Reading for Understanding, Analysis & Evaluation

Homework Booklet Miss Grant

Contents

1. In Your Own Words

2. Word Choice

3. Imagery

4. Sound

5. Tone

6. Linking Questions

7. Evaluation

8. Papers

In Your Own Words Questions

In your own words questions are asking you to show your understanding of certain words or phrases. You need to paraphrase, swapping the words with other words that mean the same. This is to show that you have got the jist of the phrase.

Usually, you will be asked to change an unusual word into your own words. There are a couple of ways to do this: 1. Use the context – what is the rest of the sentence/paragraph about? 2. Look at the unusual word – does it look like any other words you know?

Example

Writher’s phrase: “Once a rare sight on British roads, women lorry drivers are increasing in number.”

✓ 1st approach – the article is about women lorry drivers. There are more female HGV drivers in the UK than before.

Writer’s phrase: “Vertiginous cliff”

✓ 2nd approach – vertiginous = vertigo When do you get vertigo? When something is steep or high. “vertiginous cliffs” = “steep hills” Word Choice Questions

Word choice questions are asking you about what impression a word is giving to you. It is about the connotations of a word.

How to answer: 1. Identify the word they are asking about. 2. Explain what the means. 3. Explain what it makes you think of/what impression it is giving you.

Q1. Explain why the writer chose to say the animals were in “agony”. A1. The word “agony” means to be in a great deal of pain. The writer chose to use this word to express the level of pain and agony that the animals are in.

Q2. Explain why the writer chosen to use the phrase “the excitement is tremendous”. A2. The word tremendous means big or great. This gives the impression that there was a huge amount of excitement surrounding the event.

Imagery

Personification How to answer ✓ Identify the use of personification ✓ What is being made to seem like a human? ✓ What impression is this giving?

Q: “these surroundings/threw walls to the sky” A: the surroundings are being described as being able to throw up a wall, much like a builder can. This gives the impression that Scotland’s surroundings are creating mountains that act like walls.

Metaphor – a comparison when something is said to be something else. A non-literal meaning How to answer ✓ Identify the metaphor ✓ Explain what two things are being compared ✓ What image does this create?

Q: “Europe is a reservoir of ideas” A: Europe is being compared to a reservoir. A reservoir is a body of water that is usually distributed as drinking water. This creates the image that Europe is a body where ideas are shared and can be used by others with access to it.

Simile – a comparison that uses ‘like’ or ‘as’ How to answer ✓ Identify the simile ✓ Explain what two things are being compared ✓ What impression does this gives? Q: “Europe is like a reservoir of ideas.” A: Europe is being compared to a reservoir. A reservoir is a body of water that is usually distributed as drinking water. This creates the image that Europe is a body where ideas are shared and can be used by others with access. Sound

Alliteration How to answer ✓ Identify the alliteration – is it soft, harsh? (‘S’ sounds/’K’ sounds) ✓ Explain what impression it is giving you (harsh, soft) – is it to make it easier/more difficult to read? ✓ Is it imitating the sound of anything?

Q: “the gentle whistle of wind whispered through the window.” A: The repetition of the “w” sound creates a soft, gentle sound. This also imitates the sound of the wind in the house and gives the impression of the quiet sound it makes. Q: “The king kicked the crown around the castle” A: The repetition of the “k” sound is a harsh sound, which gives the impression of how harsh the action is. It could also imitates the sound the clattering sound the metal crown would make on the castle floor/walls.

Repetition How to answer 1. Identify what is being repeated 2. Explain why it is being repeated – usually for emphasis

Q: “He ran and ran and ran.” A: “Ran” is being repeated here to emphasise how far the person is running and to give the impression of a long distance. Tone

Tone is usually the hardest thing to identify Tone is linked to emotions – what emotion was the writer feeling at the time? What emotion was the writer trying to make you feel? The answer to the above questions are the answer to the question.

How to answer ✓ Identify the tone ✓ Identify the word/phrase/sentence structure that creates this tone ✓ Explain how the word/phrase/sentence structure creates this tone

Tone: light-hearted/fun Q: “…she joked.” A: the use of the word ‘joked’ shows that she wasn’t taking the moment seriously, creating the light-hearted/fun tone . Q: “It is frankly an insult to the expertise and knowledge of guests…” A: The use of the word “insult” says that the writer is angry or disgusted by the way the guests are treated. The word “insult” suggests that the groups are being treated unfairly and that the writer is angry at this. Sentence Structure

Short sentence How to answer ✓ Identify the sentence ✓ Identify the purpose – is it emphasising?

Q: “That’s all.” A: This short sentence is emphasising that there was no more that the author wanted to say about this talk. The shortness of the sentence emphasises his shortness of interest in continuing the conversation.

Long sentence How to answer ✓ Identify the sentence ✓ Identify the purpose – is it giving a lot of info? Is it reflecting the length of time that’s passing? Q: “and he ran as far as he could, over the bridge, down the High Street, through the car park and across back gardens before finally coming to a stop outside of his house.” A: This long sentence contains information about all the places the boy has run, and the length of the sentence highlights the length of his journey.

List How to answer ✓ Identify the list ✓ What is the purpose of the list? Q: “there were pickled herring, spiced eel, smoked haddock, smoked mackerel, peppered salmon and cod’s roe.” A: This list identifies various types of fish, highlighting how many there was behind the counter at the fishmonger. Linking & Rhetorical Questions

Linking Question This is to show that you have understood how the article is structured and how it all links together. How to answer 1. Identify the words in the second paragraph that links to the ideas of the previous paragraph. 2. Identify the words in the first paragraph that links to the second paragraph. 3. Explain how each of these words link to each other and the ideas of each paragraph.

Q: “Either way, she’d lost none of her poise. “Let’s be honest, I’m better at this than he is anyway,” she joked. The moment was mostly a fun political stunt” A: The phrase “the moment” links back to the previous paragraph, where there is a description of what happens. The link is effective because it links the previous paragraph with the explanation that is about to come in the second paragraph.

Rhetorical Question This is a question that doesn’t need a response. The writer is usually asking you to think about the subject. Sometimes they will go on to answer the question, or they may leave you to ponder the question for yourself. How to answer ✓ Identify the rhetorical question ✓ Explain the purpose

Q: “That’s just the way of it, right?” A: The rhetorical question here is making us question whether that really is just the way of it, and we are now expecting the writer to go on and explain whether it is or not. Rhetorical questions are also used as links. The writer may ask a question then go on to answer it. You would answer it the same as above. Evaluation

Evaluation This is to show that you have understood what the purpose of the article/conclusion was and whether it as effective. How to answer ✓ Identify the purpose of the article/conclusion (depending on the question) ✓ Identify the words/phrases/ideas that link to the introduction or the rest of the article. ✓ Explain how these words/ideas make the conclusion/article effective – do they persuade you? Entertain you? Answer questions posed at the start? ✓ The answer is that it is always effective – never say that it’s not effective unless you have a really, really good reason for it not being effective.

. Article 1

Get Out's Daniel Kaluuya: 'I resent that I have to prove I'm black' Actor responds to criticisms made by Samuel L Jackson over casting of black British actors in American films | Gwilym Mumford | 14 March 2017

1 Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya has responded to criticisms made by Samuel L Jackson over the casting of black British actors in roles about US race relations, saying that he resented having “to prove that I’m black”.

2 In an interview last week Jackson questioned the casting of Kaluuya in Get Out, a horror film centred on an interracial relationship between a black American man and his white partner. “I tend to wonder what that movie would have been with an American brother who really feels that,” he told radio station Hot 97.1, adding. “Some things are universal, but [not everything].”

3 Kaluuya addressed Jackson’s comments in an interview with GQ published on Tuesday.

4 “Big up Samuel L Jackson, because here’s a guy who has broken down doors. He has done a lot so that we can do what we can do,” Kaluuya said.

5 “Here’s the thing about that critique, though. I’m dark-skinned. When I’m around black people I’m made to feel ‘other’ because I’m dark-skinned. I’ve had to wrestle with that, with people going ‘You’re too black.’ Then I come to America and they say, ‘You’re not black enough.’”

6 Kaluuya cited the treatment of black people in Brixton and Tottenham as evidence that black people in Britain had also experienced racism and segregation, but said that, because those experiences were not widely publicised, “people get an idea of what they might think the experience is”. Jackson had previously claimed that Kaluuya “grew up in a country where they’ve been interracial dating for a hundred years”.

7 Kaluuya expressed his frustration that, “in order to prove that I can play this role, I have to open up about the trauma that I’ve experienced as a black person. I have to show off my struggle so that people accept that I’m black.

8 “I resent that I have to prove that I’m black. I don’t know what that is. I’m still processing it.”

9 He added that he didn’t want the controversy over Jackson’s to overshadow “the message of the film. There’s a black writer and director [Jordan Peele] that has written a film that is critically acclaimed, and now is commercially profitable. Yet we’re trying to separate ourselves again? There’s enough to deal with,” he added. 10 Kaluuya isn’t the only black British actor to have criticised Jackson for his remarks. Last week Star Wars actor John Boyega wrote on Twitter that the controversy was “a stupid ass conflict we don’t have time for.”

11 In an opinion column in today’s Guardian, Homeland actor David Harewood addressed the debate, arguing that American producers hire so many British actors “because we’re damn good”. He also suggested that Britons may be better suited to some parts because they weren’t as burdened by “what’s in the history books”.

12 “Perhaps it’s precisely because we are not real American brothers that we black British performers have the ability to unshackle ourselves from the burden of racial realities – and simply play what’s on the page, not what’s in the history books,” he wrote.

