National 5 English: answering the Scottish text extract questions

Section 1 of the National 5 English Critical Reading paper is worth 20 marks and is built on a Scottish writer you have studied from the prescribed list. For each writer an extract is printed (for a poet, usually the whole poem), and you answer the questions on the one you know. Your Scottish text and your critical essay must be in different genres. The questions ask you to summarise events or ideas in your own words, analyse the writer's language, explain characterisation, atmosphere or structure, and evaluate the effect of the text; a final question, which has its own material in this category, asks you to connect the extract with the rest of the writer's work.

Because most writers on the list are still in copyright, this material does not reproduce any set text. Instead it trains the question types on three original extracts written to feel like the real thing: a prose passage in which a young man returns to a family farm and is met by his mother in Scots, a short kitchen scene in which a couple circle around a money problem, and a nine-line poem that links the tide going out with the loss of a father. The skills transfer directly to whichever Scottish writer you have studied.

The quiz starts with two questions on how the section works, then takes each extract in turn: summarising what a character notices, analysing a simile and a pair of short sentences, reading a character through the gap between what she says and what she does, interpreting stage directions and a pause, spotting an evasion, explaining a parallel reply, and judging how a poem's opening and ending work. Explanations show what earns the marks.

The flashcards cover the section's rules and the vocabulary its questions use: characterisation, stage directions, pauses, atmosphere, Scots dialogue, simile, reference and comment, and what counts as a reference when you are not quoting.

The written work has eight exam-style questions with mark allocations and reference answers: summary, language analysis, characterisation, tension created by dialogue and stage directions, loss in the poem, evaluation of an ending, and a question on rhyme, enjambment and sentence breaks.

In the oral exam an examiner works through the three extracts with you question by question, giving the mark you would earn and one target after each answer.

Use the material alongside your own set text: once the question types are familiar, the same approaches apply to the extract you will meet in the exam.

• Describe what the Scottish text section requires and how it relates to the critical essay
• Summarise events and ideas from an extract in your own words
• Analyse word choice, imagery and sentence structure with a reference and a comment
• Explain characterisation through speech, action and stage directions
• Explain how a writer creates tension or atmosphere
• Evaluate how a poem's opening and ending work together

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the National 5 English course specification (Qualifications Scotland, formerly SQA, version 6.0, September 2025): Critical Reading question paper, Section 1 Scottish texts. All extracts are original texts written for this material and are not taken from any set text.