Close Reading

1. Close Reading ‘Own Words’ Questions Nat 5

2. Learning Intentions Success Criteria To understand how to ‘use your own words’ in close reading questions.

3. I can ….. • Translate a writer’s words into my own words I know …. • How to answer understanding questions

4. Understanding Questions These are marked with a U in the exam paper. These questions should be the easiest questions in the paper, but more often than not it is exactly these questions which trip candidates up!

5. Meaning – Use your own words This is the simplest type of Understanding question if you recognise the words or phrases that are being asked about. These questions test how well you have understood the passage by asking you to pick out ideas and details. This kind of question usually starts with one of the following: Explain what the writer means by … Explain the significance of the word … Show how you are helped towards the meaning of …. How does the context help you to understand the meaning of … Explain this expression in your own words….

6. Example One: The enormous difference between the climates of these two towns is due to one thing: the Gulf Stream, which brings tropic-warmed sea from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic coasts of northern Europe. Explain briefly in your own words why the Gulf Stream, as described above, affects the climate of Northern Europe? 1 mark On its most basic level this is a simple translation exercise. Simple words from the passage may be used if there is no other alternative. Figures of speech in the original must always be put into plain language, and any non standard expression, for example slang or archaisms (old-fashioned words), must be rendered in simple, formal, modern English.

7. If you ‘lift’ whole phrases or sentences from the passage you will be awarded NO marks.

8. Try the example below. Example One: The enormous difference between the climates of these two towns is due to one thing: the Gulf Stream, which brings tropic-warmed sea from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic coasts of northern Europe. Explain briefly in your own words why the Gulf Stream, as described above, affects the climate of Northern Europe? 1 mark

9. Answer: Main Idea: The current brings warm water to Northern Europe making the climate more temperate. No marks were awarded for answers which merely discuss warm water or for straight ‘lifts’ from the passage.

10. Does this mean that you can’t use any of the original words? No – the rule is not quite as strict as that. Simple, single words may be used if there is no obvious alternative, but you must never use a complete phrase or group of words exactly as they are used in the original.

11. UNDERSTANDINGFactual Questions

12. Some questions will be set to test your understanding of a text.

13. Factual Questions • The most common task is to be asked to pick out a factfrom the text and express it in your own words.

14. Example…. • Here is an example from the 2000 Intermediate 2 paper. • The topic of this text was ‘a notorious species of spider’, the tarantula, and the narrator was the spider itself. • ‘I’m nocturnal. I love the moonlight, the shadows, the dark places, the dappled murk. I’m not being poetic. I’m simply being true to my nature, my nocturnal nature. Like all tarantulas.’ • Question: In your own words, in what way is the speaker ‘like all tarantulas’ according to the first paragraph? (1 Mark)

15. There are two steps to answering a question of this type. • Step One: • Look in the text for the information which will answer the question. In this case, it is provided by the word ‘nocturnal’. • Step Two: • Express the information in your own words in a simple sentence which fits the way the question is worded. In this example you had to change from 1st person (‘I’) into 3rd person (‘the speaker’). • An acceptable answer to gain the mark would be: • ‘The speaker is active by night.’ • Remember, if you were simply to say ‘The speaker is nocturnal’ or ‘He is nocturnal’ you would get no marks since you would have failed to do step two, namely to use your own words.

16. Questions that ask you to summarise • A variation of this task is a question which asks you to pick out a number of points the writer makes and repeat them briefly in your own words. • Such a question frequently includes the word ‘summarise’. Here is an example from the 2000 Intermediate 2 paper: • In this question, the number of marks available, three, suggests the number of pieces of evidence to be found. • Always remember to look carefully at the number of marks. A summary question may be worth as many as 5 marks, and you must try to persuade the examiner to give you all of these. • You might choose to present your answer in a numbered format. • 1… • 2… • 3… • This will help gain you a mark for each separate point made.

17. Warning! • One of the commonest errors of exam technique is to write too much for a single mark question, • and too little for a multiple mark question.

18. Now try these examples on your own. They have been taken from the Intermediate 2 past papers from 2007 – 2013

19. Example Two (2007): “The sight of a hobby-hawk makes no headlines in the bird-watching world”. Explain in your own words what is meant by “makes no headlines”. 1 mark It was a hobby-hawk. Perhaps the most dashing falcon of them all: slim, elegant and deadly fast. Not rare as rare-bird-addicts reckon things: they come to Britain in reasonable numbers every summer to breed. The sight of a hobby-hawk makes no headlines in the bird watching world. It was just a wonderful and wholly unexpected sight of a wonderful and wholly unexpected bird. It was a moment of perfect drama.

20. Answer It is an ordinary event/it is not newsworthy or unusual/no-one makes a fuss.

21. Example Three (2007): The writer refers to equestrianism (“horsey events”), as related to the pursuit of flight. What is the difference between this and all the other sports he mentions? Answer in your own words. 1 mark Think about it: all these sports are done for the joy of flying. Skating is a victory over friction, and it feels like victory over gravity; it feels like flying. Its antithesis is weightlifting: a huge and brutal event, the idea of which is to beat gravity. All the horsey events come back to the idea of flight: of getting off the ground, of escaping human limitations by joining up with another species and finding flight. For every rider, every horse has wings.

