HIGHER



HIGHER

READING FOR UNDERSTANDING, ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION

Tips, Techniques and Torture!

Of all the questions that a pupil (or parent) could ever ask me, the number one most frustrating one is “You can’t really revise for Close Reading, though, can you?”

AAAAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!! YES, YES, YES! You 100%, absolutely, positively, definitely can!

We will of course be working our way through this book throughout the year, and we will also be completing a number of other close reading tasks and activities. We will be completing past papers regularly in class and at home, and you may well buy a set of past or practice papers for your own personal revision. But there is one really important thing you must be doing throughout the year, and it is the best and most enjoyable kind of revision you can do:

READ!

I’ll bet that a large majority of you have been told at some point, either face to face, or as feedback to a piece of work, or at parent’s night, or in your report that you should try to read more “quality” newspapers. This has never been more important than it is this year. Year after year after year, the passages used in the Higher Close Reading paper are taken from these newspapers, and you can only familiarise yourself with the kind of writing involved by reading it regularly.

Doing this will also help you to expand your vocabulary. This is so important as the passages used over the past decade or so have included such diverse topics as:

• Mohammad Ali and boxing,

• The development of music over time,

• Immigration,

• Paranoid Parents,

• Meteors and asteroids,

• Obesity and diet,

• The cultural impact of libraries,

• The significance of our heritage,

• The rise of urban living,

• Our use of the Earth’s natural resources, and

• The intellectual value of video gaming.

Within these topics, you could expect to come across jargon and technical terminology from the fields of sport, sound engineering, politics, parenting, astronomy, biology, literature, history, geography and agriculture, geology, chemistry, and technology.

This is why it is so important to try to expand your vocabulary and general knowledge through your own reading, as these things can’t be taught by the best teacher in the world. You have to answer in your own words and you can’t possibly do this if you don’t understand in the first place.

To start you off, you might want to buy – or have a look at the websites of – the following newspapers, paying particular attention to the sections marked ‘comment’, ‘commentary’, or ‘editorial’.

|The Times |The Independent |

|The Guardian |The Daily Telegraph |

|The Glasgow Herald |The Scotsman |

Most of the examples, tasks and activities in this part of the unit will come from the following two passages, which in turn come from the 2011 Higher Close Reading paper. They talk about the benefits (or otherwise) of playing video games.

Writing in The Times newspaper, Steven Johnson argues that valuable development in young people’s mental abilities can come from “popular culture” in general—and video games in particular.

MAKING OUR BRAINS SHARPER

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.

For the record, I think that the virtues of reading books are great. We should all encourage our kids to read more. But even the most avid reader is inevitably going to spend his or her time with other media—games, television, movies, the Internet. Yet the question is whether these other forms of culture have intellectual virtues in their own right—different from, but comparable to, reading. Where most critics allege a dumbing down, I see a progressive story: popular culture steadily, but almost imperceptibly, making our brains sharper as we soak in entertainment usually dismissed as so much lowbrow fluff. I hope to persuade you that increasingly the non-literary popular culture is honing different mental skills that are just as important as the ones exercised by reading books.

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.

In the typical game, the tasks themselves are more like chores than entertainment. And yet ironically the great bulk of the population performing these tasks every day is composed of precisely the demographic group most averse to doing chores: kids whom you virtually have to lock in their room to get them to do their maths homework. You often hear video games included in the list of the debased instant gratifications that abound in our culture. But compared with most forms of popular entertainment, games turn out to be all about delayed gratification, sometimes so long delayed that you wonder if the gratification is ever going to show.

So why does anyone bother playing these things? And why does a seven-year-old soak up, for instance, the intricacies of industrial economics in the game form of SimCity, when the same subject would send him screaming for the exits in a classroom? To date, there has been little direct research into the question of how games get children to learn without realising that they are learning. But I believe a strong case can be made that the power of games to captivate largely involves their ability to tap into the brain’s natural reward circuitry. If you create a system in which rewards are both clearly defined and achieved by exploring an environment, you will find human brains drawn to those systems, even if they are made up of virtual characters and simulated sidewalks. In the game world, reward is everywhere. The gaming universe is literally teeming with objects that deliver very clearly articulated rewards: more life, access to new levels, new equipment, new spells. Most of the crucial work in game design focuses on keeping players notified of potential rewards available to them, and how much these rewards are currently needed. Most games offer a fictional world where rewards are larger, and more vivid, and more clearly defined than life.

You may just want to win the game, of course, or perhaps you want to see the game’s narrative completed, or in the initial stages of play, you may just be dazzled by the game’s graphics. But most of the time, when you’re hooked on a game, what draws you in is an elemental form of desire: the desire to see the Next Thing. After all, with the occasional exception, the actual content of the game is often childish or gratuitously menacing. Much of the role play inside the gaming world alternates between drive-by shooting and princess-rescuing. It is not the subject matter that attracts; it is the reward system that draws those players in, and keeps their famously short attention spans locked on the screen.

Playing down the content of video games shouldn’t be seen as a cop-out. We ignore the content of many other activities that are widely considered to be good for the brain. No one complains about the simplistic, militaristic plot of chess games. We teach algebra to children knowing full well that the day they leave the classroom 99 per cent of those kids will never again directly employ their algebraic skills. Learning algebra isn’t about acquiring a specific tool; it’s about building up a mental muscle that will come in handy elsewhere.

So it is with games. It’s not what you’re thinking about when you’re playing a game, it’s the way you’re thinking that matters. Novels may activate our imagination and may conjure up powerful emotions, but games force you to analyse, to choose, to prioritise, to decide. From the outside, the primary activity of a gamer looks like a fury of clicking and shooting. But if you peer inside the gamer’s mind, the primary activity turns out to be another creature altogether: making decisions, some of them snap judgements, some of them long-term strategies.

Writing on his own website, the politician and journalist Boris Johnson blames video games for a drop in reading standards.

STRIKE A BLOW FOR LITERACY

It’s the snarl that gives the game away. It’s the sobbing and the shrieking and the horrible pleading—that’s how you know your children are undergoing a sudden narcotic withdrawal. As the strobing colours die away and the screen goes black, you listen to the wail of protest from the offspring and you know that you have just turned off their drug, and you know that they are, to a greater or lesser extent, addicts.

Millions of seven-to-fifteen-year olds are hooked, especially boys, and it is time someone had the guts to stand up, cross the room and just say no to Nintendo. It is time to garrotte the Game Boy and paralyse the PlayStation, and it is about time, as a society, that we admitted the catastrophic effect these blasted gizmos are having on the literacy and the prospects of young males.

We demand that teachers provide our children with reading skills; we expect the schools to fill them with a love of books; and yet at home we let them slump in front of the consoles. We get on with our hedonistic 21st century lives while in some other room the nippers are bleeping and zapping in speechless rapture, their passive faces washed in explosions and gore. They sit for so long that their souls seem to have been sucked down the cathode ray tube.

They become like blinking lizards, motionless, absorbed, only the twitching of their hands showing that they are still conscious. These machines teach them nothing. They stimulate no ratiocination, discovery or feat of memory—though some of them may cunningly pretend to be educational. I have just watched an eleven-year-old play a game that looked fairly historical, on the packet. Your average guilt-ridden parent might assume that it taught the child something about the Vikings and medieval siege warfare. Phooey! The red soldiers robotically slaughtered the white soldiers, and then they did it again, that was it. Everything was programmed, spoon-fed, immediate—and endlessly showering the player with undeserved praise, richly congratulating him for his bogus massacres.

The more addictive these games are to the male mind, the more difficult it is to persuade boys to read books. It’s not that these young people lack the brains; the raw circuitry is better than ever. It’s the software that’s the problem. They have not been properly programmed, because they have not read enough. The only way to learn to write is to be forced time and again to articulate your own thoughts in your own words, and you haven’t a hope of doing this if you haven’t read enough to absorb the basic elements of vocabulary, grammar, rhythm, style and structure; and young males in particular won’t read enough if we continually capitulate and let them fritter their lives away in front of these drivelling machines.

