Reading comprehension, Year 9

An evaluation

HintIt shares its root with the word 'value'.

The whyIt answers 'how well?' rather than 'what?' or 'how?'. The judgement has to be measured against what the writer was trying to do, and backed by quotation, or it is only an opinion.

No — frightening the reader was the aim

HintAsk what that kind of story is written to do to people.

The whyWhether a text works depends on its purpose, not on the reader's taste. A ghost story that unsettles you has done exactly what it set out to do, so 'I don't like it' and 'it doesn't work' are separate judgements.

Evidence quoted from the speech

HintAt the moment the reader has only the pupil's word for it.

The whyA judgement without evidence cannot be checked. Quoting the words that persuade, and saying why they work on this audience, turns an opinion into something another reader could test against the text.

The dense statistics at the end

HintThink about what someone hurrying for a train will actually read.

The whyFew texts succeed or fail completely. The opening story is a strength because it makes the reader care; the ending is a weakness because this audience will not stop to read it. Weighing both gives a more convincing judgement than praise or blame alone.

He insists he is sane but sounds frantic

HintCompare what he claims about himself with the way the sentence jerks along.

The whyThe claim and the evidence pull in opposite directions. He denies madness, yet the broken, repeating, breathless sentence shows a mind out of control. That gap between what a narrator says and what the text shows is the sign of an unreliable narrator.

He is jealous

HintAsk what kind of person keeps a count like that.

The whyNobody counts smiles and notes the times by accident. The writer lets the narrator make a claim, then supplies a detail that contradicts it, and trusts the reader to believe the detail.

The child does not understand what is happening

HintThe adults in the house know something the storyteller has not worked out.

The whyThe narrator reports honestly and misreads completely: the reader sees a mother crying and a father leaving. An unreliable narrator need not be a liar; some are too young, too innocent or too close to events to see them clearly.

The families, who want a rich husband for a daughter

HintTurn the sentence round and ask who is doing the hunting.

The whyThe sentence states, as a grand law, the opposite of what the story shows: it is not rich men who need wives but families who need rich sons-in-law. Stating the real meaning is the first step with any ironic line.

irony

HintThe wider term sounds as if it were made of metal.

The whyIt is the broad term for a gap between what is said and what is meant, or between what is expected and what happens. Sarcasm is the sharp version aimed at a target; the wider kind can be gentle and mock nobody.

B

HintOne of them only makes a true complaint bigger; the other turns the truth upside down.

The whyRemark A exaggerates: the speaker really has said it often, just not a million times. Remark B reverses: the weather is the opposite of lovely. Exaggeration stretches the truth in the same direction; irony points the other way.

Hyperbole

HintIt begins with the same five letters as 'hyperactive'.

The whyIt is pronounced hy-PER-bo-lee. Nobody is meant to believe the figure; the size of the overstatement shows the strength of the feeling. Keeping it separate from irony stops you calling every non-literal remark ironic.

The works he boasts of have vanished

HintLook around the statue for the great buildings he is so proud of.

The whyThe words were carved to make rivals despair at his power. Read now, among bare sand, they make a reader think instead about how completely power passes. The gap between what was intended and what has happened is the irony, and it carries the point of the poem.

They were harsh places the poor dreaded

HintFamilies who entered could be split up at the door, and life inside was made grim on purpose.

The whyUnder the Poor Law of 1834, help for the poor was meant to be given inside a workhouse, where conditions were kept worse than the poorest life outside so that people would avoid asking. Victorian readers heard Scrooge sending the poor to a place they feared.

Marriage was her daughters' main route to security

HintAsk where the five girls would live once their father died.

The whyA modern reader may see only a foolish, pushy mother. A first reader knew that the Bennet estate would go to a male cousin and that unmarried daughters could be left with very little. The comedy is still there, but so is a real fear.

It does not help to explain the scene

HintAsk what the date changes about how you read the storm.

The whyContext earns its place only when it changes or deepens the reading of a particular line or moment. A true fact that could be attached to any page of the book explains none of them.

They were young children

HintOnly someone very small could climb inside a flue.

The whyIn Blake's London, boys of five or six were sold to master sweeps and sent up chimneys. Readers of the time heard a child's cry in that line, and Blake's anger at a city that allowed it.

With real fear, as a genuine danger

HintFor them the three sisters were no fairy-tale costume.

The whyWitchcraft was a crime punishable by death, and many people believed it caused storms, illness and murder. Today's audiences tend to see stage witches as fantasy; the first audiences saw a threat they believed could reach into their own lives.