22. ANSWER It involves a creature/animal other than the human participant (gloss of “joining up with another species”).

23. Example Four - (2007) What is the author suggesting about the bird when he says “It turned itself into an anchor”? 1 mark From the tail of my eye, I saw what I took to be a kestrel. I turned my head to watch it as it climbed, and I waited for it to go into its hover, according to time-honoured kestrel custom. But it did nothing of the kind. It turned itself into an anchor. Or a thunderbolt. No kestrel this: it crashed into the crowd of martins, and almost as swiftly vanished. I think it got one, but I can’t swear to it, it was all so fast.

24. ANSWER It changed its shape/resembled/adopted the shape of an anchor/looked like an anchor. OR It descended vertically/swiftly.

25. Example Five - 2007 - What does “trivial” tell us about the writer’s attitude to golf? 1 mark Golf always seems to me a trivial game, but every one of its legion of addicts will tell you that it all comes back to the pure joy of a clean strike at the ball: making it defy gravity. Making it climb like a towering snipe. Making it soar like an eagle, at least in the mind of the striker, as it reaches the top of its long, graceful parabola.

26. ANSWER (He thinks) it is a waste of time/worthless/pointless/unimportant.

27. Example Five B – 2007 - Explain how an expression later in this sentence makes it clear that the author is aware that others do not share his opinion. 2 marks Golf always seems to me a trivial game, but every one of its legion of addicts will tell you that it all comes back to the pure joy of a clean strike at the ball: making it defy gravity. Making it climb like a towering snipe. Making it soar like an eagle, at least in the mind of the striker, as it reaches the top of its long, graceful parabola.

28. ANSWER “legion” (1) suggests it has many devotees (1) OR “addicts” (1) suggests( the intensity of) the hold of the game (1) OR “pure joy” (1) conveys (the intensity of) the pleasure of the game (1)’.

29. Example Six - 2008 - Explain in your own words the contrasting impressions the writer has of the village in Hamed Ela in the lines below. 2 marks Our superb Ethiopian guide, Solomon Berhe, was sitting with me in a friendly but flyblown village of sticks, stones, cardboard and tin in Hamed Ela, 300ft below sea level, in a hot wind, on a hot night.

30. ANSWER gloss of “friendly” eg welcoming/helpful/hospitable/kindly/nice gloss of “flyblown” eg rickety/flimsy/ramshackle/makeshift/uncomfortable/ physically inhospitable/unhygienic/poor 1 mark for each successful paraphrase of one side of the contrast

31. Example Seven - 2008 - What does the word “drift” suggest about how “the Afar will leave their desert home”? 1 mark And that is where Solomon was wrong. As Ethiopia modernises, the Afar will leave their desert home. They will drift into the towns and cities in the highlands. Their voracious herds of goats will die. Their camels will no longer be of any use. The only remembrance this place will have of the humans it bred will be the stone fittings of their flimsy, ruined stick huts, and the mysterious black rock burial mounds that litter the landscape.

32. Answer It will happen piecemeal/gradually/without purpose or direction or motive on the part of those who do it.

33. Example Eight - 2008 - The writer tells us “There is no modern reason for human beings to live in such places”. Explain in your own words two reasons why this is the case. Look in the sentences below for your answer. There is no modern reason for human beings to live in such places. Their produce is pitiful, the climate brutal and the distances immense. Salt is already produced as cheaply by industrial means. If market forces don’t kill the trade, the conscience of the animal rights movement will, for the laden camels suffer horribly on their journey.

34. ANSWER Glosses of two from their produce is pitiful eg what they turn out is minimal; the climate (is) brutal eg the weather is oppressive; the distances (are) immense eg they have to travel a very long way; Salt is already produced as cheaply by industrial means eg salt can be obtained equally, efficiently in other ways; Market forces [will] kill the trade eg economic factors will overcome them; the conscience of the animal rights movement eg people concerned with animal welfare will act against them

35. Example Nine - 2008 - What is the effect of the writer’s inclusion of the words “Those who call themselves” in the sentence beginning in line 51? 1 mark Those who call themselves environmentalists celebrate this. “Leave nothing and take nothing away,” read the signs at the gates of nature reserves. Practical advice, perhaps, but is there not something melancholy in what that says about modern man’s desired relationship with nature? Will we one day confine ourselves to watching large parts of our planet only from observation towers?

