Turnbull High School English Department Homework Booklet Reading for Understanding, Analysis & Evaluation Contents How to use this booklet 3 In Your Own Words

At the beginning of this month I was in a hellish yet beautiful place. I was making a programme for Radio 4 about one of the world’s most ancient trade routes.

1. 
   What is surprising about the writer’s word choice in the first sentence? (4)
   

It is a Wednesday night in Glasgow. The high walls, rails and steps of Tottenrow Gardens look like some form of municipal amphitheatre under the reddening sky. Several athletic youths in T-shirts and jogging bottoms are moving quickly. They bound over rocks, sure-footed before leaping like cats into the air, their trainers

crunching into the gravel on landing. To move off again, they roll to their shoulders on the hard ground, springing up and pushing off in one fluid unbroken movement. You can still see the dust in the air as they pass on through the shadows, up and over a wall or vaulting a railing.

2. 
   With reference to two examples of the writer’s word choice from this paragraph, how does the writer show the agility of the “athletic youths”.(4)
   

It is a Saturday night in the northernmost fringes of London. Outside an anonymous building with blanked-out windows, a discarded plastic bag swirls in the breeze. At first glance it seems a miserable place.

3. 
   Show how the writer’s word choice helps convey the idea that the place is “miserable”. (4)
   

The superstitions and rituals so beloved by the world’s top tennis players are not confined to the court. They take even more bizarre twists when the poor dears get home after their matches. Goran Ivanisevic got it into his head if he won a match he had to repeat everything he did the previous day, such as eating the same food at

the same time in the same restaurant, talking to the same people and watching the same TV programmes. One year this meant that he had to watch Teletubbies every morning during his Wimbledon campaign. “Sometimes it got very boring,” he said.

4. 
   Show how the writer’s word choice helps convey his attitudes to the top tennis players in lines 2 and 3. (2)
   

I remember only once going to a restaurant in the UK. It was a motorway café on the A303 road. My father told us, wincing as he looked at the laminated text, with its stomach churning pictograms, that we could have spag bol. from the children’s menu. We had a TV, but as we lived in Belgium there was nothing to watch apart from two American sitcoms, which came only once a week.

My parents were so hard up that when we went to England for holidays on the family farm my father would invariably book cheap overnight ferry crossings from the Continent. He would never shell out for a cabin, despite the 1am or 2 am departure slots. Instead, he would tell us to go to sleep in the back of the car, parked in the lower deck, where we would eventually pass out from the suffocation or diesel fumes.

5. 
   Show fully how examples of the writer’s use of word choice helps convey the idea of her family being “hard up”. (4)
   

By now most of us know that the version of reality on offer is one shaped by a multimillion-pound business with slick production values, and yet we willingly suspend our disbelief week after week, month after month, in the name of entertainment. Is there something lacking in our daily lives that draws us so inexorably into Cowell’s web?

6. 
   Comment on the writer’s use of word choice in the final sentence of this paragraph. (2)
   

I only began to grasp this a few months ago when I travelled to Xi’an to visit the First Emperor’s mind-boggling mausoleum, home to his Terracotta Army. “This is one of the people who changed the world,” said Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum. “There are terribly few historical figures whose achievements lasted like that. This is really one of the great, great figures in human history.”

7. 
   Show how any one feature of Neil MacGregor’s word choice makes it clear that he thinks of Qin as someone special. (2)
   

The missing part of the Cinderella story is what happens when she puts on the glass slipper and disappears into the palace. Rowling filled in the blanks, describing to Jeremy Paxman how she has to cope with begging letters, journalists rifling through her bins, photographers lurking on the beach, and strangers accosting her in the supermarket.

8. 
   Explain how the writer’s word choice these lines helps to show the negative effects of fame. (4)
   

9. 
   Referring closely to the text, show what the writer’s language reveals about Watkins’ relationship with R D Low, the editor of the Sunday Post. (4)
   

By 6pm, several 16-year-olds are standing in the magisterial surroundings of the Pavilion Suite at Orsett Hall. The unceasing rain hasn’t dampened the excitement as the teenagers flood in to inspect the formally laid tables, helium balloons and glittery fairy lights. The prevailing smell is of hairspray and scent. Friends who normally wear shapeless uniforms and dirty trainers are transformed into exotic peacocks in huge-skirted ballgowns, teetering heels and heavy makeup.

10. 
    Explain how the author uses contrasting word choice to emphasise how special the event is for the teenagers attending. (4)
    

The formula below may help you to answer these types of questions.

• 
  ________________ is being compared to ___________________
  
• 
  This is effective because just as ‘________’ suggests _______________
  
• 
  So to __________________________________
  

Explain how effective you find the word “spectrum” (line 71) as an image or metaphor to illustrate people’s “irrationality”. 3

• 
  The variety of superstitions that exist is being compared to a spectrum
  
• 
  This is effective because just as a ‘spectrum’ suggests a wide range of colours
  
• 
  So to there are a wide range of different severities of superstitious beliefs