Questions 1. Look at paragraph 1 & 2. In your own words, explain what Samuel L Jackson said about the casting of Daniel Kaluuya. (2) 2. Look at paragraph 4. Quote the metaphor in this paragraph and explain what impression it is giving about what Samuel L Jackson did. (2) 3. Look at paragraph 5. What contrast does Kaluuya draw between his treatment in America and in the UK? (2) 4. Look at paragraph 6. Explain in your own words what “racism and segregation” means. (2) 5. Look at paragraph 7. What does Kaluuya mean by having to “show off my struggle”? (2) 6. Look at paragraph 10. What is the tone of John Boyega’s tweet? (2) 7. Look at paragraph 11. Explain, in your own words, what Harewood says is the reason Black British actors are chosen for American characters. (3) (15)

Article 2 Conservatives not only resent the existence of foodbanks, they are embarrassed by them. Kevin McKenna – The Herald, 15.04.2016

1 THERE IS a view of foodbanks, espoused by many on the right, that they exaggerate the degree to which poverty exists in the UK. Foodbanks began to proliferate under a Labour administration, they will say, when government spending was actually ballooning. And isn’t it also the case that if you provide a service giving away free food people will use it? “By jove, we’ve even seen some people getting out of taxis to get to these places.” 7 Conservatives not only resent the existence of foodbanks they are embarrassed by them. Any concept which has at its heart a non-profit-making motive and involves giving stuff away will never sit comfortably with a party which measures people and institutions by how much money they can make. They are embarrassed because foodbanks are a rebuke to the infallibility of the free market and to the survival of the fittest credo which drives Conservative ideology. 13 Earlier this week the Trussell Trust, which administers more than 400 foodbanks all over the UK, released figures which showed that at 133,000 there was a 13% year- on-year increase in referrals to Scottish foodbanks. The numbers also showed that while the number of UK referrals exceeded one million there remained a disproportionate use of foodbanks in Scotland. 18 There are 51 foodbanks in Scotland over a wide geographical spread of locations; not many of us live far from one. I’d recommend visiting one of them at least once for, no matter how economically successful this country becomes, they are here to stay. The levers of our economy are pulled in such a way that a significant number of our fellow citizens will always be denied its benefits. And no matter how much the parties of the left bleat about this none has ever shown a desire properly and radically to alter the elaborate system of inequality upon which our political system is built. 25 This is a system where power, influence and wealth are manipulated by a disproportionate few to suit the few. The pathway to becoming part of it is a narrow one and favours mainly those who have had an expensive private education and a degree at Oxford or Cambridge. As the Panama Papers revealed for many years they have operated an exclusion zone for the most affluent people and businesses in this country which protects them from paying taxes in the jurisdiction that helped them and their families to become rich. At the same time they have turned the UK into a one- stop service shop for the world’s money-launderers. 33 In Scotland we like to congratulate ourselves for having created a more enlightened and liberal society, but we haven’t really. The paucity of the government’s proposed land reforms will not affect the landholdings of the 500 or so people who own more than half of our country. And while the appointment of Lady Dorrian as the first female Lord Justice Clerk was a step in the right direction an even bigger one would have been to appoint someone from a state school background. This though, would have been difficult as less than a handful of our top judges in fair and equal Scotland attended a state secondary. 41 In Glasgow north-east foodbank in the city’s historic Calton district on Wednesday afternoon it was difficult not to be affected by the stories of what had brought people here. All had been sanctioned by the Department of Work and Pensions and often for transgressions that they hadn’t known existed or for which there was simply no warning. The DWP benefits regime is now designed to make it as difficult as possible for people who have been receiving payments to receive them in the future. A government of men whose families have done business in Panama and who routinely rent out their second mansions while they are “serving the nation” have created a culture which presumes guilt on the part of benefit claimants. 50 One of the men I spoke to last Wednesday was Alex, a spry and eloquent character in his 50s who had been a travelling Gaelic musician throughout Europe. When that had come to an end he found that the benefits he was entitled to were delayed by several weeks owing to confusion over his ID stemming from the Gaelic form of his name. “The most difficult thing to deal with when you encounter the DWP is how they try to strip away every last shred of dignity and humanity before they grant you any money. No part of your personal life is left unturned as they seek reasons not to give you basic subsistence money or to delay it. 58 Many of those who have recently been using foodbanks in Scotland have worked their entire adult lives but a change in a person’s circumstances or a traumatic event can suddenly leave someone feeling that their life is spinning away from their control. Sudden unemployment or marital breakdown, especially where children are involved, can lead to depression. In-work poverty, where the wages are simply not sufficient to feed, clothe and heat a family is another major contributor to the steep increase in those of us being referred to foodbanks. The concept of savings is an alien one in vast swathes of Scotland. 66 In the space of a few years the state’s attitude to unemployment became colder and more sinister. “It was as if it had decided to turn on those who it previously wanted to help,” said Ewan Gurr, Scottish manager of the Trussell Trust. “Yet just a few years ago we had the job-seeker’s allowance and a seamless process where someone was there to try and coach you into work. Now it can be a shaming experience.” 71 One of the great myths of Britain’s benefits system and one which is irresponsibly propagated by the right is that it encourages the something-for-nothing culture. We’ll leave aside the irony of hearing this from a party which is built on unearned privilege and entitlement by birth. The benefits available to those who may require them have been bought and paid for by previous generations and by many of us currently who want our taxes and national insurance to help someone else. These are not handouts they are repayments. 78 In Parkhead foodbank a healing of sorts is also taking place. People who simply have no food for a few days will delay visiting a foodbank until they reach a point where their health is being affected. Their dignity and mental wellbeing took a battering from the DWP a long time ago. At Parkhead no one is judging and everyone knows the reasons why a soul has made that first journey to them. Here is where a person’s dignity and sense of humanity can be rebuilt with a quiet chat over a cup of tea and an empire biscuit.

1. Look at paragraph 1 a. What does the word “espouse” mean? (1) b. What is the tone of the first paragraph? Discuss the language used to show how this is created. (3) 2. In your own words, what reasons does the writer give for the Conservatives being embarrassed by foodbanks? (3) 3. Look at lines 13-24. a. How does the writer use sentence structure to show how many foodbanks there are in Scotland? (4) b. How is language effectively to convey the writer’s views on the economy? (4) 4. “This is a system where power, influence and wealth are manipulated by a disproportionate few to suit the few.” In your own words, explain what the writer means by this. (1) 5. “At the same time they have turned the UK into a one-stop service shop for the world’s money-launderers.” How is this effective image? (3) 6. Look at lines 33-40 a. In your own words, explain why the writer doesn’t think Scotland is as “enlightened and liberal” as it likes to think? (3) b. What is the tone of this paragraph, and how does the language help you understand this tone? (2) 7. What reasons does the writer give for it being more difficult for people to continue to receive benefits? (2) 8. In your own words, explain the meaning of “spry and eloquent”. (1) 9. Look at lines 50-57. What is the tone of this paragraph? How does the language help you understand this? (3) 10. In your own words, explain what the “benefit myth” is. (1) 11. Look at the final paragraph. How is this an effective conclusion to the article? (4)

Article 3 | The Ups and Down of Being an Airline Pilot Jonathan Margolis | The Guardian | Sunday Opinion

1 The guy going through the US airport security gate looks like a successful financial director, nice glasses, mid-40s, borderline quite cool. The security guard lifts his carry-on bag from the machine. “Is this yours?” she barks. He confirms it is. “You got a knife in here?” He asks if she means a blunt butter knife – part of some airline cutlery he carries on work trips, for when he brews up a pot noodle late at night up in some godforsaken motel.

2 She removes the butter knife and throws it in a bin. He points out that it’s airline cutlery, so he’ll just take another on the plane. A supervisor appears, and soon it’s one of those stand- offs with American officialdom that escalate swiftly to “Sir, I need you to…” level.

3 But there’s a key difference between this airport scenario and most like it. The guy with the knife is a pilot in uniform, about to fly a 767 full of passengers. Yet his protest that he would hardly need a piece of silverware to hijack himself just racks up the officials’ dumb aggression further.

4 He proceeds feeling thoroughly irritated. But Patrick Smith, unlike most other pilots, has somewhere to publicly vent his fury at such stupidity. He runs one of the world’s most popular blogs, AskThePilot, where, in a uniquely acerbic way, he answers passengers’ questions on anything from turbulence to airport security. Smith, a punk rock aficionado, is also the author of a bestselling book, Cockpit Confidential. And he is one of two working pilots with books about flying piled high in airport bookshops – and doing wonders for the rather boring image of modern airline pilots. As will the release in the UK next month of the Clint Eastwood-directed Tom Hanks film Sully – the story of US Airways captain Chesley Sullenberger’s heroics landing a suddenly engineless plane in the Hudson River in 2009.

5 Smith never reveals who he flies for because, he says, it makes it easier for him to be opinionated. He has spoken out, for instance, at the glorification of Captain Sullenberger, explaining that while the pilot deserves the utmost respect, the water landing was a standard manoeuvre made possible by a major slice of luck – that the collision with a flock of geese took place right by “a 12-mile runway of smoothly flowing river, within swimming distance of the country’s largest city”.

6 The second author aviator, currently at cruising altitude, Mark Vanhoenacker, a former management consultant who flies 747s, is open about being a British Airways first officer.

7 His book Skyfaring has achieved even greater acclaim for its writing quality. He is regularly compared to the literary pilots of the past, such as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Wind, Sand and Stars) and Ernest Gann (Fate is the Hunter). Skyfaring is a series of essays on every aspect of the pilot’s job, from the physics of getting a plane off the ground to wonderfully detailed and acute observations of life in the sky. He has an eye for detail you imagine serves him well in front of a zillion instruments.

8 Smith and Vanhoenacker have never met despite being admirers of each other’s work. “We often email, but I don’t even know which airline Patrick flies for,” says Vanhoenacker. “We nearly crossed paths in Ghana once. I was going to be in Accra the day after him. He left a signed copy of his book for me at the hotel. To nearly cross paths, but not quite, was a very pilot thing.” 9 Both men, coincidentally, were brought up in Massachusetts; Smith in Boston, Vanhoenacker, who is half Belgian and partly British-educated, in Pittsfield, the town where Moby Dick was written. He now lives in New York and flies from London, while Smith commutes from his Boston home to his airline’s New York hub. It’s common, they say, for pilots to live far from their flying base.

10 The two pilots’ writing style is different – Smith’s, iconoclastic and witty, Vanhoenacker’s, poetic, philosophical, erudite – and replete with Herman Melville references. But their view of life from the flight deck is similar.

11 Both love flying, but are more in love with travelling. Both spend much of their time up- front just pondering their bizarre and wonderful life, as their passengers eat, read, sleep and dream. And both, even when not on duty, fly constantly as passengers just for the joy of it.