36. ANSWER Suggests disagreement/cynicism

37. Example Sixteen - 2008- Explain in your own words why “the nomads are on a path to extinction as a culture”.1 They say there is less traffic across the Sahara today than at any time in human history, even if you include motor transport. The great days of camel caravans are over. As for the inhabitants, the nomads are on a path to extinction as a culture. Nomadic life does not fit the pattern of nation states, taxes, frontiers and controls. And though for them there is now government encouragement to stay, their culture is doomed. Amid the indescribable majesty of this place—the crumbling towers of black rock, the scream of the jackal, the waterless canyons, yellow dunes, grey plateaus and purple thorn bushes—I have felt like a visitor to a monumental ruin, walked by ghosts. There are fragments of pottery, thousands of cave paintings of deer, giraffe, elephant, and men in feathers, dancing . . . but no people, not a soul.

38. ANSWER Their way of life does not (readily)/conform to (modern) rules and/or boundaries (idea of imposition and/or constriction). (gloss of “does not fit the pattern of nation states, taxes, frontiers and controls”)

39. Example Eighteen - 2009 - Explain in your own words • what the marchers were objecting to, according to the lines below. 2 marks • The march was in protest at a government edict making • Afrikaans compulsory in schools. From January 1976, half • of all subjects were to be taught in it, including ones in • which difficulties of translation were often an issue.

40. ANSWER A Government rule/law/decree/statute/order (gloss of “edict”) (1) forcing teaching in Afrikaans/making it obligatory/enforced/required (gloss of “compulsory”) (1)

41. Example Eighteen (b) why this issue was so important to them, according to the lines below. 1 mark The march was in protest at a government edict making Afrikaans compulsory in schools. From January 1976, half of all subjects were to be taught in it, including ones in which difficulties of translation were often an issue. To pupils accustomed to being educated in English, the Afrikaans policy was the last of a line of insults delivered in the name of “Bantu” or “native education”. They thought being taught in Afrikaans, the language of a regime that had tried to “unpeople” them, would cost them their last remaining freedom—that of thinking for themselves, using their minds.

42. ANSWER it was a threat to their self-esteem or identity (gloss of “unpeople”) OR it was a threat to their (intellectual) independence (gloss of “thinking for themselves”) OR it was the last straw (gloss of “the last of a line of insults”)

43. Example Nineteen - 2009 - Explain in your own words why Dickens’s books were not “banned under apartheid”. 1 mark That is where Dickens came in. Many books were banned under apartheid but not the classics of English literature. Pupils arriving hungry at school every day were captivated by the story of a frail but courageous boy named Oliver Twist. The book was a revelation. Systemised oppression of children happened in England too! They were not alone. Slave labour, thin rations and cruel taunts were part of a child’s life in the world outside as well. One former pupil, now in his forties, says of Dickens: “Four or five of us would be together and discuss the stories. And to think he wasn’t banned! The authorities didn’t know what was in these books, how they helped us to be strong, to think that we were not forgotten.”

44. ANSWERS They were abiding/memorable/lasting/ageless OR they were masterpieces (gloss of “classics”) OR the regime did not understand their content (gloss of “didn’t know what was in these books”)

45. Example Nineteen (2009) (b) In your own words explain why Dickens’s book Oliver Twist would have “captivated” the Soweto children. 2 marks That is where Dickens came in. Many books were banned under apartheid but not the classics of English literature. Pupils arriving hungry at school every day were captivated by the story of a frail but courageous boy named Oliver Twist. The book was a revelation. Systemised oppression of children happened in England too! They were not alone. Slave labour, thin rations and cruel taunts were part of a child’s life in the world outside as well. One former pupil, now in his forties, says of Dickens: “Four or five of us would be together and discuss the stories. And to think he wasn’t banned! The authorities didn’t know what was in these books, how they helped us to be strong, to think that we were not forgotten.”

46. ANSWERS They identified with Oliver and/or the events portrayed in the book/ Their lives were like/the same as Oliver’s (1) Because they too were subjugated/exploited (gloss of “oppression” or “slave labour”) OR they too were underfed (gloss of “hungry” or “thin rations”) OR the inference can be made that they too were in poor health (gloss of “frail”) OR they too were brave (gloss of “courageous”) OR they too were mocked (by oppressors) (gloss of “cruel taunts”) Any one (1)

47. Example Twenty 2009 - Look at the lines below. Explain in your own words why Hugh Masekela thought Dickens was so important. 2 marks The veteran South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela later chose Nicholas Nickleby as his favourite book on a popular radio programme, Desert Island Discs, telling the presenter what its author did for people in the townships: “He taught us suffering is the same everywhere.”

48. ANSWERS He showed that pain/distress/misery/anguish (gloss of “suffering”) (1) Was the same throughout the world/in all places/the world over (gloss of “everywhere”) (1)

49. Example Twenty One (2009) - Explain in your own words how the grandmothers instilled a love of books in their grandchildren. 2 marks The love of books that enabled an author dead for more than 100 years to inspire thousands of schoolchildren came mainly from grandmothers who had educated their families orally, then urged them to read widely and learn all that they could.

50. ANSWER They taught them by word of mouth (gloss of “orally”) (1) And then drove/pushed/encouraged (gloss of “urged”) them to read (1)