So I say now: go to where your children are sitting in auto-lobotomy in front of the console. Summon up all your strength, all your courage. Steel yourself for the screams and yank out that plug. And if they still kick up a fuss, then get out the sledgehammer and strike a blow for literacy.

As you can see, there is A LOT of reading involved in a Higher Reading for Understanding, Analysis and Evaluation paper (certainly much more than you will be used to at National 5).

As a result of this, how you tackle the reading of the passage really depends on how quickly you can read. There are a number of possible strategies, listed here – with the most thorough and preferable option first.

OPTION ONE

Read both passages properly and thoroughly before you begin. This will give you an idea of the themes, arguments, and content of each passage and what you might be asked about. You may also be able to quickly annotate the text as you go, drawing attention to anything you think might be interesting or important. See below for an example of this. You must be a fast reader to attempt this method, but it is the preferred option.

OPTION TWO

Skim-read the passages first, getting a feel for them and an understanding of the gist of the arguments. If you go for this method, you must still be prepared to read sections in more detail as directed by each question.

OPTION THREE

Read the titles, introductory ‘blurbs’, topic sentences and conclusions of each passage before tackling the questions. This is not ideal, and should only be attempted if you really struggle for time.

The only option which will give you a thorough understanding of the passage is option one – the others should only be used if you have real trouble with managing your time, and can often lead to incorrect answers or answers which lack detail.

‘IN YOUR OWN WORDS’ QUESTIONS

When answering any question that specifically asks you to answer in your own words, people lose lots of marks for what in the marking scheme is called a ‘blatant lift’; that is to say, using the words of the passage too much. You are a Higher candidate: it is not enough just to show you can find something in a passage and copy it down – you must use your own words as far as possible whenever you are not directly quoting.

Think about it – these questions are designed to test your understanding, and if you regurgitate the words of the passage, you are only showing that you can read, not that you can understand it! This is all about building your vocabulary, so get used to using a dictionary and a thesaurus, and reading regularly, as this is the only way to improve on this.

Another common mistake is that people try to ‘translate’ every single word. For example, when putting the following into their own words:

“The teacher looked at the class with contempt; she had never before seen such an ugly, dim-witted bunch of pupils in her life.”

They will say something like:

“The educator gazed at the group of students with derision; she had under no circumstances before looked upon such an unattractive, foolish, cluster of students in her existence.”

This is obviously rather a silly way to approach the question, as it takes far too much time (unless you have a fantastic vocabulary) and you end up agonising over silly things, like an alternative word for ‘look’ or ‘life’.

Rather, you should learn to summarise and paraphrase. In other words, pick out the key points in the sentence, and try to translate the meaning, rather than the individual words. For example:

Key points: 1. The teacher looked at the class with contempt

2. They were ugly

3. They were dim-witted

Finished answer:

“The pupils in the teacher’s class were both unattractive

and stupid; therefore she looked at them in disgust.”

This answer flows much better, is expressed better, and doesn’t waste time on unimportant details. It does, however, communicate the meaning of the original clearly and concisely.

If you are a slow writer, you could even bullet point the points in your answer. This is sometimes helpful as the marker can see exactly how many points you have made. In this case, your finished answer may be:

• The pupils were unattractive

• They were stupid

• So the teacher looked at them in disgust

Now, try answering the following questions IN YOUR OWN WORDS.

They are all based on the passages on pages 3-5.

Questions on Passage One

|Read lines 1-3. | |

|Explain in your own words the contrast the writer makes between reading and playing video games in line 1. | |

|Explain briefly the ‘conventional wisdom’ concerning children today. |2 |

| |2 |

|Read lines 4-11. | |

|Identify ‘the question’ the writer asks about ‘other forms of culture’. |2 |

|How does the writer go on to explain his ‘progressive story’? |2 |

|Read lines 12-17. | |

|What does the writer tell us we ‘almost never hear’ about video games? |1 |

|Briefly state the ‘dirty little secret of gaming’. |1 |

|Summarise briefly the feelings the writer tells us a gamer might go through as opposed to having fun. | |

|What, according to the writer, will a gamer do after putting the game down? |4 |

| |2 |

|Read lines 18-23. | |

|Why, according to the writer, is it surprising that children play video games? |2 |

|Explain in your own words why the writer says games should not be included in our culture’s list of ‘debased instant | |

|gratifications’. |3 |

|Read lines 24-35. | |

|Explain in your own words the ‘strong case’ the writer thinks can be made. |2 |

|What examples does the writer give of the kinds of rewards common in video games? |4 |

|In what ways are rewards in the virtual world better than those in the real world? |3 |

|Read lines 36-42. | |

|What three reasons does the writer offer for wanting to finish a particular game? |3 |

|What negative opinions does the writer offer about the story of most video games? |2 |

|Read lines 43-47. | |

|What does the writer believe to be the negative aspect(s) of: | |

|Chess |2 |

|Algebra |1 |

|Read lines 48-53. | |

|What, to the author, is important about your thinking when gaming? |1 |

|Explain briefly the contrast between reading and playing games that the writer explains in the final paragraph. | |

|What two types of decisions do gamers make whilst playing? |3 |

| |2 |

‘MEANING FROM CONTEXT’ QUESTIONS

Most Understanding questions simply ask you to write in your own words. There are a couple of questions, however, which ask you to do very specific things. One of these is the ‘meaning from context’ question.

In this type of question, you are being asked to show that you can work out the meaning of an unusual or potentially unfamiliar word by looking at the context – that is to say, the other words around about it. The worst thing you can do in this question is panic if you don’t recognise the word. You are being tested to see if you can WORK IT OUT, not on whether you know it or not.

This type of question is asking you to show two things:

1. What the word means,

2. What evidence from the passage helped you to decide this.

For example, read the following paragraph:

“Higher English Close Reading is difficult. It can at times be frustrating, annoying and sometimes makes you feel really angry at yourself for not being able to see what should be right in front of your face. In fact, tackling a paper can be an entirely repercacious experience. But the trick is to stay calm and not to become mad at yourself.”

Now, discuss together what “repercacious” may mean. It is not important whether you actually know or not, just whether or not you can work it out. Next, decide what words/phrases in the passage help you to arrive at this meaning.

You should have decided that “repercacious” means something like annoying, exasperating, infuriating etc. The words or phrases that helped you arrive at this meaning would be things like “difficult”, “frustrating”, “annoying”, “really angry at yourself”, and “become mad”.

To write this out as a full answer, you can follow a simple template. This will help you every time you are faced with a context question. You should write:

“The meaning of the word ‘_________’ is ______________. I can work this out because the context tells us _______ ________________________________________________.”

So, to answer the “repercacious” question you would say:

“The meaning of the word ‘repercacious’ is exasperated. I can work this out because the context tells us that Close Reading is ‘difficult’ which suggests that it is not easy to do, and ‘makes you feel really angry at yourself’ which suggests that candidates become frustrated with themselves.

By the way, the word “repercacious” doesn’t exist – I made it up. Which just goes to show it is not important if you don’t know the meaning of the word to begin with.

For this type of question, one mark will usually be awarded for identifying the meaning of the word, and the other marks for providing evidence and explaining how this helped you arrive at the definition.

Now, attempt the following questions, which all ask you to work out the meaning from looking at the context of the word. This is also a helpful exercise to help you identify the various ways in which a meaning from context question can be worded.

Remember – it doesn’t matter whether or not you already know the meaning of the word. This type of question is all about demonstrating how you might work out the meaning if you didn’t know.

Use the template to help you answer every time:

“The meaning of the word ‘_________’ is ______________. I can work this out because the context tells us ________________________________________.”

Questions on Passage One

|Read lines 4-11. | |

|Explain how the context of the word “avid” helps you to arrive at its meaning. |2 |

|Read lines 18-23. | |

|Explain the meaning of the word “averse”, with reference to the context of the passage. |3 |

|Read lines 36-42. | |

|How does the writer make clear the meaning of “gratuitously menacing”? You should refer to the context of the phrase in your | |

|answer. |2 |

| | |

|Read lines 43-47. | |

|Explain with reference to the passage what the writer means by “conjure up”. |2 |

| | |

| | |

|Questions on Passage Two | |

| | |

|Read lines 1-8. | |

|With close reference to the passage, show what the writer means by “narcotic”. |3 |

| | |

|Read lines 17-21. | |

|Explain by referring to the passage what the writer means by “rapture”. |2 |

| | |

|Read lines 30-36. | |

|Explain what the writer means by “capitulate” by referring to the context of the passage. |3 |

‘LINK’ QUESTIONS

The final type of understanding question (and probably the most difficult) is the ‘link’ question. This is only difficult in that there are lots of things that you have to do to answer it fully. However once you learn the formula for answering this type of question, they become much easier.