12 Being an unashamed flying geek has led to at least one awkward moment for Smith. Boarding a BA flight to Nairobi once, he wandered into the still-open cockpit, and asked the crew, busy with pre-flight checklists, if they minded him popping in for a chat with his fellow professionals. “Yes, we do mind,” one of the pilots responded in a voice he recalls as being just like Graham Chapman’s in Monty Python. “They asked me to go away and slammed the door.”

13 Smith laughs as he recounts this. He is speaking having just woken up from a snooze during a 24-hour stopover in a grim, west London hotel used by airlines.

14 “There are aspects of flying I hate,” Smith says, motioning towards the soulless front lobby. “This, the security, the noise at airports, the crowded planes. But I see a bigger, more exciting picture. The fact that you can get on to this gigantic machine and fly half way around the world in a matter of hours, and you can do it in almost perfect safety for pennies per mile. How is that not remarkable?”

15 Does he often have that thought, about the sheer wonder of air travel? “All the time. It’s why I love what I do and why I got into it. Flying’s a lot of fun, but to me it’s not the soul of the job. That’s the going places.

16 “Sure, there are moments when I’m bored and annoyed. But then I think back to how it’s all worked out exactly how I dreamed it would as a kid. How many people can say that? If I’m stuck in a crappy hotel on a layover I was dreading, I can still on a deeper level be excited and happy about it.”

17 If Smith has one overarching message to readers, it is on the extraordinary safety of flying – and that today, cramped seats and terrible food aside, represents a golden age of air travel because it is the safest it has ever been.

18 He started out just after the least safe period, the 1980s, and has precisely one dodgy landing to recount, when a freak vortex at 200ft pitched his 19-seater plane up on one wing, at a 45-degree angle. He admits to being alarmed then. Oh yes, and to his captain being alarmed once when he insisted on flying bare chested because it was too hot for a pilot’s nasty polyester uniform shirt.

19 Smith likes long haul international flights best. He opts for them over the domestic US routes many of his colleagues with children prefer. And in the off-duty periods he fashions from doing long trips to interesting places, he travels to still more interesting places, with or without his environmental consultant girlfriend. “For leisure trips, we’ve recently been to Malta and Mauritius. On the to-go list, there’s central Asia, New Guinea, Bolivia and Iran.”

20 Is he different, then, more thoughtful, more contemplative, than other pilots? “Pilots are hard to categorise,” says Smith. “I always thought they’d be typecast – military, strong silent types. But the people I work with represent a really interesting cross section. I know a guy who’s a concert pianist and other pilots who studied music in college. The love of flying comes from different places. For me it was the grand theatre of air travel. Other pilots’ inspiration is the thrill of flying the plane. Whatever, I couldn’t imagine going in to the same office cubicle every day.”

21 Vanhoenacker, however, does know what a regular job is like. He is speaking in a crew room at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 and, rather sweetly, is wearing his BA first officer’s uniform even though he doesn’t need to as he’s about to return to New York as a passenger.

22 Quietly spoken with a light mid-Atlantic accent, he recalls his 9 to 5 days. “I’ve had an office job. I’ve done meetings. But I’d been dreaming of flying since childhood. In my management consulting days, I would occasionally load up Microsoft Flight simulator and start a flight in the morning, go off to meetings and then land the plane at Heathrow in the evening.”

23 But is commercial flying not rather prescribed and regulated for someone you sense was looking for more freedom in his late 20s, when he changed career course for BA’s sponsored cadet course?

24 Vanhoenacker is as keen as Smith on travelling for its own sake, as a passenger as well as a pilot, often with his banker partner. “I love flying as a passenger, always in a window seat. You can listen to music, to podcasts, watching the world go by and people bring you food. Actually, for me, the meditative feeling as a passenger is even better than flying.

25 “But when I’m up there doing a fuel check and talking on the radios and we’re sailing above an open ocean and there are more stars than you’ll ever see, and maybe you see a ship down there, or the moon rise, I realise I could never now not be a pilot.

26 “Maybe sometimes,” he continues, “at 3am over the ocean, you’d rather be in your own bed. But if I was given a month or two off, I’d soon be desperate to be up there all night looking at the stars.”

1. What is the tone of the opening paragraph? Give evidence to support your answer. (2) 2. How does paragraph 3 act as a link at this point in the article? (3) 3. In your own words, explain how Patrick Smith can “vent his fury”. (2) 4. In your own words, explain how he is an “unashamed flying geek”. (2) 5. Identify and explain the effectiveness of the technique in paragraph 15. (2) 6. Put paragraph 23 into your own words? (3) 7. How does the last paragraph act as an effective conclusion to the article? (2) 8. What are the main ideas of the article? (2) 9. Who is the intended audience of the article? Give evidence to support your answer. (1) 10. What is the intended purpose of the article? Give evidence to support your answer. (1) Article 4 Kirsty Strickland: Repetition of dangerous rape myths has no place in a responsible debate OCTOBER 18TH, 2016 KIRSTY STRICKLAND, THE NATIONAL

YESTERDAY on BBC Radio Scotland, the Call Kaye phone-in posed the question: Where do your sympathies lie in the Ched Evans case?

Before the first response had hit the airwaves, we could have predicted the way the ensuing “debate” was going to go. Down into a 1950s grubby gutter.

There was plenty of support for Ched Evans – whom Kaye Adams described as a “promising young footballer whose career is now in tatters’’ – but not much for the woman involved, predictably.

That is the problem with opening up a rape trial to the public for commentary. We were asked to judge the worthiness of the complainant and the accused and, as such, the discussion quickly dissolved into one on morality and the “type of woman’’ the former is. That woman, we learned, is one who has “loose morals’’, as one caller suggested. Another informed us that “she was hardly a virgin, was she?’’ while another asked: “What does she expect? These are young footballers’’. One said we all know women like this, who “put it about a bit, are a bit of a tease and a bit minxy’’.

Alongside the regular callers, we heard from experts. Well, one anyway – a co-ordinator from Rape Crisis Scotland. This would have been immensely helpful to the discussion, had she not been speaking alongside Mike Buchanan of Justice For Men And Boys.

Listeners to Call Kaye will know that Buchanan is regularly invited on when issues affecting women are discussed, to “balance” the views of female experts. His usual trope is that women are liars with an inherent victim complex and that the justice system is hugely skewed in their favour.

What was unfortunate about yesterday’s discussion was that most of the debate was framed around his line that women and men get drunk and have sex – so why are men always criminalised for doing so?

It doesn’t seem to matter to BBC Scotland that rape is overwhelmingly unreported, nor that Crown Prosecution Service analysis on “false accusations” shows they are comparatively uncommon. It wasn’t mentioned that while violent crime overall is decreasing, instances of sexual violence are actually increasing.

It is frankly an insult to the expertise and knowledge of guests from women’s groups that they are so often expected to use the limited airtime they get to refute Mike Buchanan’s many misleading and inaccurate statements around the reality of sexual violence.

The solution, as Adams suggested yesterday, is not to avoid all use of statistics when discussing these issues. Or as she put it “we have to be careful of quoting lies, damn lies and statistics’’. No, the solution is to invite guests with demonstrable expertise of the subject matter at hand. There will be people who listened to the phone-in yesterday who believed Buchanan when he inaccurately suggested that 25 per cent of sexual assaults are carried out by women.

There will also be people who believe the most important issue raised by the whole Ched Evans debacle is alcohol consumption. That tired old trope that women should “protect themselves” from being raped by modifying their way of life. This disregards the fact that women are more likely to be raped by somebody they know.

So, in short, don’t go out, don’t stay in, don’t drink and be wary of every man in your life because the odds are it will be one of them that attacks you.

Alternatively, the BBC could stop pushing the line that the onus is on women to foresee their rape and take precautions accordingly.

Adams repeatedly described issues around consent as “murky”, which should offend the majority of men in Scotland who have never accidentally assaulted a woman or seen one as an easy target when she was drunk.

On the one hand we had callers suggesting that if Ched Evans was drunk then his actions shouldn’t be judged, and on the other, people lamenting the morality and sense of a woman who has a drink. The hypocrisy of the segment was summed up when Adams spoke of the “vile abuse” the woman had encountered while opening up the airwaves to allow callers to perpetuate that abuse further.

When Ched Evans’s actions that night were raised, Adams asked: “Is that the behaviour of a rapist – or is that the behaviour of a cad?” The theme from the discussion was clear: who are we to judge the actions of a man who has been found not-guilty of rape? Which wouldn’t have been so unpalatable had Adams herself not asked: “What kind of woman wants to be in a hotel room, blind drunk, making themselves vulnerable?’’

BBC Scotland needs to do better on these issues. This isn’t a new or interesting take on a discussion but an irresponsible and unnecessary repetition of the same myths we hear time and time again.

We saw from the recent societal attitudes survey on gay marriage that views in Scotland can change for the better over time. Yet still, in Scotland, 40 per cent of people think that a woman can be partially to blame for being raped if she was drunk.

Changing that perception would encourage women to come forward. Framing consent as a minefield and criticising the morality and judgement of women who don’t cut themselves off from society to “stay safe” does the opposite.

BBC Radio Scotland plays host to some worthwhile discussions and responsible and necessary journalism. Unfortunately for listeners, and for women, neither were in evidence during yesterday’s Call Kaye.

1. Look at paragraphs 2 and 3. What is the writer’s attitude in these paragraphs? Comment on the sentence structure to back up your point. (2) 2. Look at paragraph 6. In your own words, explain what Buchanan thinks the problem is with the justice system. (2) 3. Look at paragraph 8. In your own words, explain the writer’s two main points in this paragraph. (2) 4. What is the writer’s attitude in paragraph 9? Give and explain 2 examples of word choice from the text to back up your point. (4) 5. Look at paragraph 12. Explain in your own words what the phrase “ tired old trope” means. (1) 6. Look at paragraph 13. a) What is the writer’s attitude/tone in the paragraph? (1) b) How does the writer’s sentence structure help to create this tone? (1) 7. How does paragraph 18 act as a link at this point in the article? (2) 8. What are the main ideas/concerns of this article? (2) 9. What is the writer’s attitude in this article? Give evidence from the text to back up your point. (3) Article 5

A shocking image of Syria's brutal war – a war that will continue regardless

This week the Guardian published the kind of picture that deserves to change the world. The front page of Thursday's print edition was dominated by an epic scene of human suffering, reproduced above. In a canyon between grey shattered precipices of bomb-ravaged buildings, an uncountable number of people wait for food. The faces in the front of the vast desperate crowd are anxious, stoical, subdued; beyond is a sea of heads whose expressions are unreadable but guessably similar.

