Close Reading

1. Close Reading Link Questions

2. Link Questions • Asking you to look at words/phrases/sentences which create connections/ relationship between paragraphs. • By referring to specific words or phrases, show how the sentence performs a linking function in the line of thought. (2U)

3. How to answer: • Identify in the linking sentence two words or phrases, one pointing back and one pointing forward. • Link the backward pointing one with the relevant part of the previous paragraph. • Link the forward one with the relevant parts of the following paragraph. • You must have followed all four of these steps to be awarded two marks.

4. So, before we all give the eco-lobby’s anti-flying agenda the unconditional benefit of the doubt, can we just review their strategy as a whole? • Referring to specific words and/or phrases, show how the sentence “So, before . . . as a whole?” (lines 13–14) performs a linking function in the writer’s argument.

5. So, before we all give the eco-lobby’s anti-flying agenda the unconditional benefit of the doubt, can we just review their strategy as a whole? • Referring to specific words and/or phrases, show how the sentence “So, before . . . as a whole?” (lines 13–14) performs a linking function in the writer’s argument.

6. ‘the eco-lobby’s anti-flying agenda’ links back to the previous paragraphs, which were concerned with attempts to restrict air travel. • ‘review their strategy as a whole’ links forward to the following paragraphs which look at the wider aims of the environmental groups.

7. The 7.15 Latin dance class is full, as was the six o’clock, as is the 8.30. In the reception area of Edinburgh Dancebase, learners, ranging from the middle-aged, fresh from work, to students, mill around waiting to dance. • Unlikely as it may at first seem, this is occurring across the country. Against similar winter backdrops people are queuing up to learn to dance. National inhibition is being shed as Salsa, merengue and cumbia beats force hips to sway rhythmically and partners to twist complicatedly. French ceroc classes are filling up, street dancing to hip-hop is being used as an exercise class. Even ballroom dancing is enjoying something of a renaissance.

8. The 7.15 Latin dance class is full, as was the six o’clock, as is the 8.30. In the reception area of Edinburgh Dancebase, learners, ranging from the middle-aged, fresh from work, to students, mill around waiting to dance. • Unlikely as it may at first seem, this is occurring across the country. Against similar winter backdrops people are queuing up to learn to dance. National inhibition is being shed as Salsa, merengue and cumbia beats force hips to sway rhythmically and partners to twist complicatedly. French ceroc classes are filling up, street dancing to hip-hop is being used as an exercise class. Even ballroom dancing is enjoying something of a renaissance.

9. ‘This’ links back to the idea of the dance class in Edinburgh being full and ‘is occurring across the country’ links forward to the ideas in the second paragraph, as it goes on to say that this is happening in many different places throughout the nation.

10. By referring closely to specific words and phrases, show the first sentence of the second paragraph performs a linking function.. (3U)

11. The problem here is political will rather than financial capacity. The pinch will come in other areas, such as health spending. People over 65 consume three times as many prescription items as other age groups. Nearly half of those with some measure of disability are over 70. • But the resource question, meeting the material needs of the old and elderly, is only half the story. The real problem lies elsewhere- in the imagination. What are the old for? Who are they, and do traditional divisions of human life into childhood, youth, middle-age and old-age still fit our experience?

12. The problem here is political will rather than financial capacity. The pinch will come in other areas, such as health spending. People over 65 consume three times as many prescription items as other age groups. Nearly half of those with some measure of disability are over 70. • But the resource question, meeting the material needs of the old and elderly, is only half the story. The real problem lies elsewhere- in the imagination. What are the old for? Who are they, and do traditional divisions of human life into childhood, youth, middle-age and old-age still fit our experience?

13. ‘The resource question’ refers back to the problems of funding health care for the elderly. ‘Is only half the story’ points forward to the rest of the paragraph, which is going to look at the other half of the story- the real problems of identity in old age.

14. By referring to specific words or phrases, show how lines 21–24 perform a linking function at this stage in the writer’s argument.

15. It might be thought—indeed, it is widely assumed—that it must be good for the countryside to be returned to the central position it enjoyed in British life long ago. Yet there is a particularly worrying aspect of the new rural mania that suggests it might finally do the countryside more harm than good. This is the identification, in the current clamour, of the countryside in general and the landscape in particular with the past—the insistence on the part of those who claim to have the best intentions of ruralism at heart that their aim is to protect what they glibly refer to as “our heritage”. This wildly over-used term is seriously misleading, not least because nobody appears ever to have asked what it means.

16. ‘new rural mania’ refers back to attempts to reinstate the central importance of the countryside in British life. • ‘a particularly worrying aspect’ introduces the idea that attempts to equate the countryside with our history are not just misguided; they are damaging.