In this type of question, you are being asked to show how a particular line (usually the first line of a new paragraph) acts as a link between what came before it and what comes after it. For example, read the following extract:

“The Higher English students were a thoroughly detestable bunch. They sat huddled together; spotty, snotty, greasy teenagers with all the sophistication and erudition of a bagful of slugs.

However, there were glimmers of hope among the rag-tag horde. The group wrote beautifully and their close reading answers were second-to-none.

Clearly, the sentence which links these two paragraphs together is:

However, there were glimmers of hope among the rag-tag horde.

If you were asked to explain how this acted as a link, you would have to ask yourself three things:

1. Which part of the sentence refers back to the first paragraph?

2. Which part of the sentence refers back to the second paragraph?

3. Are there any linking words/phrases?

After you have found these three pieces of information, the question becomes much simpler to answer.

‘rag-tag horde’ refers back to the previous paragraph, which was talking about everything about the group that appeared negative, and all the reasons they were unlikeable. However ‘glimmers of hope’ refers to the next paragraph, which talks about the things that the group were good at, such as their writing and close reading answers. The sentence also starts with the linking word/phrase ‘however’ which signifies this change in direction of the writer’s argument.

In fact, you can use the same template to answer any ‘Link’ question:

‘______________________’ refers back to the previous paragraph, which was talking about _____________________________. However ‘_____________________________________’ refers to the next paragraph, which talks about _________________________. The sentence also starts with the linking word/phrase __________________ which suggests _____________.

If you can learn this quick template, you really can’t go far wrong when answering a linking question. You only need talk about linking words/phrases if they are included in the passage – it might be that you can leave that sentence out of your answer.

Now, attempt the following questions, which all ask you to identify how a particular sentence acts as a link in the passage. This exercise will also help you identify the various ways in which a link question can be worded.

Use the template to help you answer every time:

‘______________________’ refers back to the previous paragraph, which was talking about _____________________________. However ‘_____________________________________’ refers to the next paragraph, which talks about _________________________. The sentence also starts with the linking word/phrase __________________ which suggests _____________.

Questions on Passage One

|Read lines 4-11. | |

|“Yet the question is whether these other forms of culture have intellectual virtues in their own right – different from, but | |

|comparable to, reading” | |

|Explain fully how this sentence acts as a link at this point in the passage. |5 |

| | |

|“Where most critics allege a dumbing down, I see a progressive story” | |

|In what way does this form a link in the writer’s argument? |4 |

|Read lines 43-53. | |

|“It’s not what you’re thinking about when playing a game, it’s the way you’re thinking that matters” | |

|Explain in your own words how this sentence performs a linking function. | |

| |4 |

| | |

|Questions on Passage Two | |

| | |

|Read lines 1-16. | |

|Millions of seven-to-fifteen year olds are hooked, especially boys, and it is time someone had the guts to stand up… | |

|Explain in your own words how this sentence performs a linking function at this point. | |

| |4 |

|Read lines 22-29. | | | |

|“They stimulate no ratiocination, | | | |

|discovery, or feat of memory – though some | | | |

|of them may cunningly pretend to be | | | |

|educational” | | | |

|How does this sentence in lines 23-24 serve| | | |

|as a link in the writer’s argument? | | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| |4 | | |

The examples, tasks and activities in this part of the unit will come from the following two passages, which in turn come from the 2013 Higher Close Reading paper. They talk about the obsession with shopping in today’s society.

Writing in The Times newspaper, Carol Midgley considers the attraction of shopping and the power of “consumerism”.

ADDICTED TO SHOPPING

This is a story about modern consumerism; it is being written inside a mall. From my vantage point on a wooden bench purposely designed to be uncomfortable and placed alongside a digital screen pulsing ever-changing adverts selling other outlets, other products, other ways here to spend, spend, spend, I can watch shoals of people hurrying in and out of stores honouring the creed of the turbo-consumer: live to shop.

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.”

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?

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.

For years, shops, retail centres, giant malls have been taking over public spaces worldwide, creating a mainstream monoculture. The pedestrianisation of city centres, though largely regarded as pro-citizen, is in fact primarily to maximise “footfall” and shoppers’ “grazing time”. This retail creep has ensured that increasingly there’s not much else to do but shop. The more we consume, the less space there is to be anything other than consumers. The space to be citizens and make decisions equally and collectively about the world around us is diminished. It may be a free country, but we simply have the freedom to shop. Kings as consumers, pawns as citizens.

Am I over-catastrophising the consumer phenomenon? In the Liverpool One shopping “experience”, where I am sitting, a place teeming with shoppers despite the credit crunch, and punctuated by Massive Reductions! signs, people don’t look particularly disempowered or depressed. Purposeful, I suppose, but also strangely distracted, as if they do not notice the environment around them, merely the magnetic shop signs. I understand the siren call of TK Maxx and how a £3 top can mend a bad day. But the question is, why does it?

We can answer this question from the basis of evolutionary psychology. The human body is a practical tool for reproduction and survival, but it is also the advertising and packaging for our genes and our “fitness indicators”. When a modern woman buys a new dress or a man a Rolex watch, they are really self-marketing, saying: “Look at me, I’m attractive, successful, fertile, healthy—mate with me.” It isn’t that we are materialistic; in a marketing-dominated culture we just don’t know any other way to do it.

But here’s the thing: much of this is simply not true. In reality, consumerism is a poor means of self-advertising because the vast majority of people don’t notice or care what you are wearing. The fundamental consumerist delusion is that branded goods are the most effective way of signalling to others our “fitness”. But even in a turbo-consumer world it’s a fallacy that we care more about the artificial products displayed by people than their conversation, their wit, or their affection. Yet when mineral water advertised with a photo of a nearly nude Jennifer Aniston sells for 870 times the price of tap water, then marketing dominates life on Earth. Marketers understand that they are selling the sizzle not the steak.

Back at the mall, I speak to two young shoppers staggering under the weight of their carrier bags. Will they go home now and put their feet up? “No, we’re taking these bags home in a taxi,” says one. “Then we’re coming back to do another hour before the shops close.”

Writing in The Guardian newspaper, Will Hutton considers the same topic from a different point of view.

THE GENIUS OF SHOPPING

My two daughters have been addicted to shopping for years. From big city luxurious shopping mall to idiosyncratic old clothes shop, they fall upon it greedily. Sometimes they strike gold; but, even if they come away empty-handed, the experience of just sizing up and calibrating what’s on offer seems reason enough to have invested an irrational number of hours.

They are fully paid-up members of the allegedly futile and empty materialist culture: rootless, obsessive shoppers for whom filling up their shopping bags is a substitute for politics, community participation, family or faith. Critics of this culture indulge in a collective mass tut-tutting: shopping and everything that goes with it are apparently symbolic of what is wrong with the modern age. Serious shoppers are “slaves to the market”, enemies of collective action, whose individualistic appetite is helping to homogenise our high streets while destroying our moral wellbeing.

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 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.

I would even extend the argument to the shopping mall—the quintessential expression of the alleged degradation of shopping. Hong Kong proclaims itself the shopping capital of the world; its malls are marble-floored temples to consumption that make their British counterparts look tawdry. But instead of recoiling from the excess, I found it attractive. The effort made to present the goods well is an act of creativity in its own right. The collective impact throbs with vitality.

