S1 / S2 NEWSPAPER ANALYSIS HOMEWORK



NEWSPAPER ANALYSIS HOMEWORK

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It is vitally important as a student of English that you are doing as much as you can at home to improve your Close Reading and Analysis skills. One way that you can do this is to read and analyse broadsheet newspapers.

TASK

1. Choose a broadsheet newspaper from the following titles: The Herald; The Scotsman; Scotland on Sunday; The Observer; The Guardian; The Independent, The Times, The Sunday Times etc. If you do not usually buy one of these papers, you can access articles through the Internet.

2. Choose an article from the newspaper that interests you.

3. In your jotter, you should write the following (using bullet points if appropriate):

a) The date

b) The newspaper’s name

c) The headline of the article

d) One sentence summary of what the article is about.

e) Three bullet points summarising three key points made in the article.

f) The purpose of the article. [to inform, entertain, persuade, criticise, promote, instruct…] and an explanation of how you know this.

g) Analyse three techniques the writer has used:

• Descriptive word-choice (explain the connotations)

• Interesting sentence structure:

o Question (rhetorical)

o Short or minor sentences (no verb)

o One-word sentences or paragraphs

o Repetition

o Lists

o Interesting punctuation (! ? - “” : ; )

• Imagery (Simile, Metaphor, Personification)

• Pun / Word-play / Humour

• Tone (critical, tongue-in-cheek, light-hearted, ironic, sentimental…)

• Statistics/Facts/Anecdotes

**[Remember to identify the feature AND analyse the effect (e.g. why it is used)]**

h) The definition of 3 new vocabulary words you didn’t know before.

EXAMPLE

Date & Title

19/01/2011

The Independent : ‘Eat and Run: The Fine-Dining Crimewave’

Summary

o More and more people are leaving posh restaurants without paying for their meal to save money.

3 Key Points

o Statistics show that record numbers of people are committing the crime.

o Very few people are ever arrested.

o Two people who have been arrested (Janis Nords and John Williams) were fined in court.

Purpose

o To inform

Techniques

o Alliteration: creates a humorous tone.

“dash for the door” & “dine and dash”

o Parenthesis (two dashes) to emphasise how big the bill was.

“His crime spree – which amounted to £5880 in unpaid bills – resulted in him being banned…”

o Statistics: to inform the reader how serious the crime has become.

“300 compared to 249 in 2009”; “33 per cent increase” & “£7000”

New Vocabulary

o “prominence” – the state of being noticeable or standing out

o “jeroboam” – a large wine bottle size which holds 4 standard bottles.

o “Latvian” – coming from the country Latvia. A person from Latvia.

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