Reading comprehension, Year 11: synthesis, usefulness, context and unseen extracts

Bring both together, saying which text each comes from

HintThink about what synthesis means and how a reader must be able to trace every detail.

The whySynthesis is more than summarising each text in turn. The details are combined into one account, and each is still attributed, so a reader can see that the journey-time point is from Text A and the safety point from Text B.

Use only what the two texts say

HintThink about the origin of every claim in your answer: can a marker find it on the page?

The whyA synthesis is an accurate combined account of the sources. Adding outside knowledge or a guess, however sensible, makes it inaccurate, because the question asked what the texts show.

AO1

HintRecall which objective is about identifying and interpreting information, not comparing methods.

The whyAO1 covers finding explicit and implicit information and synthesising evidence from different texts. Question 2 is about what the sources tell you. Comparing how the writers put it across is AO3, and is saved for question 4.

Level 2

HintRecall the limit on the mark band for an answer that handles one text well and ignores the other.

The whyThe mark scheme requires an answer to cover both texts, and to keep to what the question is about, before it can reach Level 3 or above. A one-text answer of Level 2 quality gets 3 marks out of 8.

School A was well equipped; school B was short of resources

HintAsk what the desks, slates and sharing show about how much each place had to spend.

The whyNeither source uses the words 'rich' or 'poor'. You infer the difference from the details, and you draw on both sources in one answer, each with its own short quotation.

Its reliability

HintWhich word describes the trust you place in a source's claims, based on who wrote it and why?

The whyTo judge it, ask who wrote the text, what they could know, what they stood to gain, and whether they give evidence that can be checked.

Its relevance

HintA text can be true and still fail this test, if it is about the wrong thing.

The whyThe same text can be highly relevant to one task and useless for another. Always judge it against a purpose: relevant to whom, and for what?

The inspector's report

HintThink about who has something to sell and who has nothing to gain.

The whyThe brochure exists to sell rooms, so it will leave faults out. The inspector has no reason to hide them. Purpose shapes what a text includes, and so how far it can be trusted on a given point.

It is out of date

HintThink about whether details that change over the years still match today's reality.

The whyA text can be reliable for its own time and no longer useful for a present-day purpose. For a history of the city in the 1990s, the same book would be an excellent source.

Yes

HintThink about the difference between trustworthy and useful, and whether they always come as a pair.

The whyUsefulness needs both: the text has to be about what you need (relevant) and it has to be trustworthy (reliable). Failing either one is enough to make it the wrong text for the job.

Its context

HintThe term covers setting, period and audience; think of how historians describe the background of a source.

The whyContext explains choices and attitudes that would otherwise puzzle you. The date of a source is the first piece of it to look for.

An attitude common at the time

HintBefore judging a writer, ask what people in the 1840s generally believed.

The whyChild labour was widespread and legal in the 1840s, and many writers saw it as useful. Reading with the date in mind lets you describe the writer's viewpoint accurately before you compare it with a modern one.

No: it is learning from a model

HintThink about the difference between taking someone's words and borrowing an approach.

The whyBorrowing a technique is how writers learn; borrowing sentences is plagiarism. The course expects you to read widely partly so that your own writing has good models to draw on.

writing

HintThink of the AQA skill that your reading is supposed to feed into.

The whyReading and writing are taught as two halves of one skill. A reader who notices how an article opens, or how a description moves, has a bigger toolkit for their own 40-mark tasks.

The one who has read 'Oliver Twist'

HintThink about how background knowledge from a novel colours your reaction to a historical term.

The whyA Victorian writer assumed readers knew what a workhouse was and feared it. A modern reader gets that knowledge from other reading, and it makes an unseen text less strange.

No: every text is unseen

HintThink about whether these papers use set books, as other English qualifications do.

The whyEnglish Language tests skills, not knowledge of particular books. You cannot revise the texts, so you practise the method on many different extracts instead.

No

HintThink about the equipment list for the exam room.

The whyBoth papers say so on the front cover. An unfamiliar word can usually be worked out from its context: read the sentence before it and the sentence after.

About 20 to 25 minutes

HintApportion the section's total time in proportion to the marks the question carries.

The whyHalf the marks deserve about half the time. The 8-mark questions get about 9 or 10 minutes each and the 4-mark question about 4 or 5.

Mark off those lines

HintThink of a quick physical annotation that keeps you inside the permitted range.

The whyMarking the lines stops you drifting into the wrong part of the text. Evidence from outside the named lines can be held to the lower levels, or to the bottom of a level, however good it is.

The source and the questions

HintThink about what you must know before you read in order to read actively.

The whyReading the questions as well shows you which lines matter for each one and what the final question's statement or comparison will be, so the first read does double work.