To condemn shopping as somehow degrading to those who take it seriously as a cultural expression of themselves is to obscure an important dimension of our lives. True happiness may be about the quality of our interpersonal relationships and wanting to belong to a just society; but it is also about the opportunity to express how we want to live through what we buy. The genius of shopping is that it offers ordinary people the chance both to generate and to satisfy their multiple wants—as well as propelling our economy. Instead of the denigration of shopping culture it is time to recognise that the millions who love it are not stupid, being manipulated or slaves to the market—they are doing something important.

The analysis questions in the Reading for Understanding, Analysis and Evaluation exam are a little more tricky than the understanding ones.

However, there are a number of techniques we can learn to simplify the process a little and make it easier. If we know what might come up, we can prepare ourselves and learn how to answer the different question types, and maximise our chances of picking up marks.

First and foremost, when answering analysis questions, we must keep our WITS about us. In other words, all analysis/language questions ask you to home in and focus on four things:

Word Choice;

Imagery;

Tone; and

Structure.

Any question which asks about language will be expecting you to comment on one or more of these areas to achieve maximum marks.

WARNING

You need to be careful when analysing language at Higher level. When you were doing National 5, these types of questions were generally awarded marks as follows:

• One mark for quoting

• One mark for analysing/commenting on it

At higher, you still have to quote, but that on its own is not enough to earn a mark. Your analysis alone will be marked, and could score 1 or 2 depending on how detailed it is.

‘WORD CHOICE’ QUESTIONS

Every single year, I have to mark close readings where the pupils has clearly understood the word choice question, knows what they need to analyse, but get zero marks. Why? Because they don’t focus on individual words. If you are answering a word choice question, it is vitally important that you only quote one word (or possibly two or three at the most) to analyse.

For example, if you were asked to comment on the writer’s word-choice in the following:

“The teacher sneered at the inarticulate drivel he was compelled to mark. How many times did he have to go over the same simple point? And yet these... people? Could you even call them that? They still couldn’t pick up an easy little two marks for answering on word choice!”

Some candidates will say something like:

“The teacher sneered at the inarticulate drivel he was compelled to mark” The writer’s word choice here shows that he is disgusted and almost mocking the students for their answers. It also shows that he thinks what they have written is not good and doesn’t make sense.

This answer clearly shows that the pupil knows what the answer is, but it would score zero marks. The pupil does not concentrate on individual words and so the analysis lacks focus. On the other hand, the following would get full marks:

• “sneered” – the writer’s word choice here clearly shows his disapproval. A sneer is an almost contemptuous verb, showing that the writer is not impressed by the pupils’ work.

• “inarticulate drivel” – this example of word choice shows that the work that the pupils have produced is not only poor, but almost nonsensical.

This is a much more precise answer. Think of it this way – the passages you read have been very carefully constructed by the writers. They have made very clear decisions about the words they have chosen, so you need to be equally precise when analysing them. You have to be a surgeon: very clinically and exactly dissecting the work of the author.

The first answer above is like the surgeon has used a meat cleaver to operate on a cancer patient – he might have taken out the right bit, but it’s surrounded by stuff he doesn’t want and didn’t need to remove. In short, it’s a mess. The second example is like the surgeon has used a very small, very sharp scalpel. He has taken out only the bits he needed to, and has focussed on getting the job done as tidily as possible. I know which method is most successful, and I know which I’d prefer!

When looking at word choice, pay particular attention to things like informal, colloquial or slang language; use of dialect; emotive language; jargon; and anachronisms or old-fashioned language.

Now, try answering the following questions, focussing on WORD CHOICE.

They are all based on the passages on pages 12-14.

Questions on Passage One

|Read lines 1-4. | |

|Explain one use of the writer’s word choice which suggests that the mall is an assault on her senses. | |

|Explain how the writer’s word choice conveys both the speed and the number of consumers. |1 |

| | |

| |2 |

|Read lines 5-9. | |

|Show how the writer uses word choice to demonstrate the interviewee’s suspicion of the writer. | |

| |1 |

|Read lines 10-14. | |

|Show how two examples of the writer’s word choice reveals the popularity of shopping as a pass-time. | |

| |2 |

|Read lines 22-28. | |

|How does the writer use word choice to show how malls have steadily taken over city centres? | |

|Show how the writer’s word-choice helps explain how city centres have changed over the years. |2 |

| | |

| |1 |

|Read lines 39-45. | |

|Explain how the writer’s word choice indicates how consumers are fooled by marketing. |2 |

Questions on Passage Two

|Read lines 1-6. | |

|How does the writer use word choice to demonstrate the range of shopping experiences his children are addicted to? | |

| |2 |

|Read lines 16-20. | |

|How does the writer use word choice to show the different ways in which the critics disapprove of the consumer? | |

| |5 |

|Read lines 21-24. | |

|Show how the writer uses word choice to cast the markets as a malevolent force. |3 |

|Read lines 25-30. | | | |

|Explain how the writer uses word choice to demonstrate | | | |

|the positive aspects of his shopping experience. | | | |

| | | | |

| |3 | | |

‘IMAGERY’ QUESTIONS

In these types of questions, funnily enough, you’ll be asked to identify and explain the effect of imagery in the passage. Remember, imagery is a very specific set of literary techniques: usually metaphors, similes, and personification.

It is NOT enough to say that an image is effective because it creates a picture or image in your head – of course it does, that’s why it is called IMAGE-RY!

Metaphoric language is used by writers to express ideas. Writers use figures of speech in their writing to help create engaging and interesting descriptions. Writers have chosen their words very carefully – so you must think about why the writer has chosen to use the image rather than just using a more simple description.

When analysing an image, you should be asking yourself a number of questions:

• Which part of the passage should I quote?

• What does the image mean LITERALLY?

• What does the image mean FIGURATIVELY?

• Why is this effective?

For example, if you were asked to comment on the writer’s use of imagery in the following:

“The teacher stared in disbelief. He couldn’t possibly make this any simpler. But still, he felt like a man in front of a firing squad, questions shooting from every possible direction: what if I can’t find anything to quote? What if the literal meaning of the image just seems ridiculous? What if I don’t think it’s effective? The teacher sat down on his chair, put his head on the desk, and sobbed silently.”

Firstly, you’d look for a metaphor or simile. In this case, “he felt like a man in front of a firing squad”. Then, you’d consider what this means literally – in front of a crowd of people who are all shooting at you at the same time. Then think about what that must mean figuratively – the questions are coming thick and fast and from all directions at the same time. Finally say why this is effective – it shows how disorganised and overwhelming the questions are, and how it almost seems to hurt the teacher.

Now, we can put this all together using the “just as … so to…” formula.

• “he felt like a man in front of a firing squad”

• Just as a firing squad shoot their guns at the victim together and from all directions, so to do the questions from the students seem to come from everywhere and all at the same time. This is effective as it shows how disorganised and overwhelming the questions are, almost like the bombardment physically hurts the teacher.

It is really important to quote both the literal and figurative meaning of the image, no matter how ridiculous this might seem – by describing both meanings of the image you demonstrate you understand where the image comes from.

Let’s ease our way into this one. Start off by analysing the following images. Remember to use the template:

Just as ________________________________________________ _________________________________________________. So to _______________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________. This is effective because_______________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________.

BE CAREFUL: Some examples will contain more than one image.

1. The boys’ eyes were glued to the new girl who had just breezed in, like a breath of fresh air.

2. The front gates were swarmed by pupils as the bell rang to signal the start of the holidays.

3. The teacher erupted with fury at the pupil, who slouched in his chair like a giant slug.

.

4. The class exploded into action as they saw the Headteacher pass the door.

5. The silence in the exam hall was shattered by the invigilator tripping over the desk.

Now attempt the following questions, based on the passages on pages 12-14.

Questions on Passage One

|Read lines 10-14. | |

|“we gladly boarded the work-to-spend treadmill” | |

|Explain fully the writer’s use of imagery here. |3 |

|Read lines 15-21. | |

|How does the writer use imagery to effectively show how shopping makes us feel in the short term. | |

| |4 |

|Read lines 29-33. | |

|“I understand the siren call of TK Maxx” | |

|How does the writer use imagery in these lines? |3 |

Questions on Passage Two

|Read lines 1-6. | |

|How does the writer use imagery to show that occasionally his daughters find great bargains. | |

| |4 |

|Read lines 21-24. | |

|Explain how the writer has used imagery to show that the critics believe the consumer is very easily manipulated and influenced. | |

| |4 |

‘TONE’ QUESTIONS

The key thing to remember when answering questions on tone, is that the question is really asking you how the tone is created. It is also asking you to be very specific.