This is a great photograph – and it wants the world to act. It was released by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and shows what happened when aid workers tried to give out food parcels at Yarmouk refugee camp on the edge of Damascus. The picture illuminates the mind- boggling devastation of the war in Syria: tottering jumbles of concrete and plaster gaping with voids and caverns, are all that is left of this cityscape. Above all, it captures the sheer scale of human suffering with this horribly mesmerising sea of faces.

But will it make a difference? It is intended as a campaigning picture, not a work of art. Here are the facts from one small part of Syria; here is the fate of part of the Palestinian people.

When I look at photographs that try to move the world to compassionate action I am haunted by Jurgen Stroop. In the 1940s, Stroop, the SS General who led the final attack on the Warsaw ghetto, collected some singularly devastating images of human suffering. They show the final defeat of the Jewish uprising in the ghetto in 1943. In one picture, soldiers, who happen to be Ukrainian, stand over the bodies of Jews killed in the fighting. In another, a factory burns. In another, people are being marched to a checkpoint to be taken to the camps. These images are harrowing, easily as harrowing as this week's picture from Damascus – for the victims here are all going to be murdered, not fed – and yet they were not taken to save lives, to move the world to action.

Stroop was accompanied by a photographer whose pictures illustrated an elegantly produced report that Stroop sent to Himmler, entitled The Jewish Quarter No Longer Exists, and the album shows why photographs don't stop wars or end suffering. The images he preserved are today part of the testimony of the Holocaust: few could look at them, surely, without feeling gut instincts of anger and compassion. Yet we know that their first onlookers contemplated them with satisfaction at a job well done – the extermination of race enemies.

The problem with photography that tries to wake up the world to conflict and suffering is that cruel and violent human situations come about precisely because ideologies ignore reality and blind themselves to others' pain. If the first casualty of war is truth, what is the use of pictures that appeal to a universal human court of justice and righteousness? We aspire to that common humanity, but war in its vicious modern forms comes about precisely because it is so easy to deny it even to your neighbours.

The impotence of images to shake the world to its senses was demonstrated in the first war that became a modern "issue", an international cause of debate and handwringing and taking sides. Robert Capa's photographs from the Spanish Civil War are unequivocally compassionate and empathetic with the people of Madrid enduring fascist air raids – but they were not enough to turn the tide and save the Republican cause. They surely helped to recruit idealists to fight for Spain – but Franco won anyway.

Capa was later one of the founders of Magnum Photos and died in Indochina, forming a human bridge between the age of the world wars and the post-1945 era in which humane photojournalism has become part of the fabric of modern conflict. Where there are wars there are heroes with cameras, seeing the horror on behalf of humanity. Larry Burrows in Vietnam, Don McCullin in Cyprus and Biafra – these are among the great witnesses of the modern age.

But wars and war crimes go on. And photography just seems to be a decoration for our conscience. We don't act because of photographs. There is no need to go far back in history to illustrate this depressing truth. Only last year, photographs on the front pages of newspapers around the world showed the bodies of children killed in a poison gas attack in Syria. The global debate provoked by these pictures ended in a considered decision not to intervene militarily. The House of Commons was widely congratulated by liberals for its refusal to take aggressive action. So why fool ourselves? We look at the terrors of our time and are shocked, but it's just fine feelings. Because this is not a well-governed world, there is no will to make it one, and as things stand, no curb on human cruelty.

1. In your own words, explain what impact the front page of the Guardian ‘this week’ was supposed to have on readers. 2. Look at paragraph 2. a. What does the writer mean by “picture illuminates the mind-boggling devastation of the war in Syria”? b. Choose a word from this paragraph that best describes the situation in Syria and explain what image this word is trying to create in your mind. 3. What is the literary technique used at the start of paragraph 3? Why do you think the writer has chosen to use this here? 4. Explain, in your own words, what the writer means by “singularly devastating images of human suffering”. 5. Look at paragraph 5. Summarise the paragraph and explain how you think the writer is trying to make you feel. 6. What does the word “aspire” mean? 7. Now re-read the full passage. Underline all examples of metaphors and try and explain what image the writer is trying to create in your mind.

Article 6 The Age of the Bitch – time for misogynists to feel our anger. Vonny Moyes, 18 October 2016, The National

1 I’m giving serious thought to changing my column name to “this week in sexist BS”.

2 There are lots of things going on in the world right now, but it feels rather like we’ve been flipped inside out. There has been a lot to get mad about for quite some time, but this week The Bucket of Ignorance truly hath runneth over with grade-A sexist bunk. The fact that the negative stereotypes of the gender binary intersect with everything – politics, sport, journalism and beyond – mean that they are impossible to ignore. Now seems like a prudent point to stop and cogitate on the absurdity of where we find ourselves, as a supposedly advanced civilisation. If you want to quickly take the temperature of the current conversation, just type Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton into any social media platform. If you need something a little closer to home, try Ched Evans, and marvel at the number of men offering to rape women as punishment. This sort of on-the-sleeve vitriol has become normal.

3 Yet this – the sexual assault stuff – is the only thing so far that seems to have dented the Trump train in any way. Why? Because enough of us have reach the tipping point. This is one feather too many on the scale. For a lot of us, 2016 is the year the passivity bandwidth has maxed out. The year the patience well has run dry. We’re finally finding our ovaries and saying “this is not okay”. And yes, we really have to say this out loud, because even though it’s blindingly obvious to every woman out there, people still think calling it a joke vindicates it in some way. A prime example from just last week was Everyday Sexism’s Laura Bates having to underline to Radio 4’s Justin Webb the danger of conflating sexual assault with compliments.

4 We’re all thinking how absurd it is that we need to keep having this conversation. We all know we’re conditioned to minimise and de-escalate, but somehow seeing this play out on such an enormous, hyperreal scale has prompted many women to speak up. This week Michelle Obama perfectly verbalised what we’ve all been screaming internally. If you haven’t seen her speech, I suggest you watch it – that your spouses and children watch it – because nothing has more elegantly vocalised the frustration of being female bodied and watching this car-crash play out. And not just the presidential election campaign, I’m talking about the culture of plain-sight misogyny this campaign has come to typify.

5 For most of my adult life, aside from on paper, I’ve played my feminism cool. The desire to be socially accepted has meant I’ve pushed down bits of me that would disrupt the niceties if I were to speak my mind. The thoughts and feelings have always been there, but I haven’t necessarily felt like I could bring them out. It’s a product of being shy-ish in person and the social conditioning that every little girl is taught. That subtle from-birth training to adhere to cultural and social norms. Be deferential. Be polite. Do your best to be liked.

6 But all the while, even though it’s against my natural instincts, I’ve found it harder and harder to bite my tongue. Every news story. Every microaggression. Every violent tweet. Every unwanted grab. Every loaded “sweetheart” or “darling” or “snowflake”. Every time my daughter is complimented for her looks and my sons for their intellect. Each has glaciated the surface of my personality, to the extent that I’ve moved from being the uncomfortable eyebrow raiser, to someone happy to pierce the atmosphere with a “no”. Significant when you’ve spent your life trying to be quiet and good. 7 Lots of other women feel this way. I refuse to believe any well-minded woman hears that sort of bilge 2016 has exposed us to and feels 100 per cent okay with it. Even if she’s trying to be a The Cool Girl or The Quiet Girl or The Good Wife. Feminists are not fringe. We’re just not easy to spot because of the caricature we’ve been given. The paint-by-numbers feminist who doesn’t wear makeup, probably has a raging bush, and wanders around screaming “I HATE MEN” while slapping them with Simone de Beauvoir books.

8 That’s so far removed from the truth. So many are only beginning to find their voices as a consequence of others speaking out. It’s a safety in numbers thing. As Caitlin Moran says: if you have a vagina and want to be able to decide what to do with it, congratulations – you’re a feminist. That matters whether you want to keep that vagina at home, or share it with others, or put it in The White House, or do whatever you like with it, while being free of aggression or expectation. Yes, as western women we’ve got a sweet deal by comparison. We can get an education. We can go to work. We can get an abortion. We’re probably not going to be forced into a child marriage. We’re fairly unlikely to be trafficked or have our children abducted by Boko Haram. We’re at little risk from female genital mutilation. We don’t face the threat of honour killings or acid attacks. So while here in the west, we’re mostly not dying, plenty of women elsewhere are. Plenty of women who can’t tell you how inconvenient it is to be raped or beaten or cut or killed. Even when they do tell you, we’ve created a culture where gender bias is so naturalised, they’re not always believed. So we need to be loud. And yes – we are angry. Anger is an appropriate response to the non-exhaustive list above.

9 THAT’S why I’m done with speaking out being an added-extra. I’m done with hidden feminism. I’m finished with being the plainclothes officer who only flashes the badge when it counts. I hope you’ll consider doing the same. Right now it counts. Society tells us to be quiet and pliant. We laugh off the dude that stands too close to us. We don’t smack away the wandering digits of the creepy guy on the bus. Instead of finding our voices, we freeze and accept, and feel dirty afterwards.

10 Enough.

11 This is bigger than us. We know feminism isn’t just for women, but we need to keep saying this aloud until it’s crystal clear. The fortification of the gender binary hurts all of us. It’s about freeing everyone from the expectations and inequalities of each, and creating the freedom to be yourself – despite what society tells you you should be because of your assigned gender.

12 This week I heard a brilliant phrase. Cheryl Strayed, the award-winning American author, described this growing refusal to comply as “The Age of The Bitch”. How perfect is that? This dismantling of the need to be liked that bridles us to keeping things palatable for others is what we need to embrace.

13 So ladies, it’s time to unhook ourselves from that conditioning. Your voices of dissent are needed more than ever, because it’s about to get worse. Now is the time for us to take action that will shape the future.

14 As The Atlantic’s Michelle Cottle points out, however the US election goes, it’ll open the floodgates of misogyny that will reverberate far beyond politics, and far beyond the US. If Hillary Clinton wins, we all know the sort of language that will colour the political grievances. And if Trump wins, we have a man in the highest and perhaps most visible office in the world saying it’s okay to assault women.

