Contents Introduction
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- Navigate this page:
- Analysis and Evaluation
- CRITICAL READING
- Important Key Concepts: Understanding
- Analysis
- Purpose and Audience All writers have a reason, or reasons, for writing. For example, while the main purpose
- Factors Examples Age
- Gender male or female Occupation
- Practice Task
- Aspects of style to consider
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Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………2 Critical Reading Key Concepts General Advice Purpose, Audience and Text…………………………………………………………3-8
Context……………………………………………………………………………………..12-14 Linking Questions………………………………………………………………………15-17
Imagery…………………………………………………………………………………….24-28 Sentence Structure……………………………………………………………………29-38 Tone………………………………………………………………………………………….39-42  CRITICAL READING
Critical Reading for Understanding, Analysis and Evaluation forms a significant part of the Higher Course (30% of overall grade from final exam). It shows that you are able to read and understand a complex body of information and opinion presented in non-fiction texts, written for an educated, adult readership. Passages will be drawn from a variety of sources including good quality newspapers, travel writing and sometimes from biography, journals, essays and books. They deal mainly with current issues/ideas that are relevant and important to society. You must pass a single internally assessed paper (pass or fail), and there will be a double passage – two passages on a related theme – in the final exam worth 30 marks, to be completed in 1h 30mins. The first passage will be accompanied by several questions, the second has none, but there will be a final 5 mark question asking you to compare both passages.  The purpose of this booklet is to help you become skilled in understanding the ideas presented by writers and in identifying, analysing and evaluating the techniques used to convey these ideas and arguments effectively.
Important Key Concepts: Understanding: some questions are designed to test your ability to understand and follow a writer’s line of thought (argument). Other questions will relate to purpose (what point the writer is making) and will involve using your own words to summarise and explain how ideas are linked, and so on. Analysis: these questions focus on the writer’s style, such as the use of word choice (word connotation and association), imagery, sentence structure and tone. Evaluation: in this element of the Reading for UAE paper you will be asked to evaluate how effective the writer’s use of particular techniques are in advancing his/her ideas. General Advice The most obvious advice to give any Higher candidate is to engage regularly in purposeful and focused reading of good quality journalism. A quick browse through the Higher English Past Papers section of the SQA website will confirm the importance of this; in recent years passages have come from publications such as The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph and The Independent, and include topics as diverse as shopping and consumerism, the Olympics, video games and aircraft pollution. Articles published by these newspaper companies are available online so are easy to access. Use the information in the Key Concepts section as a guide to reading. Purpose and Audience All writers have a reason, or reasons, for writing. For example, while the main purpose of travel writing is to pass on information about a particular location, a writer might also include some amusing anecdotes to entertain the reader. By the same token, one writer may write a very bias (one-sided) article about assisted suicide to persuade the reader of its merits while another may take a more balanced approach and present all sides of the argument. At Higher level the writer’s purpose could be any combination of the following:
Audience: Closely related to the writer’s purpose is the readership a piece of writing is aimed at. This is more complex than it appears. For example, an article examining the pros and cons of Scottish Independence will be aimed primarily at Scottish voters, but may also take into account readers in the rest of the UK whose lives will also be affected if Scotland becomes independent. Consider audience carefully, and take into account several factors:
In the internally assessed element of the Critical Reading for UAE paper you are required to comment on a writer’s purpose/s and audience. You must justify your answer by using evidence from the passage. Practice Task: Read this article by Jeremy Clarkson and try and work out the purpose/s and intended readership. “What a Daft way to stop your Spaniel eating the Milkman” Because one dog once ate one child, some hopeless little twerp from the department of dogs had to think of something sincere to say on the steps of the coroner’s court. Inevitably, they will have argued that the current law is “not fit for purpose”, whatever that means, and that “steps must be taken to ensure this never happens again”.
The steps being considered mean that every dog owner in the land will have to fit their pet with a microchip so that its whereabouts can be determined from dog-spotting spy-in-the-sky drones, and that before being allowed to take delivery of a puppy, people will have to sit an exam similar to the driving theory test. 10 In other words, the normality of dog ownership will be skewed. Instead of spending your free time with your pooches, throwing balls or tickling them under the chin, you will be forced to provide tea and biscuits for someone from the department of dogs while he inspects your cupboard under the stairs for evidence that they’ve eaten the cleaning lady. 15 This will achieve nothing good. It will ruin the enjoyment of dog ownership for millions, it will result in thousands of abandoned dogs, as people realise they can’t afford the insurance, and yet it will make no difference to men in the north called Mick, who will continue to tattoo their dogs with gothic symbols of hate. Aspects of style to consider:
Model Answer 
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