For example, if you were asked about the tone in the following example:

“What do you mean you can’t identify tone in Close Reading? Are you lot really that thick? I thought that some of you might have had some modicum of intelligence, but actually, your stupidity truly baffles me! In my day, people were smarter. You lot are just a bunch of lazy toads who expect everything handed to you on a plate. The human race is going downhill fast, and it’s you lot that are to blame!”

Quite often, you will see answers that say things like simply:

“The writer creates a negative tone.”

Come on! Do you really think that’s worth a mark at Higher? Firstly, you need to be much more specific in identifying the tone. Negative is not good enough. Condescending. Patronising. Mocking. Sneering. Contemptuous. All of these would be a better example to use. Secondly, you need to provide examples from the text and explain their effect.

So, a better answer might be something like:

The teacher creates a contemptuous tone in the paragraph. The teacher clearly feels very strongly that the pupils lack intelligence and are dim-witted. We can see this in his use of words such as “stupidity” and the reference to them not having a “modicum of intelligence”. His choice of the word “lazy” and the reference to things being “handed to you on a plate” also suggests that the teacher believes they want everything given to them with minimal work on their part.

A big difference, eh?

Finally, the following list will give you an idea of some of the possible types of tone you could refer to:

|Accusatory |Accusing someone of wrong doing |

|Bitter |Strong hatred arising from [personal] pain |

|Cynical |Questioning sincerity |

|Condescending |A feeling of superiority |

|Didactic |An attempt to lecture or educate the reader |

|Familiar |Informal, jokey, or friendly sounding |

|Forthright |Very direct and matter-of-fact |

|Gloomy |Dark, sad and depressing |

|Mocking |Ridiculing the subject |

|Optimistic |Hopeful, always looking on the bright side |

|Pessimistic |Always seeing the worst in things |

|Sarcastic |Sneering and mocking, usually using irony |

|Solemn |Very serious or reflective |

Again, let’s ease our way in to these questions.

Read the following paragraphs, and try to identify the tone used:

1. I couldn’t believe my luck! It had only taken me ten minutes to put the lottery ticket on, and here I was, staring at the winning ticket. I tired hard to suppress my tears of joy, but when I turned to my wife who was dancing around the coffee table, my emotions got the better of me and I wept tears of relief. We were going to be okay. All the debt which had built up over the years had become insignificant in those few seconds. Our future was looking good again.

2. Of course the government only have our interests at heart. They don’t want to take our taxes, they are only doing what needs to be done to improve everyone’s quality of life. Okay, so they might use some of the money to pay for the guttering to be cleaned on their third home, but a happy MP is one who can get out to parliament to fight for their constituents. Yeah, right. And I’m a pink teddy bear.

3. Recycling is one of the best ways for you to have a positive impact on the world in which we live. Recycling is important to both the natural environment and us. We must act fast as the amount of waste we create is increasing all the time. The amount of rubbish we create is constantly increasing because increasing wealth means that people are buying more products and ultimately creating more waste; increasing population means that there are more people on the planet to create waste; and finally new lifestyle changes, such as eating fast food, means that we create additional waste that isn’t biodegradable.

Now try the questions that follow. They are all based on the passages on pages 12-14. Tone does not come up as often as some of the other question types, therefore there are not as many examples to try.

Questions on Passage One

|Read lines 15-21. | |

|Comment on the writer’s use of tone in her description of “turbo-consumerism”. |4 |

|Read lines 22-28. | |

|How does the writer’s tone reveal her attitude to the changes which have taken place in city centres around the UK? | |

| |4 |

|Read lines 39-45. | |

|How does the writer’s tone reveal her opinion on the lies perpetrated by consumerism? |3 |

Questions on Passage Two

|Read lines 7-15. | |

|Does the reader subscribe to the same beliefs as the critics? Comment on his use of tone. | |

| |3 |

|Read lines 25-30. | |

|How does the writer create a jovial or light hearted tone in this paragraph? |3 |

| | |

‘STRUCTURE’ QUESTIONS

When asked about structure (usually sentence structure), you should be able to work your way through a mental checklist which will help you analyse the types of sentence used. The things you should be looking out for are:

|CHECKLIST |Π |

|Sentence length (long, or short) | |

|Listing (using commas or semi-colons) | |

|Repetition | |

|Argument signal words (furthermore, moreover, however…) | |

|(Rhetorical) questions | |

|Emphatic sentences (makes a very clear, frank point) | |

|Balanced sentences | |

|Interesting use of punctuation | |

|Parenthesis | |

Remember, it isn’t enough just to identify the sentence structure, you also have to explain its effect. For example, if you were asked to comment on sentence structure in the following:

“This is just getting ridiculous – what else can I do? You’ve had lessons on Close Reading; you’ve completed practice questions, and you’ve done past papers; we’ve read articles and picked out important vocabulary; we’ve revised question types and how to answer them; you’ve had time to complete Close Reading at Supported Study; and now we are going over it yet again. Short of slicing the top off your head with an angle grinder and stuffing the notes directly into your brain, I am at a loss!”

It is not enough just to say:

The writer uses a list.

You need to explain what effect this has on the reader. So you might say something like:

The writer uses a list here, to demonstrate all of the different strategies that the teacher has employed to help his class understand Close Reading. He lists all of the varied tasks and activities one after the other. This has a cumulative effect and makes it seem like the teacher has exhausted all of the possibilities available to him. This adds to the sense of frustration the teacher clearly feels as he has obviously tried a lot of methods to help them.

This is a much better answer. Remember, these questions are testing whether you understand the effects of language, not just how to identify techniques.

You should therefore be aware of the kind of effect that different sentence structures can create. For example, long sentences can make something seem tedious and long winded. Short sentences can create excitement. Lists can have a climactic or cumulative effect. Repetition can draw the reader’s attention to particular words and phrases, hammering the point home. Rhetorical questions draw the reader in and encourages them to subscribe to your point of view – it gets the reader on-side. Parenthesis adds extra information which helps to extend the writers argument. There are many possibilities, so you need to do some thinking for yourself here!

Now, try answering the following questions, focussing on STRUCTURE.

They are all based on the passages on pages 12-14.

Questions on Passage One

|Read lines 1-4. | |

|How does the writer use sentence structure in the first sentence to highlight a sense of irony? | |

|Explain how the writer’s sentence structure helps to demonstrate the constant activity in the mall. |2 |

| | |

| |2 |

|Read lines 5-9. | |

|Show how the structure of the sentence that begins with “what she really needs…” helps to demonstrate modern consumerist culture.| |

| |2 |

|Read lines 10-14. | |

|How does the writer’s sentence structure help convey her disbelief at the way consumerism has developed in society? | |

| |2 |

|Read lines 22-28. | |

|How does the writer use sentence structure to highlight how public spaces have been taken over? | |

| |2 |

Questions on Passage Two

|Read lines 16-20. | |

|How does the writer use sentence structure to demonstrate the various things that the critics deplore? | |

| |2 |

|Read lines 31-37. | |

|Show how the structure of the sentences in these lines help indicate the diversity of products available in Hong Kong. | |

| |2 |

|Read lines 43-49. | |

|How does the writer’s sentence structure help to exemplify his point in the final paragraph? | |

| |4 |

‘LANGUAGE’ QUESTIONS

Sometimes, you will be asked specifically to look at word choice, or imagery, or tone, or structure, just as we have done in this unit. Sometimes, however, you will simply be asked to ‘comment on language’. In this case, it is a free-for-all. Unless you have been specifically asked to look at one type of language, then you can choose any of the WITS to focus on. Just look out for questions like “Comment on at least two different features of language…” In this case, you’d obviously want to focus on at least two of the WITS.

These passages come from the 2016 Higher paper. These passages will be used in all of the example questions for the ‘Evaluation” section of this unit. These passages will also be used as the worked example for the comparison question.

