Close Reading Workshop

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Close Reading Workshop

• Word Choice Questions

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• Remember!
• In word choice questions you will be asked to
  identify individual words and then explain how
  they help to convey the authors ideas and the
  effect they had in the passage.

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• Remember!
• For these questions, you must be able to identify
  the relevant connotations of the word.

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• Remember!
• Focus on individual words instead of phrases.

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• You will usually be given 2 marks for each
  example of word choice that you analyse
  correctly.
• (Quote plus comment 2 marks).

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• When writing about word choice you always
• Quote plus comment

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Analysing Word Choice the method

• 1. Identify the most important words (Quote)
• 2.
• State the connotations of the word.
• Explain why the word is effective and how the
  word helps you to understand the writers
  ideas/opinion. (Comment)

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Example Question

• Explain how any example of the writers word
  choice in paragraph 2 reveals what his attitude
  to top players is (2).
• Tennis players are a funny bunch. Have you
  noticed how they always ask for three balls
  instead of two how they bounce the ball the same
  number of times before serving, as if any
  deviation from their routine might bring the
  world collapsing on their heads?
• But the superstitions and rituals so beloved by
  the worlds top players are not confined to the
  court. They take even more bizarre twists when
  the poor dears get home after their matches.

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• bizarre
• This has connotations of being strange and weird.
  This conveys his opinion that sportspeople often
  behave in a very unusual and irrational manner
  and that we should laugh at them.

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Example question

• Explain what is suggested by the writers word
  choice of web in this paragraph (2).
• By now most of us know that the version of
  reality on offer on the X Factor is one shaped by
  a multimillion-pound business with slick
  production values. Yet we willingly suspend our
  disbelief week after week, month after month, in
  the name of entertainment. Is there something
  lacking in our daily lives that draws us so
  inexorably into Simon Cowells web?

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• web.
• This has connotations of being trapped and unable
  to escape. The writer is emphasising that shows
  such as the X Factor have taken a strong hold of
  us and our lives and that we cant avoid them.

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Example question

• Explain why the writers word choice of reward
  is ironic (2)
• But it was Oliver that they took to heart
  students at one of the countrys leading black
  colleges, Lovedale, formed a committee to ask for
  more.
• Calling it the Board, after Dickenss Board of
  Guardians, they asked for more lessons, more
  foodand more and better books. Their reward was
  to be charged with public violence. All 152
  board members were expelled from the college
  and some were jailed.

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• reward
• This has connotations of something pleasant and
  enjoyable. This is ironic as what the people
  received was a punishment for their actions, the
  very opposite of pleasure and fun.