Reading non-fiction flashcards
12 cards on Reading non-fiction: the key points, worked examples and the slips to watch. Swipe through them, or print them.
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Reading non-fiction
Facts and attitudes in non-fiction
How do you find both the explicit facts and the implicit attitudes in a non-fiction text?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Facts and attitudes in non-fiction
Key points
- Explicit: what the writer states outright, such as places, dates and events.
- Implicit: what the writer suggests, such as an attitude they assume, admire or quietly resent.
- The first question tests retrieval: on AQA, you choose four true statements about named lines.
- Check each statement against the exact words, not your memory of the passage.
Watch out
A statement that is nearly right is false: one changed word, like ‘always’ for ‘often’, makes it untrue.
Reading non-fiction
Reading between the lines
How can a single word reveal a non-fiction writer’s attitude?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Reading between the lines
Key points
- Faint praise or a flat word can hint at disappointment the writer never states.
- An adverb can carry a complaint: ‘eventually’ or ‘finally’ suggests a long, annoying wait.
- Ask what the writer assumes, admires or quietly resents, and find the word that shows it.
Example
‘The view from the room was pleasant enough.’
‘Enough’ hints that the writer expected more: the praise is grudging.
Watch out
Taking faint praise at face value misses the attitude: ‘adequate’ is not a compliment.
Reading non-fiction
The summary question
What does the summary question want, and what should you leave out of it?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
The summary question
Key points
- It asks what both texts show about a shared subject, such as the differences between two journeys.
- It is about content, what the texts say, not how the writers say it.
- Use both sources, pairing a point from one with a point from the other.
- Synthesis means drawing the information from both texts together.
Watch out
Analysing language in the summary question earns nothing there: save it for the language question.
Reading non-fiction
Writing a synthesis paragraph
How do you build a summary paragraph that draws two texts together?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Writing a synthesis paragraph
Key points
- Make a point that links the two texts, then give brief evidence from each.
- After each piece of evidence, add an inference: what it suggests.
- Link the texts with ‘whereas’, ‘similarly’ or ‘in contrast’.
Example
Both writers find the city crowded, but only the modern writer enjoys it.
The Victorian visitor is ‘jostled and choked’, which suggests he feels trapped.
In contrast, today’s tourist calls the crowds ‘buzzing’, suggesting excitement.
Watch out
A list of details from each source with no inference stays in the lower marks.
Reading non-fiction
The language question in non-fiction
How do you answer the language question on a non-fiction text?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
The language question in non-fiction
Key points
- Check which source and which lines the question names, and stay inside them.
- Quote briefly, name the method, then explain its effect on the reader.
- Link each effect to what the writer wants from the reader: the purpose.
Example
The writer calls the old pier ‘a rotting skeleton’.
The metaphor makes the seaside seem dead and abandoned, so the reader shares her sadness at its decline.
Watch out
Writing about the other source, in a question that names only one, can’t be credited there.
Reading non-fiction
Emotive language and statistics
How do emotive language, statistics and direct address work on a reader?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Emotive language and statistics
Key points
- Emotive language: words chosen to stir strong feelings, such as pity, anger or guilt.
- Name the feeling the words aim for, then what the writer wants it to make the reader do.
- A statistic sounds like proof; a shocking one turns a private worry into a big problem.
- Direct address (‘you’) pulls the reader in and makes them feel responsible.
Example
Emotive: ‘lonely, forgotten pensioners shivering in unheated flats’
Statistic: ‘Last winter, 312 people slept on the streets of our town.’
Watch out
‘The statistic shows facts’ fits any text: say what this figure makes the reader feel.
Reading non-fiction
Irony, lists and tone
How do irony and lists shape a non-fiction writer’s tone?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Irony, lists and tone
Key points
- Irony: saying the opposite of what you mean, often for humour or criticism.
- A long list of complaints builds a sense of mounting outrage or frustration.
- Tone is the attitude a voice conveys: name it with a precise adjective, such as wry or scathing.
- These methods work the same way in a modern text and in a 19th-century one.
Example
Irony: after a five-hour delay, ‘the railway had truly outdone itself’.
List: ‘the noise, the dirt, the endless queues and the rudeness of everyone in them’
Watch out
Missing irony means reading the writer backwards: check whether the praise fits the facts.
Reading non-fiction
Reading a 19th-century text
How should you tackle a 19th-century non-fiction text that sounds old-fashioned?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Reading a 19th-century text
Key points
- On AQA, one source is from the 19th century and the other from the 20th or 21st.
- Read the older text twice, jotting a few words beside each paragraph to say what it is about.
- Expect long, formal sentences and some old words: work out meanings from the context.
- Its techniques work just like modern ones: lists, emotive words, irony, direct address.
- Its date is part of the writer’s perspective: what they assume may be typical of their time.
Watch out
Skimming the older source because it feels hard means missing what the writer means.
Reading non-fiction
Purpose and audience
How do purpose and audience shape the choices in a non-fiction text?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Purpose and audience
Key points
- Purpose is what the text sets out to do: persuade, inform, advise, argue or entertain.
- Audience is who it is written for: their age, interests and what they already know.
- Ask who the text is for, and what it wants them to do or feel.
- Purpose explains almost every choice: link each method you analyse back to it.
One city, two purposes
A travel guide, to entertain, describes the night market’s food and music.
A charity appeal, to raise money, describes a child queuing at a food bank.
Watch out
Naming the purpose and stopping there earns little: show how it shapes the writer’s choices.
Reading non-fiction
Forms of non-fiction
Which forms of non-fiction might you meet, and what does each one usually do?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Forms of non-fiction
Key points
- Article: informs or argues for readers of a newspaper, magazine or website.
- Memoir or autobiography: looks back on the writer’s own life, shaped by hindsight.
- Diary or letter: personal and written at the time, for the writer alone or for one reader.
- Travel writing: entertains and informs through the writer’s own experience of a place.
- Speech: written to be heard, so it speaks to its audience directly.
Watch out
A memoir looks back with hindsight; a diary is written at the time: don’t mix them up.
Reading non-fiction
Inferences the text supports
What makes an inference about a non-fiction writer well grounded?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Inferences the text supports
Key points
- Every claim about the writer’s meaning needs words from the text behind it.
- Stay within what the evidence shows: one word can reveal an attitude, but not a life story.
- Precise and modest beats sweeping and unsupported.
Example
Grounded: calling the crowd ‘a swarm’ suggests she finds them mindless and faintly threatening.
Too far: ‘a swarm’ proves she hates all people.
Watch out
Claims about the writer’s whole life, from one word, can’t be supported by the text.
Reading non-fiction
Effects tied to this text
Why is ‘it makes the reader want to read on’ a weak comment, and what should you write instead?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Effects tied to this text
Key points
- A comment that would fit any text shows no reading of this one.
- Say what this word makes the reader feel or think about this subject.
- Then link it to what the writer wants from their audience.
Example
Weak: ‘crammed’ is effective and makes you want to read on.
Strong: ‘crammed’ suggests passengers treated like cargo, so the reader shares the writer’s anger.
Watch out
Calling a word ‘effective’ or ‘interesting’ says nothing until you explain how and why.
Print these cards
Four cards to an A4 sheet, each the size of a standard A6 revision card.
One-sided
Each card prints on one face: the question at the top, the notes under it.
Two-sided
Questions on the front, notes on the back. Print double-sided and flip on the long edge, then cut along the lines.