve quotation.

• Begin your answers with something like: “This is effective because…”, “This worked well because…”

For practice

Identify the tone for each of these extracts. Give a reason. The tone will be either: informal, chatty, humorous, ironic or tongue-in-cheek.

1. There’s so much fascinating stuff to learn about this place, and that’s before you’ve got to the tricky business of remembering what everything is called.

2. A revolution is happening in the communications industry: ad copywriters like me are standing back and watching real people talk to real people. The scandal!

3. The moment I stepped into the taxi I knew something was wrong. For a start the driver was called Eddie and taxi drivers in New York shouldn’t have names.

4. Take it from me, if you are in an open space with no weapons and a grizzly comes towards you, run. You may as well.

5. “Hey everyone,” I call. I realise that the clients are all looking the other way. It turns out that we were not more than 50 yards from a small herd of giraffe. Actually, it’s 100 yards now. Not only was I the last to spot them, my shouting has scared them off.

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