Literacy: reading and viewing
Reading across paragraphs
Answer a question whose evidence is split between two paragraphs, and follow a reference back across the break.
In a short passage the answer usually sits in the line the question came from. In a longer one it often does not. Writers put a fact in the first paragraph and only make it matter in the third, and a reader who answers each question from the nearest sentence will keep getting the near-miss answer.
The two-fact question
Some questions cannot be answered from any single line, because they need one fact from here and one from there. If the answer you find seems to explain only half the question, look elsewhere in the passage for the other half.
Pronouns cross the gap
He, she, they, it, this, such and the former all point backwards — sometimes over a paragraph break. When a paragraph opens with one of them, the thing it names is in the paragraph before, and finding it is the first thing to do.
The first, the second, the last
A writer who has listed three things will often go on to call them the first, the second and the last. Count the original list carefully. Getting the count wrong turns every following sentence into a wrong answer.
Stated or worked out
Keep the two apart. A fact is stated if you can put your finger on the words. Anything else you worked out yourself, however sure you are of it. Examiners ask for both, but they ask for them differently.
Worked example
Read: "Ravi had promised his mother he would be home before dark. // The match went to a last over, and the whole crowd stayed for it. // He walked in at nine, and she did not look up from her book." Why does the last sentence matter?
Take the fact from the first paragraph: he had promised to be home before dark.
On its own it is only a promise, with nothing yet hanging on it.
Try it together
One passage, three questions of different kinds.
The passage is: "The mill closed in the spring. Two hundred families had worked there. // By the end of the year the school had lost a third of its pupils, and the baker shut on Mondays." Answer each step in the form it asks for.
1.How many families had worked at the mill? Write the number.
Have a go
Paragraph 1: "The lighthouse was automated in 1974." Paragraph 2: "After that, the cottage beside it was never lived in again." What is the link between the two?
Ready to practise?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.