15 Today I called something sexist bullshit in the street, much louder than a whisper, and you know what? The sky didn’t fall on my head. And what’s even better, it felt honest and real. So let’s be loud. Let’s be abrasive. Let’s dig our heels in and be that bitch.

1. What are the main ideas/concerns of this article? (2) 2. What is the overall attitude of the article? Give evidence from the text to back up your point. (3) 3. Identify and explain the image used in paragraph 2 – “quickly take the temperature of the current conversation.” (2) 4. Identify and explain TWO images in paragraph 3. (4) 5. Read paragraph 7. Explain, in your own words, what the ‘stereotypical’ feminist is like, according to the writer. (2) 6. Read paragraph 8. a. Exlplain, in your own words, why western women have a “sweet deal by comparison”. (4) b. Explain, in your own words, what the writer means by “gender bias is so naturalised”. (1) 7. Read paragraph 14. Identify and explain the image used in the phrase “floodgates of misogyny”. (2)

An American Tragedy

David Remnick, The New Yorker, Wednesday November 9 2016

1 The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit— and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.

2 There are, inevitably, miseries to come: an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court; an emboldened right-wing Congress; a President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader who will not only set markets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties of Other whom he has so deeply insulted. The African-American Other. The Hispanic Other. The female Other. The Jewish and Muslim Other. The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event— and it’s a stretch—is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve.

3 Early on Election Day, the polls held out cause for concern, but they provided sufficiently promising news for Democrats in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and even Florida that there was every reason to think about celebrating the fulfillment of Seneca Falls, the election of the first woman to the White House. Potential victories in states like Georgia disappeared, little more than a week ago, with the F.B.I. director’s heedless and damaging letter to Congress about reopening his investigation and the reappearance of damaging buzzwords like “e-mails,” “Anthony Weiner,” and “fifteen-year-old girl.” But the odds were still with Hillary Clinton.

4 All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.

5 In the coming days, commentators will attempt to normalize this event. They will try to soothe their readers and viewers with thoughts about the “innate wisdom” and “essential decency” of the American people. They will downplay the virulence of the nationalism displayed, the cruel decision to elevate a man who rides in a gold-plated airliner but who has staked his claim with the populist rhetoric of blood and soil. George Orwell, the most fearless of commentators, was right to point out that public opinion is no more innately wise than humans are innately kind. People can behave foolishly, recklessly, self-destructively in the aggregate just as they can individually. Sometimes all they require is a leader of cunning, a demagogue who reads the waves of resentment and rides them to a popular victory. “The point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion,” Orwell wrote in his essay “Freedom of the Park.” “The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”

6 Trump ran his campaign sensing the feeling of dispossession and anxiety among millions of voters—white voters, in the main. And many of those voters—not all, but many—followed Trump because they saw that this slick performer, once a relative cipher when it came to politics, a marginal self-promoting buffoon in the jokescape of eighties and nineties New York, was more than willing to assume their resentments, their fury, their sense of a new world that conspired against their interests. That he was a billionaire of low repute did not dissuade them any more than pro-Brexit voters in Britain were dissuaded by the cynicism of Boris Johnson and so many others. The Democratic electorate might have taken comfort in the fact that the nation had recovered substantially, if unevenly, from the Great Recession in many ways—unemployment is down to 4.9 per cent—but it led them, it led us, to grossly underestimate reality. The Democratic electorate also believed that, with the election of an African-American President and the rise of marriage equality and other such markers, the culture wars were coming to a close. Trump began his campaign declaring Mexican immigrants to be “rapists”; he closed it with an anti-Semitic ad evoking “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”; his own behavior made a mockery of the dignity of women and women’s bodies. And, when criticized for any of it, he batted it all away as “political correctness.” Surely such a cruel and retrograde figure could succeed among some voters, but how could he win? Surely, Breitbart News, a site of vile conspiracies, could not become for millions a source of news and mainstream opinion. And yet Trump, who may have set out on his campaign merely as a branding exercise, sooner or later recognized that he could embody and manipulate these dark forces. The fact that “traditional” Republicans, from George H. W. Bush to Mitt Romney, announced their distaste for Trump only seemed to deepen his emotional support.

7 The commentators, in their attempt to normalize this tragedy, will also find ways to discount the bumbling and destructive behavior of the F.B.I., the malign interference of Russian intelligence, the free pass—the hours of uninterrupted, unmediated coverage of his rallies—provided to Trump by cable television, particularly in the early months of his campaign. We will be asked to count on the stability of American institutions, the tendency of even the most radical politicians to rein themselves in when admitted to office. Liberals will be admonished as smug, disconnected from suffering, as if so many Democratic voters were unacquainted with poverty, struggle, and misfortune. There is no reason to believe this palaver. There is no reason to believe that Trump and his band of associates—Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Pence, and, yes, Paul Ryan—are in any mood to govern as Republicans within the traditional boundaries of decency. Trump was not elected on a platform of decency, fairness, moderation, compromise, and the rule of law; he was elected, in the main, on a platform of resentment. Fascism is not our future—it cannot be; we cannot allow it to be so— but this is surely the way fascism can begin.

8 Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate but a resilient, intelligent, and competent leader, who never overcame her image among millions of voters as untrustworthy and entitled. Some of this was the result of her ingrown instinct for suspicion, developed over the years after one bogus “scandal” after another. And yet, somehow, no matter how long and committed her earnest public service, she was less trusted than Trump, a flim-flam man who cheated his customers, investors, and contractors; a hollow man whose countless statements and behavior reflect a human being of dismal qualities— greedy, mendacious, and bigoted. His level of egotism is rarely exhibited outside of a clinical environment.

9 For eight years, the country has lived with Barack Obama as its President. Too often, we tried to diminish the racism and resentment that bubbled under the cyber- surface. But the information loop had been shattered. On Facebook, articles in the traditional, fact-based press look the same as articles from the conspiratorial alt-right media. Spokesmen for the unspeakable now have access to huge audiences. This was the cauldron, with so much misogynistic language, that helped to demean and destroy Clinton. The alt-right press was the purveyor of constant lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories that Trump used as the oxygen of his campaign. Steve Bannon, a pivotal figure at Breitbart, was his propagandist and campaign manager.

10 It is all a dismal picture. Late last night, as the results were coming in from the last states, a friend called me full of sadness, full of anxiety about conflict, about war. Why not leave the country? But despair is no answer. To combat authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals—that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do.

Create your own questions for the above article. You should have at least ONE of the following: 1 In your own words 2. Imagery – metaphor & personification 3. Sentence structure – short sentences & parenthesis 4. Linking question Article 7 The core of Andy Murray’s genius is that there is nothing fake on court or off it Kevin Mitchell

Pick up any dictionary and check the definition of honesty. There will be references to integrity, loyalty, candour, right-mindedness, authenticity. All of these describe the Andy Murray I have come to know and, without wishing to confer sainthood on the poor man, the best tennis player these islands have had and the freshly crowned No1 in the world would still seem to be incapable of telling a lie.

That is at the core of his genius. There is nothing fake about what Murray does on court or, as far as evidence suggests, off it. The sweary, chuntering, foot-dragging sufferer who prevails to conquer all real and imagined demons will not change just because he now looks down from the mountain instead of up.

It is one of his towering achievements that he is essentially no different to the Murray barely any of us knew when we first became aware of his talent a decade and more ago. More than likely, he has changed little in character or demeanour since his mother, Judy, gave him and his brother tennis rackets in Dunblane when they were no higher than the net at the local club.

One of the most touching images to reach public view after his triumph in Paris at the weekend – to seal not only the Masters title there (his eighth of the year) but take the crown of his longtime rival Novak Djokovic – was that of his mother sitting on his knee, holding a glass of champagne as they flew home on a private jet. Their smiles were frozen in the photo but more than likely did not disappear after the click of the button.

She was there for him at the beginning, during countless swoops and dives, and here at the moment of what might prove to be the defining achievement of his career. Some have cavilled at her presence, weirdly. It bothers neither her nor her sons.

So, how has he done it? Perhaps the key to his continued success in the toughest era of his sport has been his almost maddening attention to detail. He shares that obsession with Djokovic, whom he has known since they were 11 and against whom he has always judged himself. No minor detail is too small to master, for either of them.

As the Scottish journalist Hugh MacDonald says in his concise and exquisite book, Murrayball: How He Gatecrashed the Golden Era, Murray rose from the most unpromising tennis environment imaginable in a small Scottish town to the heights of the game by “taking the small steps, by intuitively and then efficiently employing the theory of the aggregation of marginal gains”.

Murray has never lacked for friends in the game – as the vanquished John Isner testified after losing in three sets to him in the final on Sunday. “He’s the guy that everyone is looking up to right now,” the American said after his eighth straight loss to him. One of the first messages of congratulations Murray received from outside his immediate family on the evening he reached the pinnacle of his sport came from Tim Henman, who was similarly misunderstood in the years that he carried the weight of British expectations at Wimbledon and on less amenable surfaces to his particular talent.

Henman has been a generous and supportive ally of Murray’s since their careers briefly overlapped and said in one early biography: “I remember when word first reached me about ‘this kid with an unbelievable feel for the game … always seems to play the right shot at the right time … but he’s a bit temperamental on court.’ That should remind us of someone. All those characteristics are still there.”

Perhaps the key to his success in the toughest era of his sport has been his almost maddening attention to detail

Sue Mott ghostwrote that book before Murray won the Olympic gold medal in 2012 and three subsequent grand slam titles. However, the point Henman makes is valid still. Murray had not changed at that point in his career and he remains as stubborn, committed and intuitive several years on.

I first saw him play in New York in 2004, the year he beat the cerebral and quirky Ukrainian Sergiy Stakhovsky 6-4, 6-2 to win the boys’ title at the US Open. For all that he had what Henman identified as a natural instinct for the game, there was little to suggest that Murray would prove to be any better than many other prodigies who had washed up on the shores of our collective imagination.

He was frail, for a start. That year, he had spent six months out with a knee injury. After he joined the Tour the following year, he was out for three months with the first signs of the back problems that would plague him until he finally went under the knife eight years later.

Now he is at the peak of his powers. There will be twinges and grimaces, certainly – but the superstructure he has constructed is as strong as it could be. So is his mind. Murray is 29. Those around him are starting to falter, even Djokovic. It could be that the next few years we will see a more dramatic flowering of the most remarkable athlete it has been my pleasure to know.

