Close Reading The Final Question

The Final Question Worth five marks (ten per cent of the whole paper) Will ask you to identify and compare the similarities and/or differences of the key ideas in the two passages. You can answer using developed bullet points or continuous prose

Example Consider the attitude displayed by each writer to air travel and its effects on the environment. Referring to important ideas in the passages, identify the key areas on which they agree and disagree. You may answer this question in continuous prose or in a series of developed bullet points.

Answering the Question Decide what you are being asked: agree, disagree or both. Identify the key ideas of both passages (try to do this while you are working you way through the questions). Find some short quotations to illustrate these points. Identify the key areas where they agree or disagree. Write your answer.

Writing Your Answer Identify the area of agreement/ disagreement Paraphrase the stance in Passage One. Use an embedded quotation to illustrate this. Paraphrase the stance in Passage Two. Repeat at least three times.

Writing Your Answer Identify the area of agreement/ disagreement Paraphrase the stance in Passage One. Use an embedded quotation to illustrate this. Paraphrase the stance in Passage Two. Repeat at least three times.

Exemplar The difficulty of gaming: Passage 1 describes games as “maddeningly hard” and as such require and develop problem solving skills, thus making games beneficial to the player. Passage 2 disagrees. It describes the players as “spoon-fed”. This suggest that the games offer no challenge to the player, that everything is done for them. x4