Extracts and answers

Extract 1

This short extract is from a story called 'Tunes for Bears to Dance To', by Robert Cormier. In the story, Henry works for a Mr. Hairston, who runs a shop.

"Potatoes to bag up," he called over the shoulder of a customer, and Henry made his way down to the cellar, where a bin of potatoes awaited him. He always tried to hurry the job because the cellar was dark and damp and he often heard rats scurrying across the floor. One day, a grey rat squirted out of a bag of potatoes and Henry had leapt with fright, his heart exploding in his chest. He was afraid of a lot of things - the closet door that never stayed closed in his bedroom, spooky movies about vampires - but most of all, the rats.

The question is in two parts, with a quotation used as an introduction.

Extract 2

This short extract is from an account written by an author called Laurie Lee, in which he describes arriving in Spain during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

The people in the kitchen were a people stripped for war-the men smoking beech leaves, the soup reduced to near water; around us hand-grenades hanging on the walls like strings of onions, muskets and cartridge-belts piled in the corner, and open orange-boxes packed with silver bullets like fish. War was still so local then, it was like stepping into another room. And this was what I had come to re-visit. But I was now awash with sleep, hearing the blurred murmuring of voices and feeling the rocks of Spain under my feet. The men's eyes grew narrower, watching the unexpected stranger, and his lumpy belongings drying by the fire.

The question to look at based on this paragraph is again based on having some understanding of figurative language. It has two parts to it.

Extract 3

The following examples are based upon an area which quite often causes problems for pupils, but it is actually more straightforward than you might imagine to answer these types of questions correctly.

These questions concentrate on sentence structure.

Since it is usually the case that pupils do often find these types of questions more difficult, you may want to skip forward and read over the 'How sentences are structured' page in this Bite.

Read this extract from a story called 'Tunes for Bears to Dance To', then answer the question which follows. Mr Hairston, who runs a shop, is talking to his young assistant Henry. At this point in the story, he is making comments about his customers.

"The customer's always right," he proclaimed one day, as if he could read Henry's mind. "But only in the store. When buying. Otherwise, they're only people. Stupid, most of them. Don't even know a bargain when they see one. So, why give them a bargain?"

The question on sentence structure based on this paragraph asks -

Extract 4

The final example in this revision bite offers another example of a sentence structure question. The extract is taken from a book called 'Yaxley's Cat'. A mum and her two children are in a cottage which needs quite a bit of tidying up and her young son, who is quite practical, has succeeded in getting an old water pump to work.

Timothy, who was practical like his Dad, had discovered a drum of paraffin in a lean-to, filled the oil-lamps and got them going. He used more paraffin, in a careful calculating way that brought her out in a cold sweat, to get the fire in the kitchen range going. He had also got the water-pump over the sink to work. At first it had only made disgusting wheezing sounds, but Tim had poured water down it from a butt in the garden, calling it "priming the pump" very professionally. At first it had pumped evil rusty red stuff, but now it ran clear, though Rose had visions of outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, and hurried dashes to the hospital in Norwich, and how would you ever get an ambulance up that path, but if you boiled all the water . . . Now he was winding up all the clocks and really getting them ticking.

You do not need to know about all of these for every close reading text which you will read and answer questions on, but you should have a working knowledge of them, so that if questions on any of them do occur you are prepared.

If you feel confident enough about them at the moment, then read the following short extracts and study the examples of sample questions and answers. For each example given, try to jot down possible answers to the questions before you read the sample answers. A little more practice never goes amiss!