Questions

1. Look at paragraph one. Identify the sentence structure technique and explain its purpose and effect. (2) 2. Look at paragraph two. a. Identify and analyse the sentence structure technique used in the opening sentence. (2) b. Using the context, explain what the word “chuntering” means. (1) c. What image is the writer trying to create of Andy Murray here? Comment on how the language used does this. (2) 3. Look at paragraph three. Identify and analyse the interesting sentence structure technique used in this paragraph. (2) 4. Look at paragraph 5. Comment on the use of the word “weirdly” and explain what tone it creates. (3) 5. Look at paragraph 6. How does the opening sentence act as a link at this point in the passage? (2) 6. In your own words, explain Tim Henman’s role in Andy Murray’s life. (3) 7. Look at paragraph 12. Identify and analyse the metaphor used in the last sentence of the paragraph. (3) 8. How does the final paragraph act as an effective ending to the passage as a whole? Comment on the main ideas, tone and any other language feature. (4) Article 8 Bartlett For America, Forever David Sims, The Atlantic, May 2016

1 The White House press briefing has been presided over by its share of celebrity guests over the years, but when C.J. Cregg took the podium on April 29, it might’ve marked the first appearance of a fictional character. “Josh is out today, he has ... I believe it’s a root canal?” she quipped, probably referring to the incumbent Press Secretary Josh Earnest—or was it Josh Lyman, who had once stepped in for C.J. after her own dental emergency? Either way, she’d lost none of her poise. “Let’s be honest, I’m better at this than he is anyway,” she joked.

2 The moment was mostly a fun political stunt: The actress Allison Janney, who played the role of Press Secretary C.J. Cregg for seven years on NBC’s hit drama The West Wing, eventually broke character and ceded the stage back to Earnest after briefly speaking about sufferers of opioid abuse. But the gag was also the latest in a long line of enthusiastic throwbacks to a show that depicted a gentler, more idealistic time for Washington D.C.—one where White House staffers could be realistically portrayed as hard-charging, lovable do- gooders. The West Wing has been off the air since 2006, but this unfulfilled desire for harmony and efficacy in the political process is perhaps why there’s been more nostalgia for the fictional Jed Bartlet administration than for any real one in recent memory.

3 Though Janney was only in character for a couple of minutes, the sight of her behind the podium talking to reporters felt particularly meta—even for a show whose fictional elements have so often bled into, or influenced, reality. The West Wing, which debuted in 1999, is now old enough that it surely inspired some of the younger staffers in the Obama administration to get into politics. And when the show intrudes into the real world, it does so in ways partly playful and partly serious: Back in 2008, the fictional Democratic President Bartlet (Creggs’s boss) even “endorsed” Obama in Maureen Dowd’s New York Times op-ed column, via a peculiar dream dialogue conjured by the show’s creator Aaron Sorkin.

4 Since airing its series finale almost a decade ago, The West Wing has remained in the public consciousness, thanks to its easy availability on Netflix and an evolving world of Internet fandom, including a slew of popular Twitter accounts imitating the show’s main characters. Now, the actual cast is getting more involved with the nostalgia boom. In a recent episode of The Late Late Show, the host James Corden did a walk-and-talk sketch with Janney (back as Cregg), this time accompanied by a white-haired Bradley Whitford as Bartlet’s Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman. In March, the actor Joshua Malina (who played Will Bailey on the show’s later seasons) and the composer Hrishikesh Hirway launched The West Wing Weekly, a recap podcast that tackles an episode a week.

5 Malina is now a regular on Scandal, one of a new wave of popular shows that present a darker side of Washington than The West Wing did—and that reflect the more cynical view many Americans today have of the political process. Scandal has always highlighted its president’s human weaknesses: Fitzgerald Grant is a philanderer who had the election stolen for him and possesses little actual power. He’s also committed murder, as has House of Cards’s Frank Underwood. 6 Compared to those shows, The West Wing exudes an almost cartoonish optimism about the power of politics to work for the common good. “[The West Wing] is a little too gentle for the sort of the cable landscape we’re used to now, in terms of an hour-long drama,” Malina told Vulture in an interview about the podcast. “That’s part of what’s so great about rewatching it. It does feel like a palate cleanser from the world of Breaking Bad and Sopranos.” Of course, The West Wing, for all its merits, is still high fantasy. Amid growing disenchantment with the 2016 presidential race, where the two leading candidates are likely to be the most unpopular ever nominated by their parties, it’s become easier to understand why even Obama White House officials are looking backwards—or to a D.C. that never really existed.

7 In the end, any administration’s achievements will lack the scripted magic of the The West Wing, where insurmountable problems can be conquered in the writer’s room. Look at what the Bartlet administration accomplished in its two terms: One episode brokers peace between Israel and Palestine, another “solves” Social Security’s fiscal insolvency, and a third confirms a controversial liberal as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. In the show’s earlier days, progress came more slowly, and episodes would end with the staff grinding their teeth at the seeming impossibility of enacting gun-control legislation or making college education free for all. Over the seasons, those achievements started to stack up, effectively enshrining The West Wing’s romantic view of Washington. But the real melancholy is the fact that America’s political heroes can only exist in a dream sequence. When they actually take the stage at the White House, they quickly have to break character.

Questions

1. Who do you think is the intended audience for this article? a. How do you know this? 2. What is the purpose of this article? a. How do you know? 3. What is the tone of the opening paragraph? What word(s) lead you to think this? 4. Using the rest of the paragraph, what does the word “ceded” mean? 5. What does the writer mean by the phrase “a long line of enthusiastic throwbacks”? 6. What two reasons does the writer give for the “nostalgia” felt by the American public? 7. How are the cast getting involved in the “nostalgia boom”? 8. In what ways in ‘Scandal’ more cynical than ‘The West Wing’? 9. What does the writer mean by “almost cartoonish optimism”? 10. What is the tone of paragraph 6? How do you know? 11. How do the final two sentences act as an effective ending to the article as a whole? 12. What are the main ideas of this article?

Article 9

To the First Lady, With Love By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The New York Times Style Magazine,

She had rhythm, a flow and swerve, hands slicing air, body weight moving from foot to foot, a beautiful rhythm. In anything else but a black American body, it would have been contrived. The three-quarter sleeves of her teal dress announced its appropriateness, as did her matching brooch. But the cut of the dress scorned any “future first lady” stuffiness; it hung easy on her, as effortless as her animation. And a brooch, Old World style accessory, yes, but hers was big and ebulliently shaped and perched center on her chest. Michelle Obama was speaking. It was the 2008 Democratic National Convention. My anxiety rose and swirled, watching and willing her to be as close to perfection as possible, not for me, because I was already a believer, but for the swaths of America that would rather she stumbled.

She first appeared in the public consciousness, all common sense and mordant humour, at ease in her skin. She had the air of a woman who could balance a checkbook, and who knew a good deal when she saw it, and who would tell off whomever needed telling off. She was tall and sure and stylish. She was reluctant to be first lady, and did not hide her reluctance beneath platitudes. She seemed not so much unique as true. She sharpened her husband’s then-hazy form, made him solid, more than just a dream.

But she had to flatten herself to better fit the mould of first lady. At the law firm where they met before love felled them, she had been her husband’s mentor; they seemed to be truly friends, partners, equals in a modern marriage in a new American century. Yet voters and observers, wide strips of America, wanted her to conform and defer, to cleanse her tongue of wit and barb. When she spoke of his bad morning-breath, a quirky and humanizing detail, she was accused of emasculating him.

Because she said what she thought, and because she smiled only when she felt like smiling, and not constantly and vacuously, America’s cheapest caricature was cast on her: the Angry Black Woman. Women, in general, are not permitted anger — but from black American women, there is an added expectation of interminable gratitude, the closer to groveling the better, as though their citizenship is a phenomenon that they cannot take for granted.

“I love this country,” she said to applause. She needed to say it — her salve to the hostility of people who claimed she was unpatriotic because she had dared to suggest that, as an adult, she had not always been proud of her country.

Of course she loved her country. The story of her life as she told it was wholesomely American, drenched in nostalgia: a father who worked shifts and a mother who stayed home, an almost mythic account of self-reliance, of moderation, of working-class contentment. But she is also a descendant of slaves, those full human beings considered human fractions by the American state. And ambivalence should be her birthright. For me, a foreign-raised person who likes America, one of its greatest curiosities is this: that those who have the most reason for dissent are those least allowed dissent. Michelle Obama was speaking. I felt protective of her because she was speaking to an America often too quick to read a black woman’s confidence as arrogance, her straightforwardness as entitlement.

She was informal, colloquial, her sentences bookended by the word “see,” a conversational fillip that also strangely felt like a mark of authenticity. She seemed genuine. She was genuine. All over America, black women were still, their eyes watching a form of God, because she represented their image writ large in the world.

Her speech was vibrant, a success. But there was, in her eyes and beneath her delivery and in her few small stumbles, a glimpse of something sombre. A tight, dark ball of apprehension. As though she feared eight years of holding her breath, of living her life with a stone in her gut.

Eight years later, her blue dress was simpler but not as eager to be appropriate; its sheen, and her edgy hoop earrings, made clear that she was no longer auditioning.

Her daughters were grown. She had shielded them and celebrated them, and they appeared in public always picture perfect, as though their careful grooming was a kind of reproach. She had called herself mom-in-chief, and cloaked in that nonthreatening title, had done what she cared about.

She embraced veterans and military families, and became their listening advocate. She threw open the White House doors to people on the margins of America. She was working class, and she was Princeton, and so she could speak of opportunity as a tangible thing. Her program Reach Higher pushed high schoolers to go further, to want more. She jumped rope with children on the White House grounds as part of her initiative to combat childhood obesity. She grew a vegetable garden and campaigned for healthier food in schools. She reached across borders and cast her light on the education of girls all over the world. She danced on television shows. She hugged more people than any first lady ever has, and she made “first lady” mean a person warmly accessible, a person both normal and inspirational and a person many degrees of cool.

She had become an American style icon. Her dresses and workouts. Her carriage and curves. Toned arms and long slender fingers. Even her favored kitten heels, for women who cannot fathom wearing shoes in the halfway house between flats and high heels, have earned a certain respect because of her. No public figure better embodies that mantra of full female selfhood: Wear what you like.

