Close Reading

Close Reading – Higher
English Language Skills for Higher English takes you through all the different types of questions you will encounter in the Close Reading NAB and exam and provides practice questions and passages.

Below is a summary of the main points made in the early sections of the book.
UNDERSTANDING MEANING
How to tackle questions which test your understanding of the basic meaning of the passage.
  * Answer as far as possible in your own words.
  * Put figures of speech, slang, old-fashioned terms etc. into simple, formal, modern English.
  * If you simply copy or lift whole phrases or sentences from the passage you will not be awarded any marks.
  * Take into account the number of marks allocated to the question and answer accordingly. The more marks, the more detailed your answer needs to be.
  * Look at the wording of the question carefully and use any guidance it may give you.
 
THE CONTEXT QUESTION
In answering the context question you must show that you understand the meaning of particular words/phrases.
You will be asked to explain the meaning of the word/phrase and to show how you deduced its meaning from its placing in the text (its context).
You should write down what you think the word/phrase means and quote the words/phrases which provide the clues to its meaning,explaining briefly how they help to confirm the meaning.
N.B. Always take into account the number of marks allocated to the question and the precise wording of the question itself.

 
THE LINK QUESTION
 You will be asked to show how a sentence (or paragraph) provides a link between ideas within the passage.
One way of tackling this question is to think of dominoes.

Often (though not always) the first part of the “link” sentence will refer back, in some way, to the previous topic and another part of the sentence will introduce the new topic which follows.
You need to a) quote the part of the link sentence which refers back to the earlier topic, saying...