In the first passage, Catherine Bennett puts forward the case for allowing 16-year-olds to vote.

RUDE, IMPULSIVE, SULKY… STILL, LET OUR 16 YEAR OLDS VOTE

There are hugely important questions to address before 16-year-olds can be invited into the complicated UK electoral process. Are they sufficiently mature? Can they tell one party from another? Are they too preoccupied by a combination of exams and hectic social lives to be bothered? Even worrying about their appearance has been cited as a reason why under-18s might struggle to give adequate thought to the political and economic issues facing Britain today.

There was a long period, between being sixteen myself and then, decades later, getting to know some present-day teenagers, including the one in my own house, when I would have agreed with champions of the status quo. I presumed — without knowing any — that these 16-year-olds were as clueless as my younger self, but with an increased obsession with their peer group, a result of unpatrolled access to social media, greater affluence, and being subject to a constant barrage of entertainment.

If these factors were not enough to guarantee extreme teen disengagement with the political process, scientists have supplied biological reasons to question the efficiency of teenagers’ smartphone-fixated brains. The last time there was a significant move to reduce the voting age, the biologist Richard Dawkins set out the potential risks posed by the undeveloped teenage brain to our current epistocracy. An epistocracy — as of course all older voters will know — is government by wise people, that is, those with fully developed grey matter. In the article, Dawkins cited evidence from neuroscientists that “the brain undergoes major reconstruction from the onset of puberty which continues until 20 or beyond”. Crucial, if I understand them correctly, is the importance of this continuing development to the frontal lobes. This is the area at the front of the brain which “enables us to think in the abstract, weigh moral dilemmas and control our impulses”. It was not even clear, the author said, that teenagers are developed enough to “be making life-changing decisions for themselves”.

If we simply accept this argument, what does it mean in practice? It means that a grown-up who believes in wizardry or unicorns or vampires can become a Member of Parliament, but a school pupil the age of, say, Malala Yousafzai, has yet to acquire the intellectual credentials to vote.

Malala had been the victim of a terrorist attack in Pakistan as a result of her blog advocating education for girls, had recovered and continued to campaign tirelessly for equal educational opportunities for all children. This led to her becoming, in 2014, at the age of seventeen, the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Of course, it would be naïve to suggest that all teenagers can be as accomplished as Malala. However, there is, in fact, considerable evidence that the “unfinished” brain can be pretty good at sport, music, creating computer software and raising thousands of pounds for charity. True, 16-year-olds can be rude, sulky, reckless and unreliable. But the adult world is scarcely exempt from these characteristics. Perhaps — as politicians must hope — most teenagers know too little about politics to make self-congratulatory comparisons between themselves and the at times limited brain power on show during parliamentary debates. The evidence of their own eyes confirms that, when considering normal behaviour, 16-year-olds barely compete in terms of incivility, tantrums, profanity, impulsivity, prejudice, time-wasting and an unedifying dependency on tabloid websites, when compared to millions of fully enfranchised grown-ups. If law-makers ever think of restricting voting by the inadequately brained, illiterate, non-taxpaying or ignorant, the consequences for some adults would be chilling.

Indeed, recent research suggests that those who have been emphasising the negative effects of social media and modern technology on the developing brain may have got it all wrong. Sixteen and seventeen-year-olds are part of the iGeneration, the first generation who have grown up with the digital innovations of the 21st century. They are flexible enough mentally to develop their political worldview from the wide range of sources to be found on the Internet, too media aware to be taken in by spin doctors and manipulative politicians.

Our teenagers do have their flaws. No, they don’t always evince much money sense, although they do, as consumers, pay sales tax. Yes, if voting booths were bedrooms they would probably leave wet towels all over them. But having now witnessed some of the more loveable teenage qualities — idealism, energy, a sense of injustice, open-mindedness — these seem to be exactly the ones of which modern politics is starved. Even a limited turnout by young voters, minus all the ones who are supposedly too apathetic or too busy insulting police officers or attending Ibiza-themed foam parties, might inject some life into the next election.

Naturally, engaged teenagers would want answers on stuff that directly affects them such as unpaid internships, exams, student debt, the minimum wage, benefits and perhaps any military engagements in which they might be invited to serve. However, it might lead to a fresh look at policies that affect future generations, by voters who will actually be around to experience the consequences. If voting has to be rationed, maybe it should be elderly citizens — who may not see the impact of, say, political inaction on climate change or carelessness about fuel sustainability — who should give way to 16-year-olds.

We could compromise: make it seventeen. Then 16-year-olds would only have a year to wait — after they have already married, donated an organ, bought fireworks, and signed up to fight for their country — before they would be allowed to choose, alone in an exposed voting booth, between competing political visions. Judging by the current resistance of adults who believe they know so much better, you’d think we were doing our young people a great big favour.

In the second passage, Julia Hartley-Brewer puts forward her arguments for not allowing 16-year-olds to vote.

LETTING 16 YEAR OLDS VOTE WOULD BE A DISASTER

I have decided that it is only right and fair that my 8-year-old daughter should be allowed to vote. She knows her politics and can name the party leaders on sight, which is more than can be said for a large proportion of voters — and she pays tax. Every time she saves up her pocket money to buy a new toy or game, it comes with a price tag that includes a hefty 20 per cent of VAT. On all these grounds, she has just as much of a claim to have her say about Britain’s future as do the 16 and 17-year-olds of this country. And yet no one is demanding that she is given the vote because, well, she’s an 8-year-old. She’s a child; she doesn’t have the intellectual and emotional development of an adult so she doesn’t get to have the rights of adults.

So why is it that so many people — including prominent politicians — believe that we should be giving 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote? The call for the voting age to be lowered to sixteen is as absurd an idea as you’ll hear.

Yes, 16 and 17-year-olds were allowed to vote in the Scottish referendum. And what did they achieve? The turn-out for that tiny age group was a lot higher than among most other younger voters (largely, it is thought, because they were encouraged to turn out to vote by their parents) but it did not enthuse the 18 to 20 age bracket, which as per usual largely didn’t bother at all. Wouldn’t our democracy be better served if we spent more time, effort and resources on engaging the people who already have the right to vote, rather than just adding on a few million voters who will never vote again after their first trip to the polling station?

Ah, but that’s not the point, the protagonists claim. We should allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote because they are legally allowed to do other, far more important, life-changing or life-risking things than put a cross on a ballot paper, so why not let them vote as well? And that would be a really good argument, if it were true. Because, in actual fact, we don’t allow our 16 and 17-year-olds to do very much. They can’t legally drink alcohol or smoke, for starters. We don’t trust them to be sensible with a pint of lager so why trust them with a stubby pencil in a polling booth?

Okay, but they can get a job and pay income tax and that’s not fair if they don’t have a say in the government that sets those taxes, right? But income tax isn’t the only tax we pay so why should that be the crucial decider? We all pay VAT on many of the goods we purchase from a very young age so, on that argument, my 8-year-old should be eligible to vote too.

Allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote would be a disaster. Voting is, after all, not a privilege like receiving pocket money or being permitted to stay out past your usual curfew on a Saturday night. It’s a right. And a hard-won right at that.

When politicians say they want 16 and 17-year-olds to vote, what they really mean is that they want 16 and 17-year-olds to vote for them. This is not about empowering young people or shifting the focus of debate to issues more relevant to 16 and 17-year-olds. Mainstream politics will continue to focus on issues important to adults, such as the economy and the state of the health service. It is simply calculated electioneering on the part of cynical politicians to retain power.

Don’t believe the nonsense being spouted in the name of democracy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with making people wait until they are eighteen to vote.

‘HOW EFFECTIVE’ QUESTIONS

In a lot of your Close Reading answers, your evaluation of the passage will come out through your analysis. Occasionally, however, you may be asked how effective something the writer has said (usually their conclusion). For example, if you look at the final paragraph of passage one on page 4, you may be asked to comment on how effective this is as a conclusion to the passage, for a total of say, 3 marks. You would simply make three points about why this works as a conclusion:

This is an effective conclusion because:

• The writer says “it’s the way you’re thinking that matters”. This reiterates his earlier point that games are all about increasing thinking and reasoning skills, in a similar way to chess or algebra.