It was the 2016 Democratic Convention. Michelle Obama was speaking. She said “black boy” and “slaves,” words she would not have said eight years ago because eight years ago any concrete gesturing to blackness would have had real consequences.

She was relaxed, emotional, sentimental. Her uncertainties laid to rest. Her rhythm was subtler, because she no longer needed it as her armor, because she had conquered.

The insults, those barefaced and those adorned as jokes, the acidic scrutiny, the manufactured scandals, the base questioning of legitimacy, the tone of disrespect, so ubiquitous, so casual. She had faced them and sometimes she hurt and sometimes she blinked but throughout she remained herself. Michelle Obama was speaking. I realized then that she hadn’t been waiting to exhale these past eight years. She had been letting that breath out, in small movements, careful because she had to be, but exhaling still.

1. Read paragraph 1. a. In your own words, what image does the writer paint of Michelle Obama? (2) b. What is the tone of this paragraph? Back up your answer with evidence from the text. (2) 2. Read paragraph 2. In your own words, explain three ways that the writer describes Michelle Obama. (3) 3. Look at paragraph 4. In your own words, explain what the writer means by “interminable gratitude”. (1) 4. Look at paragraph 6. What tone has the writer created here? Back up your point with evidence from the text. (2) 5. Read paragraph 7. How does the writer show how important she finds Michelle Obama though sentence structure? (2) 6. Read paragraph 10. How does this paragraph act as a link at this point in the passage? (2) 7. Read paragraph 11 and 12. How does paragraph 12 continue the idea of Michelle Obama as the “mom-in-chief”? (4) 8. How does the final paragraph act as an effective conclusion to the article? (2)

Article 10 For the Potter generation, Alan Rickman’s death marks the end of childhood.

When the sad news of Alan Rickman’s passing hit the internet on Thursday, his name quickly climbed Twitter’s trending topics, as did the names of several of his most famous characters. However, for those not steeped in the lore of Harry Potter, the film franchise that made Rickman familiar to millions of younger people since it began in 2001, one of those trending phrases would have seemed 5. baffling: “#Always”.

It’s taken from the key moment for Rickman’s character, Professor Snape, the anti-hero of JK Rowling’s seven-book series on which the films are based, and the point that reduced many of us to floods of tears.

The motivation behind the character’s actions for the past seven books/eight films is finally revealed: 10. he has been in love with Lily Evans, Harry Potter’s mother, since childhood, and since her death his life has been devoted to protecting her son, someone whose very existence – as the living embodiment of her rejection of him – causes him pain.

Snape’s whole life has been conflict and pain and risk. When he’s asked in his final days whether he still cares for her “after all this time”, his answer is: “Always.” It’s among the last words he speaks in 15. the series – revealed after his death – and is a totemic moment for his character.

For Potter fans, that one word became a meme all of its own, the key to Snape’s heroism. I’ve seen it on T-shirts, necklaces and tattoos, a reminder of the moment our hearts broke for Severus Snape.

For those for whom the world of Harry Potter was a silly bit of froth happening in the background, it’s hard to understand how much Snape meant to a certain generation: kids who discovered the books or 20. the films at school, and were in their 20s by the time the series was completed.

He was ever present in their lives, first as a menace, then as a threat – then, you realise, as a protector. The character developed as the viewers and readers did, and became more complex and divisive – just as the world of adulthood is all shades of grey, compared with the right and wrong certainties of childhood.

25. Harry himself starts the story seeing Snape as the ultimate villain, a man who treats him unfairly, glares at him for no reason, and might actually be trying to kill him. By the end of the series, he admits Snape was the “bravest man I ever knew”.

In between those two points we, and Harry, are constantly ambiguous about Snape’s loyalties, never letting go of the idea that he might be the viper in the nest. Hogwarts is a comforting retreat for 30.readers, but Snape keeps us on our toes – he’s the villain, then he isn’t; then he’s pointlessly cruel, then he’s a victim; then a murderer and a traitor; and, ultimately, a tragic hero.

Once we establish that Snape wasn’t a killer, at the end of book one (“he does seem the type, doesn’t he?” says the actual villain, Quirril), he settles into the background as the most familiar of school tropes: the strict teacher. Snape becomes a sort of proxy for every stern blowhard who ever gave us 35. lines or seemed overly harsh in the classroom.

In the case of Snape, it is all legitimate too: he is horrible to Harry, and our resentment grows with his. Snape is genuinely cruel, at one point refusing to acknowledge Hermione’s horribly overgrown teeth after a backfiring prank.

The breakthrough comes in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth instalment. We are 40.given a glimpse into Snape’s past, and see that he is horribly bullied by James Potter at school, the father figure Harry always idealised. It is our first crack in the world. Through Snape, we start to see that our heroes can be flawed – that things aren’t always what they seem, that our actions can have consequences. We start to understand Snape. Then he kills Dumbledore, and our world is ripped from under us again.

45. For Potter fans – and Harry Potter fandom is at the core of some Millenials’ formative years – Snape is the heart of the story. Harry is the everyman, the eyes of the audience. But Snape represents the key themes: the power of love as the ultimate driving force, and the importance of repentance and redemption. Ultimately, Snape gives his life not for revenge or hatred, but for love.

This is why the death of Alan Rickman has felt so jarring for the Potter generation. Rickman was 50.Snape – the most perfect piece of casting in the whole series. His unique rhythm and sardonic baritone perfectly epitomised the potions master we had seen in our mind’s eye all along. When Snape gave his life for Harry, for Lily, our hearts broke. And with the passing of Rickman, a small but important piece of childhood died too.

1) In line 3, how does the author suggest that the world of Harry Potter is magical? (2) 2) Look at lines 13-15. In your own words, why was Snape’s life so pivotal to the Harry Potter universe? (3) 3) Look at lines 18-24. In your own words, why will a generation be upset at Alan Rickman’s death? (4) 4) Look at line 29. Which piece of imagery suggests that Snape was the villain of the franchise? (3) 5) Look at lines 30 and 31. Why is the sentence structure on this line so effective? (2) 6) Look at lines 45-48. In your own words, what does Snape represent to the average Harry Potter fan? (3) 7) Look at lines 49- 53. What words does the author use to show the reader that Rickman was an excellent piece of casting? (4) 8) What is the author trying to say about the passing of Alan Rickman? Summarise the points made in the article (4)

Article 12 Scotland needs to clean up its tourism act

Journalist Alan Taylor suggests that the Scottish tourist industry needs to improve in several respects.

One cold and wintry night not so long ago I disembarked from a bus in Ullapool. It was more than an hour late which meant that I'd missed the last connection to Lochinver: When I pointed this out to the driver, he was as sympathetic as a traffic warden. The only balm he could offer was that 'there are worse places to be stranded in than Ullapool'.

Happily for me, this turned out to be true. As the heavens darkened and a Wagnerian growl announced the imminence of rain, I made my way to the Ceilidh Place where a room was soon found and a cheerful glass put in front of me.

When I relayed my experience of public transport to locals none reacted with surprise. Rather I got the impression that I would have had a better chance of reaching my destination had I travelled on a sledge pulled by huskies.

Therein lie the polar points of Scottish tourism. On the one hand, there is the attitude of those who couldn't care less, who regard service as a synonym for servility, who treat customers as if they are something smelly stuck to their shoe. Meanwhile, there are those who take satisfaction from other people's pleasure, who embrace the 'Welcome to Scotland' slogan, who are enthusiastic ambassadors for their country and will attempt to kill you with kindness.

I was reminded of my Ullapool sojourn by the fact that we are in the midst of Scottish Tourism which has apparently been going since 2006. Where have I been all these years?

Its theme is 'competing for growth', a catchphrase as meaningless as it is fatuous. In order to achieve this there will be pow-wows in smart hotels, an 'industry dinner' and a soiree at Holyrood, at all which the importance of tourism to the Scottish economy, which is put at £11 billion, will doubtless be incanted and applauded. Please take my excuses as read.

As a constant tourist in my own country I have my own thoughts on how we may compete for growth, none of which, I hasten to say, is concerned with what Visit Scotland and the numerous 'agencies' involved in the industry do or don't do.

First, and perhaps foremost, it is worth saying that standards have generally improved over the last few years. Bad service and bad manners, which used to be the norm, are today so unusual they are remarkable.

Gone, hopefully, are the days when one - that is, yours truly - could turn up thirsty, ravenous and exhausted at an inn in the Borders after a 20-mile hike only to be told it was your own fault for walking so far. Oh, and by the way, don't even think about ordering food. The kitchen closed two months ago when the chef ran off with the chambermaid.

Having said that, I was recently in a swanky hotel in Pitlochry where the barman seemed to think he was dispensing drinks from his personal cellar; so reluctant was he to serve guests.

If that anecdote is illustrative of anything it is that we are more likely to pass on instances of bad practice than we are to make recommendations. Hence the popularity of Trip Advisor and other websites devoted to detailing the good, the bad and the ugly in the tourist trade.

But while there will always be places that make Fawlty Towers seem like Gleneagles there is undoubtedly room for improvement which ought to be highlighted during Scottish Tourism Week.

Among the biggest beefs of the complainers is cleanliness. Is it too much to ask that showers are fuzz-free, carpets swept and furniture dusted? In many establishments it would appear it is.

The same goes for the countryside, parts of which make a landfill site look tidy. Thus attractive hedgerows and rural byways are rendered hideous by deposits of rubbish. It is the same with trees, in many of which you can't spot nesting birds for rotting plastic bags.

This is not attractive to me or to tourists, many of whom are drawn to Scotland for its hitherto glorious scenery. Have if you must your tourism week. But what's urgently needed to keep the foreign legions coming is a national spring clean.

