National 5 English: Reading for Understanding

The Reading for Understanding paper is less about knowing terms than about doing exactly what the question asks, and this practice is built around the places where candidates do something slightly different instead. An own-words question offers an option that says the right thing in the passage's own words, which is precisely how the mark is lost. A summary question offers an option that is entirely reasonable and says something the passage never said, because adding is as wrong as leaving out. A statistics question offers the observation that four in ten dying means six in ten survived — true, and an answer to a question nobody asked. The ten items cover putting a point in your own words, working a word's meaning out from what surrounds it, finding the key point in a short paragraph, a link question where one sentence looks back and the next turns forward, and an evaluation of a final sentence that closes an argument on a judgement rather than a fact. There is also the distinction between the part of a sentence that could be checked and the part that could only be agreed with, and what a writer gains by opening with one named person instead of the figures. Every passage is invented. Zestly is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with any exam board and it is not an exam centre.

• Restate a point in your own words without borrowing the original wording
• Work out what a word means from the detail around it, and say which detail decided it
• Identify the key point of a short paragraph rather than repeating its content
• Answer a link question by saying what looks back and what looks forward
• Evaluate a closing sentence in terms of what it leaves the reader with
• Separate a statement that could be checked from one that could only be agreed with
• Summarise a paragraph without adding a claim it never made
• Say what an anecdote and what a statistic each do for an argument

"Four in every ten of the trees planted under the scheme were dead within a year." What does the figure do for the argument? — It puts a scale on the failure, so the criticism rests on evidence rather than impression. Noting that six in ten survived is true, and answers a different question.