• He also discusses the power of novels to “activate our imagination”, which links back to his previous point about reading remaining an important pass-time, albeit quite a passive one.

• Finally, he reiterates his point that playing games helps in both short term judgements, and long term strategies, which summarises his main argument concisely.

Now, try answering the following questions, focussing on EVALUATION.

They are both based on the passages on pages 23-25.

Question on Passage One

|Read lines 56-60. | |

|How effective is this paragraph as a conclusion to the article? |4 |

Question on Passage Two

|Read lines 35-36. | |

|How effective is this paragraph as a conclusion to the article? |2 |

THE COMPARISON QUESTION

In the Comparison question, you are asked to compare the similarities and/or differences between the key ideas in both passages. Your evaluation is bound up in your assessment of what the key ideas are.

Worked Example

In the 2016 paper, the question was:

Look at both passages.

The writers disagree about whether or not 16 and 17-year-olds should be allowed to vote.

Identify three key areas on which they disagree. You should support the points by referring to important ideas in both passages.

You may answer this question in continuous prose or in a series of developed bullet points.

For a total of 5 marks.

There are a couple of things to note here – firstly, it asks you for three key areas, yet the question is worth five marks. This is because it is possible to gain a full 5 marks for only three points, as long as your analysis of your evidence is very strong.

I would always assume you are going to get a horrible harsh marker, though, and give more than three key areas if you can and if time permits.

Secondly, you will note that it says you can answer in continuous prose or in developed bullet points. Don’t fall into the trap of assuming that continuous prose is better because it looks more sophisticated – a bullet pointed answer is easier to mark and the marker will be grateful for it!

Over the page, we will work through the answer to this question.

The main areas on which these passages disagree are:

1. The intellectual ability of 16-17 year olds.

2. Whether 16-17 year olds are capable of independent thought.

3. How easily manipulated young people are.

4. How committed they are.

5. The impact that allowing 16-17 year olds to vote would have.

You would be expected to identify at least 3 of these areas, and then marks would be awarded accordingly:

|5 |identification of at least 3 essential areas of disagreement, with an intelligent use of supporting evidence |

|4 |identification of at least 3 essential areas of disagreement, with sound use of supporting evidence |

|3 |identification of at least 3 essential areas of disagreement, with some supporting evidence |

|2 |identification of only two essential areas of disagreement or identification of more than two without supporting evidence |

|1 |identification of just one essential area of disagreement |

You are expected to devote a substantial amount of time on this answer, so you are expected to be able to include a lot of detail and to have spent some time thoroughly examining the arguments of both passages.

The following is a sample answer, laid out properly:

|Area of disagreement | Evidence |

|The intellectual ability of 16-17 year olds|Passage 1 argues that teenagers are capable of intellectual maturity. It points out the ridiculousness|

| |of the argument that someone like Malala “has yet to acquire the intellectual credentials to vote”, |

| |whereas very immature adults are given this credit. By sharing some of Malala’s history, the writer |

| |shows that young people can have just as much intellectual maturity and experience as many adults. |

| |Passage 2 however, refers to his own daughter, who is 8 years old, and argues that no one would think |

| |to offer her the vote as she is a child and therefore intellectually immature – “She’s a child; she |

| |doesn’t have the intellectual and emotional development of an adult”. He then equates 16-17 year olds |

| |to his daughter, and argues the same case applies to them. |

|How easily manipulated young people are |Passage 1 argues that young people are too media-aware to be taken in by spin. The writer says that |

| |they “develop their political worldview from the wide range of sources”. This suggests that young |

| |people are actually very informed and the fact that they can compare sources leaves them less |

| |susceptible to manipulation. |

| |Passage 2 says that when 16-17 year olds are offered the chance to vote, it is “calculated |

| |electioneering on the part of cynical politicians”. The idea that it is simply electioneering suggests|

| |a sense of manipulation and propaganda, hinting at the fact that they are simply paying young people |

| |lip service to manipulate them and win their votes. |

|How committed they are |Passage 1 explains that targeting young voters will lead to a substantially longer commitment to |

| |important issues – “it might lead to a fresh look at policies that affect future generations, by |

| |voters who will actually be around to experience the consequences”. This states that young people will|

| |show commitment because they will be directly affected by policy making. The writer argues this will |

| |spark more interest in politics as a whole. |

| |Passage 2 however, suggests that young people do not demonstrate any long term commitment, and are |

| |generally apathetic. He states that in the Scottish referendum, 16 and 17 year olds only voted because|

| |they were made to by their parents, but those in the 18-20 bracket “as per usual largely didn’t bother|

| |at all”, hinting that those younger would do the same if not pushed. |

Using this bullet point layout, you will save yourself time and it will also be much clearer to the marker where you are accumulating marks.

Again, if you feel that your three points are not sufficiently developed, or if you find yourself with some extra time at the end of the exam (ha!) feel free to add a fourth or fifth point.

Now, try answering the following questions, focussing on BOTH PASSAGES.

Question on passages on pages 3-5.

|Look at both passages. | |

|The writers disagree about the benefits of playing video games. | |

|Identify three key areas on which they disagree. You should support the points by referring to important ideas in both passages. | |

|You may answer this question in continuous prose or in a series of developed bullet points. | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| |5 |

Question on passages on pages 12-14.

|Look at both passages. | |

|The writers disagree about the effects of consumerism on society today. | |

|Identify three key areas on which they disagree. You should support the points by referring to important ideas in both passages. | |

|You may answer this question in continuous prose or in a series of developed bullet points. | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| |5 |

For further practice of this kind of question, look on the internet or on newspapers for two articles on the same topic, who either share the same view or disagree over a topic. Using these two articles, complete the same task, picking out key areas on which they agree or disagree.

Now try putting all of this together in an hour and a half!

In the first passage, Isabel Oakeshott gives a disturbing account of her visit to Central Valley, California, an area where intensive farming is big business.

On a cold, bright November day I stood among a million almond trees and breathed in the sweet air. I was in Central Valley, California, in an orchard stretching over 700,000 acres. Before me was a vision of how the British countryside may look one day. Beyond the almond orchards were fields of pomegranates, pistachios, grapes and apricots. Somewhere in the distance were almost two million dairy cows, producing six billion dollars’ worth of milk a year.

It may sound like the Garden of Eden but it is a deeply disturbing place. Among the perfectly aligned rows of trees and cultivated crops are no birds, no butterflies, no beetles or shrubs. There is not a single blade of grass or a hedgerow, and the only bees arrive by lorry, transported across the United States. The bees are hired by the day to fertilise the blossom, part of a multibillion-dollar industry that has sprung up to do a job that nature once did for free.

As for the cows, they last only two or three years, ten-to-fifteen years less than their natural life span. Crammed into barren pens on tiny patches of land, they stand around listlessly waiting to be fed, milked or injected with antibiotics. Through a combination of selective breeding, artificial diets and growth hormones designed to maximise milk production, they are pushed so grotesquely beyond their natural limit that they are soon worn out. In their short lives they never see grass.

Could the British countryside ever look like this? If current trends continue, the answer is yes. Farming in Britain is at a crossroads, threatened by a wave of intensification from America. The first mega-dairies and mega-piggeries are already here. Bees are disappearing, with serious implications for harvests. Hedgerows, vital habitats for wildlife, have halved since the Second World War. The countryside is too sterile to support many native birds. In the past forty years the population of tree sparrows has fallen by 97%.

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.

My journey to expose the truth, to investigate the dirty secret about the way cheap food is produced, took me from the first mega-dairies and piggeries in Britain to factory farms in France, China, Mexico, and North and South America. I talked to people on the front line of the global food industry: treadmill farmers trying to produce more with less. I also talked to their neighbours — people experiencing the side effects of industrial farms. Many had stories about their homes plummeting in value, the desecration of lovely countryside, the disappearance of wildlife and serious health problems linked to pollution.