From the Herald, March 2012

QUESTIONS

1. Re-read paragraph 1. Identify and analyse two images used by the writer and explain how these help make his point about the bus driver. (4) 2. Read paragraph 2. Explain, in your own words, what happened to the writer once he made it to Ceilidh Place. (2) 3. Read paragraph 3. What tone has the author created here? Give evidence from the text to support your answer. (3) 4. Read paragraph 4. What are the main points the writer makes about the different attitudes towards tourists in Scotland? (4) 5. Read paragraph 5. What impression is the writer trying to create by using a rhetorical question? (2) 6. Read paragraph 6. What is the writer’s attitude towards the Scottish Tourism Week? Back up your answer with evidence from the text. (4) 7. Read paragraph 7. How does this paragraph act as a link at this point in the passage? (3) 8. Read paragraph 8. How has “standards…generally improved” in Scotland? (2) 9. Read paragraph 9. How does this paragraph develop the argument made in the previous paragraph? (2) 10. Read the last four paragraphs. What does Scotland need to do to improve the tourist experience? (2) 11. Read the final paragraph. How does this paragraph act as an effective conclusion? (2)

Article 13 School’s out: how Britain embraced the junior prom by Sally Williams

It is 11 am on a Thursday in mid-July and Lucy Holloway, I 6, has an appointment at CC's Hair Salon in Rainham, Essex. Lucy has agonised for several weeks about her hair. Preceding her arrival at the salon's door were at least twenty phone calls with her best friend.

Lucy is getting ready for a special occasion that so far has cost about £500 (hair, evening dress, shoes clutch bag, nails, jewellery, spray-tan, limousine hire).

In effort and cost you might presume Lucy is getting married. In fact, it's more important than that.

'You can have as many weddings as you want, but you only get one prom,’ she says.

Ten years ago we did not have school proms to mark the milestones of GCSEs and A-levels. We had end-of-term discos. Now elaborate 'passing out' celebrations have become a cultural phenomenon, stoking passions and rivalries, and refashioning our sense of what a school party should be. More than 85 per cent of schools in Britain hold school proms, which range from no-frills dinners in school halls to tailor-made extravaganzas in five-star hotels.

Dr Caroline Schuster, a chartered psychologist, believes the appeal and the distinctive red- carpet look - long frocks and limousines - come not only from US sitcoms and soaps but also from a world where schoolgirls measure themselves against film stars and supermodels. Proms, she says, are an incitement to celebrity-fantasy. 'It gives you the chance to become as near a celebrity as you can.’

The prom season is short: only four weeks from mid-June to mid-July. Yet the prom business was estimated to be worth about £80 million last year. The average cost was £244 per person, with one in ten spending more than £500 and two per cent splashing out more than £1,500, according to a survey by Holiday Inn.

The industry now includes 'prom management' companies, websites providing a database and venues and the Prom Show, a promotional fair. The prom has also helped to transform the fortunes of Moss Bros. Two years ago, the company had losses of £2.8 million. Last year, the menswear chain was back in profit, thanks, in part, to its prom hire business.

* * *

By 6 pm, several 16-year-olds are standing in the magisterial surroundings of the Pavilion Suite at Orsett Hall. The unceasing rain hasn't dampened the excitement as the teenagers flood in to inspect the formally laid tables, helium balloons and glittery fairy lights. The prevailing smell is of hairspray and scent. Friends who normally wear shapeless uniforms and dirty trainers are transformed into exotic peacocks in huge-skirted ballgowns, teetering heels and heavy makeup.

I'm taken aback with the effort. This year's prom has involved weekly meetings since September of the prom committee, made up of students and teachers, who voted on the theme. Fairy tales, princes and princesses, the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics were rejected in favour of Viva Las Vegas with its opportunities for casino glamour although there is no question of gambling: only a magician chocolate playing cards and helium balloons in the shape of hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades.

Every detail has been overseen by the head of year. She is a believer in the prom as a rite of passage, centring on fun, dressing up and shared history 'This is a celebration of their time with us.' The principal of the school sees the prom more as a social opportunity, a chance to open up the mystical world of formal dining. There will be children who will never go to a formal function like this, so it is a lifetime experience for them. And for those who do find themselves moving in such circles, this will mean they will have learnt how to cope with it.'

By 10 pm the dancing has started. 'It's coming to an end,’ Lucy says of the prom and also of five years with five close friends. Only two will be at the same college as her next year.'I love how you accepted me and didn't laugh over my obsessions,’ writes one in Lucy's end-of-year book. 'How we shared books; how we managed to have endless conversations about random stuff'.

I leave six girls swaying on vertiginous heels, teetering on the edge of adulthood.

Questions 1. The passage begins by concentrating in detail on one particular girl. Why do you think the writer decided to do this? (2)

2. Comment on one aspect of the sentence structure of lines 4-5 (paragraph 2), which helps to convey the importance of the event to Lucy. (2) 3. Explain how the writer uses the metaphor ‘milestones’ (line 8) to support her point about the significance of GCSE and A-level exams. (3) 4. In your own words, summarise the reasons why school proms appeal to young people, according to lines 13-16. (3) 5. Referring to lines 17-24, explain three ways in which the rise of the school prom has had economic benefits. (3) 6. Look at lines 25-29. Explain how the author uses contrasting word choice to emphasise how special the event is for the teenagers attending. (4) 7. Read lines 30-34. Identify the author’s attitude to the planning of the event and give evidence to support your answer. (3) 8. With reference to lines 35-40, summarise in your own words the various ways in which the school staff consider the event to be of benefit to those involved. (6) 9. Comment o the image used in the final sentence (line 45) and explain how it is an effective way of bringing the passage to a conclusion. (4)

Article 13 The price of bacon by David Derberyshire

There is something irresistible about the smell of fried bacon. It's one of the delights of being a meat eater and possibly the single most common reason why weak-willed vegetarians throw in the towel. For some, the joy of bacon lies in rashers squeezed between factory- sliced white bread and smeared with tomato ketchup. For others, it's the crisp slice of streaky bacon on the British breakfast plate, ready to be dipped into a runny yellow yolk or a dollop of baked beans. And our love affair shows no sign of fading. A recent poll of Britain's best- loved 100 foods saw bacon at number one, beating chicken into second place and knocking chocolate into third. But while one in ten Britons claims bacon as their favourite, are those rashers that sizzle so seductively in the pan what they seem?

One problem may lie in a form of iron called haem found naturally in red meats such as beef, lamb and pork. It can trigger the formation of substances called N-nitroso compounds (NOCs) in the body which can damage the lining of the bowel. Some types of NOCs have been linked to bowel cancer.

Another health risk comes from the salt, sodium nitrite and potassium nitrate which are added to bacon. These last two chemicals stop bacteria and keep the meat bright red so it looks fresh. However, nitrites and nitrates have also been shown to increase the risk of cancer in animals. Amid such health fears, the British pig industry says it has cut down the level of potentially harmful additives. But there is a limit to how much can be reduced. 'If you go too far, it stops becoming a cured meat: said a spokesman for the British Pig Association. 'Instead it's fresh meat and it doesn't keep so long.’

However, preservatives aren't the only dangerous additives in bacon. Traditional smoky bacon gets its distinctive taste by being hung over smouldering wood chips. You'd be forgiven for assuming that smoked food - which has been eaten for thousands of years - is harmless. But some studies have shown that smoked foods contain cancer-causing compounds which are formed when wood burns, although the evidence linking smoked meats and cancer is not very strong.

Another problem is that cheap cuts are not treated with real smoke but are often sprayed with a 'natural liquid smoke extract' (made by condensing real smoke into a powder or liquid and mixing it with water). When the European Food Safety Authority investigated 11 of these smoke extracts in 2010, it found that one could be harmful to people, while several were dangerously close to levels which may cause harm.

Perhaps the most surprising additive to bacon is water which is used to make rashers look bigger: The water is the reason why cheap rashers ooze so much white fluid in the frying pan - and then shrink. Revealingly, a survey by the consumer magazine Which? found that rashers sold by leading supermarkets had more than I 0 per cent added water:

Which? Also found that the labels which signal the bacon's country of origin are very misleading. Until supermarkets signed up to a new voluntary code, the practice was widespread to label as 'British' meat that had been raised in Holland or Germany because it had been cured in the UK. And this issue raises another problem with your morning rasher: British pigs are among the best looked after in the world. But less than 40 per cent of the pork we eat is British. The rest comes from countries where welfare standards are often appalling.

Meanwhile, the British Pig Association says shoppers should not worry about pig welfare in the UK and that 94 per cent of our farms are part of an assurance scheme that guarantees high standards of welfare - from the size of pens to the amount of food and play material for pigs. Farms are inspected each year and get a vet visit at least four times a year.

But despite such attempts to reassure consumers, Compassion in World Farming says British intensively-reared pigs still suffer because most are housed indoors and do not get enough mental stimulation. With a lack of bedding or material to snuffle around in, pigs often turn aggressively on each other Although farmers are no longer meant to dock piglets' tails routinely, many continue to do so in order to prevent bite damage. And many piglets have their teeth ground down to stop biting - a procedure that can be painful. In the UK, new mothers are routinely confined in farrowing crates. The crates are designed to stop sows crushing their young. But unable to build a nest or move around the sows become frustrated and stressed, according to the RSPCA.

Amid all these welfare concerns, the best route for shoppers is to hunt down specialist bacons - the pricier dry cured rashers from organic or free range pigs. Of course these are more expensive. So when it comes to enjoying Britain's favourite food, there's a cost to your pocket if you want it guilt free - and a cost to your health if you don't.

Questions:

1. Show how the writer engages the reader’s attention in the opening paragraph (lines 1-8) by appealing to a number of senses. Comment on the writer’s word choice and support your answer with quotations. (4). 2. Choose one of the following images: “weak-willed vegetarians throw in the towel” (line 2) “our love affair shows no sign of fading (lines 5-6) “…bacon at number one, beating chicken into second place and knocking chocolate into third” (lines 6-7) Explain fully why the image you have chosen is effective in expressing the writer’s meaning. (3) 3. With close reference to the text, explain clearly how the last sentence in paragraph 1 (“But while one in ten…what they seem?”) acts as a link in the structure of the writer’s argument. (3)

4. Look at lines 9 – 11. With close reference to the text, explain how far the writer has convinced you that ‘haem’ is dangerous. (4) 5. In the next four paragraphs (lines 12-31), the writer looks at things that are sometimes added to produce bacon. Using your own words, summarise these and their dangers. (6) 6. In the next section of the article (lines 32-49), the writer considers how pigs are reared and how humane their treatment is. He summarises the views of the British Pig Association and the Compassion in World Framing organisation. Which side do you feel the writer most favours? Clearly state your reasons looking at: a) the structure of the writer’s argument and b) the writer’s language and word choice. (6) 7. The title of the article is ‘The price of bacon’. Think of the possible meanings implied by the title. Explain in some detail how it is appropriate for the passage as a whole. (4)