Nat 5 English prelim tomorrow

[dementedma]

Ds is having a fit. Has left his folder in school.
English prelim tomorrow and he is stressing about close reading questions. Apparently there is some sort of explanation of the different types of questions required. Anyone help?

Yes.

There are many questions requiring him to "use your own words" which means put a phrase or section into different words. E.g. "They were encouraged to consider help" might become "The children were pushed to think about finding some support"

Some questions ask them to analyse:

This means word choice

Sentence structure

Paragraph / argument / links

Imagery (metaphor / simile)

In each case he needs to find the technique and consider the effect it has.

E.g. There was a deluge of applicants. This is a metaphor. A deluge is literally a large rush of water. Here it is used to suggest a large and sudden number of people applying for a job. This has the effect of making the applications seem overwhelming.

Or she skipped into the room. This is good word choice with skipped suggesting childish, happy movement.

He's talking about linking questions, which he seems to understand, buthe has forgotten the others. This is his own bloody fault for not being organised quite honestly!

Finally, they have to summarise which usually is a list of key points in the passage.

He should have done plenty of CR papers before and you can't really revise, just do plenty of practising.

Link questions don't come up often but are in 4 parts:

1. Quote from the link sentence, something that links back.

1. Say what it links back to by paraphrasing the paragraph before.

1. Quote from the link sentence, something that links on to the next paragraph.

1. Say what it links on to a paraphrase the next paragraph.

e.g.

Paragraph about cheese.

Link sentence- Although cheese is delicious, chocolate is much preferred.

Paragraph about chocolate.

Broadly:

Cheese links to the paragraph before which us about all the tasty types of cheese while chocolate is much preferred links to the paragraph after which goes on to talk about the popularity of chocolate.

Wow, thanks for all this. That's really helpful!

Will check back later but BBC bitesize is good plus SQA site has past papers.

Link questions do come up (Nat 5 RUAE marker) . DIE is how my dudes remember Direction Idea Evidence.

St Rochs has a great PowerPoint on their website for all the different question types and formulas for approaching them. I shared that on Edmodo for my guys .

That's what he's talking about - the formulas for remembering them!!! Where can we find that?

Agree they come up (Higher marker but teach N5) but they are rarely as important as kids think they are.

Dis came home all happy today because he got 17/30 for a practice Close Reading (Higher) - which is an improvement on his previous 12/30.

He really struggled with Close Reading in Nat 5 - got a poor result for it in his prelim but still managed to get an A for his Nat 5.

There are some really good approaches here - hope your ds does ok with his Prelim. Ds' Higher Prelim is in 2 weeks

Thanks all. He is bright but lazy and disorganised. With hindsight I should probably have kept a closer eye on his "revision"

I hope he did okay.

I had a lazy DS sitting national 5 English last year. He took full advantage of the fact that you only have to answer exam questions on 2 sets of texts. He chose the short story to cut his work further and didn't bother with all the poems as some rarely come up - so he said - and luckily they ones he ignored didn't come up this year. Only bothered to learn quotes the night before the exam. Still got a good A. However his closed reading is very good probably because his English teacher spent all year drumming into the class how to answer the questions.

He says it was easy and he did ok. We shall see.....