I wanted to challenge the widespread assumption that factory farming is the only way to produce food that everyone can afford. My investigation started in Central Valley, California, because it demonstrates the worst-case scenario — a nightmarish vision of the future for parts of Britain if current practices continue unchecked. It is a five-hour drive south of San Francisco and I knew I was getting close when I saw a strange yellowish-grey smog on the horizon. It looks like the sort of pollution that hangs over big cities, but it comes from the dairies. California’s bovine population produces as much sewage as 90 million people, with terrible effects on air quality. The human population is sparse, but the air can be worse than in Los Angeles on a smoggy day.

Exploring the area by car, it was not long before I saw my first mega-dairy, an array of towering, open-sided shelters over muddy pens. The stench of manure was overwhelming — not the faintly sweet, earthy smell of cowpats familiar from the British countryside, but a nauseating reek bearing no relation to digested grass. I saw farms every couple of miles, all with several thousand cows surrounded by mud, corrugated iron and concrete.

It may seem hard to imagine such a scene in Britain but it is not far-fetched. Proposals for an 8,000 cow mega-dairy in Lincolnshire, based on the American model, were thrown out after a public outcry. On local radio the man behind the scheme claimed that “cows do not belong in fields”. It will be the first of many similar fights, because dairies are expanding and moving indoors. The creep of industrial agriculture in Britain has taken place largely unnoticed, perhaps because so much of it happens behind closed doors. The British government calls it “sustainable intensification”. Without fuss or fanfare, farm animals have slowly disappeared from fields and moved into hangars and barns.

In the second passage, Audrey Eyton considers the reasons for the introduction of intensive farming and explains why it could be viewed as a mistake.

The founding fathers of intensive farming can claim, “It seemed a good idea at the time!” Indeed it did, in Britain, half a century ago. The post-war government swung into action with zeal, allocating unprecedented funds to agricultural research. The outcome was that the mixed farm, where animals grazed in the fields, was replaced by the huge factories we see today.

The aim in confining animals indoors was to cut costs. It succeeded. Indoors, one or two workers can “look after” hundreds of penned or tethered pigs, or a hundred thousand chickens. Great economies were made and thousands of farm workers lost their jobs. This new policy of cheap meat, eggs and cheese for everyone was completely in tune with the national mood, as Britain ripped up its ration books. It was also in tune with nutritional thinking, as nutritionists at that time thought greater consumption of animal protein would remedy all dietary problems.

So factory farming marched on. And became more and more intensive. Where first there were one or two laying hens in a cage, eventually there became five in the same small space. The broiler chicken sheds expanded to cram in vast acres of birds. Many beef cattle were confined in buildings and yards. Until mad cow disease emerged, such animals were fed all kinds of organic matter as cheap food. In the UK dairy cows still spend their summers in the fields, but many of their offspring are reared in the cruelty of intensive veal crate systems.

The aim of those early advocates of intensive farming was “fast food” — fast from birth to table. Again, they succeeded. Chicken, once an occasional treat, now the most popular meat in Britain, owes its low price largely to the short life of the bird. Today’s broiler chicken has become the fastest growing creature on earth: from egg to take-away in seven weeks. Most farm animals now have less than half of their pre-war lifespan. Either they are worn out from overproduction of eggs or milk, or have been bred and fed to reach edible size in a few short weeks or months.

But meat, eggs and dairy products have indeed become cheap, affordable even to the poor. All of which made nutritionists exceedingly happy — until they discovered that their mid-century predecessors had made a mighty blunder. Before intensive farming brought cheap meat and dairy products to our tables, man obtained most of his calories from cereal crops and vegetables. The meat with which he supplemented this diet had a much lower fat content than intensively produced products. Now, however, degenerative diseases like coronary heart disease and several types of cancer have been linked to our increased consumption of fatty foods.

War-time Britons, on their measly ration of meat and one ounce of cheese a week, were much healthier. With this knowledge, the only possible moral justification for intensive farming of animals collapses. The cheap animal production policy doesn’t help the poor. It kills them. In addition, the chronic suffering endured by animals in many intensive systems is not just a sentimental concern of the soft-hearted. It is a scientifically proven fact. Cracks are beginning to show in our long-practised animal apartheid system, in which we have convinced ourselves, against all evidence, that the animals we eat are less intelligent, less in need of space and exercise than are those we pat, ride or watch.

It is also a scientifically proven fact that intensive farming has caused the loss of hedgerows and wildlife sustained by that habitat, has polluted waterways, decimated rural employment and caused the loss of traditional small farms. We need to act in the interests of human health. We need to show humane concern for animals. We need to preserve what remains of the countryside by condemning the practice of intensive farming. We need to return the animals to the fields, and re-adopt the environmentally friendly, humane and healthy system we had and lost: the small mixed farm.

|Read lines 1-5. | |

|Identify any two positive aspects of Central Valley, California, which are conveyed in these lines. Use your own words in your | |

|answer. |2 |

|Read lines 6-10. | |

|By referring to at least two examples, analyse how the writer’s use of language creates a negative impression of Central Valley.| |

| |4 |

|Read lines 11-15. | |

|By referring to both word choice and sentence structure, analyse how the writer makes clear her disapproval of dairy farming | |

|methods used in Central Valley. |4 |

| | |

|Read lines 16-20. | |

|Explain the function of these lines in the development of the writer’s argument. You should make close reference to the passage | |

|in your answer. |2 |

| | |

|Read lines 21-31. | |

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

| |4 |

|Read lines 32-37. | |

|Analyse how both imagery and sentence structure are used in these lines to convey the writer’s criticism of industrial farming. | |

| | |

|Read lines 38-50. |4 |

|Explain how the writer continues the idea that the Central Valley dairy farming is “nightmarish”. Use your own words in your | |

|answer. You should make three key points. | |

| | |

|Read lines 50-56. |3 |

|Evaluate the effectiveness of the final paragraph as a conclusion to the writer’s criticism of industrial farming. | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| |2 |

Question on both passages

|Identify three key areas on which these passages agree. You should support the points you make by referring to important ideas | |

|in both passages. You may answer this question in continuous prose or in a series of developed bullet points. | |

| |5 |

-----------------------

READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!

Let’s get this out of the way first – I will probably spend most of this year referring to “Reading for Understanding, Analysis and Evaluation” as “Close Reading”. This is what it used to be called, and I just can’t train myself not to call it that.

UNDERSTANDING PASSAGES

VIDEO GAMES: PASSAGE ONE

VIDEO GAMES: PASSAGE TWO

HOW TO READ THE PASSAGES

Contrast, semi-colon. Books and video games viewed differently.

Focus on the writer’s main argument

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.

For the record, I think that the virtues of reading books are great. We should all encourage our kids to read more. But even the most avid reader is inevitably going to spend his or her time with other media—games, television, movies, the Internet. Yet the question is whether these other forms of culture have intellectual virtues in their own right—different from, but comparable to, reading. Where most critics allege a dumbing down, I see a progressive story: popular culture steadily, but almost imperceptibly, making our brains sharper as we soak in entertainment usually dismissed as so much lowbrow fluff. I hope to persuade you that increasingly the non-literary popular culture is honing different mental skills that are just as important as the ones exercised by reading books.

Repetition: highlights lack of forward thinking?

Tone is quite informal. Why?

Will always happen…

List: diversity of media available to people now…

Word choice: trivial, unimportant.

UNDERSTANDING

TRY IT YOURSELF

UNDERSTANDING

TRY IT YOURSELF

UNDERSTANDING

TRY IT YOURSELF

ANALYSIS PASSAGES

SHOPPING: PASSAGE ONE

SHOPPING: PASSAGE TWO

KEEPING YOUR WITS ABOUT YOU

ANALYSIS

TRY IT YOURSELF

ANALYSIS

TRY IT YOURSELF

ANALYSIS

TRY IT YOURSELF

ANALYSIS

TRY IT YOURSELF

ANALYSIS

EVALUATION PASSAGES

THE VOTE: PASSAGE ONE

THE VOTE: PASSAGE TWO

EVALUATION

TRY IT YOURSELF

QUESTION ON BOTH PASSAGES

TRY IT YOURSELF

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

INTENSIVE FARMING: PASSAGE ONE

INTENSIVE FARMING: PASSAGE TWO

QUESTIONS

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