SQA National 5 English

Close reading of a non-fiction passage asks three things of a reader: to follow what the writer says, to see how the language carries it, and to judge how well it works. Understanding comes first, because analysis of a technique means little if the idea behind it has been missed. The passages are usually taken from newspapers and magazines, so the writing is often a column, a feature or a personal essay rather than a plain report. ## Main ideas and examples A **main idea** is a point the writer is making. An **example**, an anecdote or a piece of expansion is there to support a point, not to be a point in itself. Take a short piece of writing about a town library. > Libraries are the last free public space we have. Nobody asks you to buy anything. I once spent a whole wet afternoon in mine, reading about beekeeping, and left with a library card and a new hobby. Cut them and we lose something no app can replace. The main ideas are that libraries are a free public space, which is a rare thing, and that closing them would be a loss that technology cannot make good. The afternoon spent reading about beekeeping is an anecdote: it shows the first idea at work, but it is not an idea about libraries in general. A reader who lists the beekeeping story as a main point has taken an example for an argument. Ways to tell the two apart: - a main idea can usually be stated without the names, places and numbers that illustrate it; - an example often starts with a signal such as "for…