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I'm getting a pony for Christmas...
Anita and Me - Illustrating and Supporting Points
This GCSE English Literature quiz looks at illustrating and supporting points in Meera Syal's Anita and Me. One of the most important skills to learn for writing English literature essays is how to provide evidence in support of your argument and the points you make. You can provide this evidence either by making specific reference to moments in the text, or by using direct quotations. Offering evidence to back up your argument is how you make your writing persuasive. By quoting or paraphrasing, you also demonstrate how well you understand the text. These essential skills are certainly not easy to master, however! As ever, you can improve with practice. In addition to selecting the most effective evidence, you will also need to pay attention to detail, grammar and punctuation. By taking this challenging quiz, you will be able to practise these important literary skills. See whether you can identify the answers which have managed to use evidence correctly. When using these skills in essay writing, don’t forget to follow up with explanation and analysis, too!
1.
"It was hot and I could feel beads of sweat and fear threading themselves into a necklace of guilt, just where my itchy flesh met the collar of my starched cotton dress"
Syal compares the discomfort of guilt to the physical sensation of "itchy" flesh caused by wearing a "starched" cotton dress
Syal compares the discomfort of guilt to the physical sensation of "itchy flesh" caused by wearing a "starched cotton dress"
Syal compares the discomfort of guilt to the physical sensation of itchy "flesh" caused by wearing a starched "cotton dress"
Syal compares the discomfort of guilt to the physical sensation of itchy flesh caused by wearing a starched cotton dress
Take a moment to identify the most effective evidence for the point you wish to make
2.
"I held out my crumpled bag of stolen sweets. She peered inside disdainfully, then snatched the bag off me and began walking away as she ate. I watched her go, confused. I could still hear my parents talking inside, their voices now calmer, conciliatory. Anita stopped momentarily, shouting over her shoulder, 'Yow coming then?'"
Anita's contradictory attitude towards Meena, simultaneously condescending and needy, is expressed in her invitation to the younger girl, when she "stopped momentarily, shouting over her shoulder, 'Yow coming then?'"
Anita's contradictory attitude towards Meena, simultaneously condescending and needy, is expressed in her invitation to the younger girl, when she "stopped momentarily, shouting over her shoulder, Yow coming then?"
Anita's contradictory attitude towards Meena, simultaneously condescending and needy, is expressed in her invitation to the younger girl, when she stopped momentarily, shouting over her shoulder, "Yow coming then?"
Anita's contradictory attitude towards Meena, simultaneously condescending and needy, is expressed in her invitation to the younger girl, when she "stopped momentarily", shouting over her shoulder, "Yow coming then?"
Remember to use single quotation marks for dialogue within your chosen quotation
3.
"Mama tried to be a careful motorist, but drove so slowly that the amount of blood pressure she provoked in anyone unlucky enough to be stuck behind her, cancelled out all her good intentions. I had seen her having lessons from papa around the village, caught glimpses of her crawling around a gentle corner or tackling a minor slope as if it were the north face of the Eiger, whilst papa sat impassively next to her, his fingers gripping the dashboard in a parody of a fighter pilot bracing himself for a blast of G-force"
Meena worries that people unlucky enough to be stuck behind her mother while driving might have increased "blood pressure"
Meena describes her dad's calm approach to teaching her mother how to drive: he sits impassively next to his wife while she learns
Meena compares her mother's overly cautious driving to dangerous activities such as mountain climbing or flying a jet
All of the above
Be sure to practise the essential skill of paraphrasing!
4.
"'I'm getting a pony for Christmas,' Anita said airily. She was wearing one of her old summer dresses and a cardigan I guessed must have been her mum's as it hung off her in woolly folds. I felt babyish and cosseted; wrapped up in my hooded anorak and thick socks and realised Anita must have been a lot older than I had previously thought"
Meena does not realise that Anita's old "summer" dress and cast-off "cardigan" show how neglected she is
Meena does not realise that Anita's old summer dress and cast-off cardigan show how neglected she is
Meena sees herself as "babyish and cosseted" in comparison to her more grown-up friend, oblivious to the poverty implied by Anita's ill-fitting and insufficiently warm clothing
Meena sees herself as babyish and cosseted in comparison to her more grown-up friend, oblivious to the poverty implied by Anita's ill-fitting and insufficiently warm clothing
Ordinary words such as "summer" and "cardigan" do not require quotation marks unless their use is interesting or unusual in some way
5.
"I opened my mouth to allow the story sitting on my lips to fly out and dazzle my papa, but stopped myself when I saw how furious he was. Both his eyebrows had joined together so he had one angry black line slashing his forehead like a scar and his usually light brown eyes were now black and impenetrable, glowing dark like embers. Then the enormity of what I had done hit me"
Meena's papa's transformation makes him almost unrecognisable to his daughter, as his eyes change colour, becoming "impenetrable" to her
Meena's papa's transformation makes him almost unrecognisable to his daughter, as his "eyes change colour", becoming "impenetrable" to her
Meena's papa's eyes become impenetrable, making him appear almost as a stranger to his daughter
Meena's papa's "eyes become impenetrable", making him appear almost as a stranger to his daughter
Make sure the quoted words are accurate
6.
"I did not realise quite how starved we were of seeing ourselves somewhere other than in each other's lounges until Reita Faria, the reigning Miss India, won the Miss World contest"
Meena recollects how infrequently Indians were represented on television, and how starved she, her parents, and their friends were by this lack of representation
Meena recollects how infrequently Indians were represented on "television", and how "starved" she, her parents, and their "friends" were by this lack of representation
Meena recollects how infrequently Indians were represented on television, and how "starved" she, her parents, and their friends were by this lack of representation
Meena recollects how infrequently Indians were represented on television, and how "starved she, her parents, and their friends were" by this lack of representation
Sometimes quoting a single key word is enough to make a point
7.
"Anita was still lying on the ground. Trixie had ambled over and was snuffling at clumps of her hair that lay about her head like a broken halo"
Anita's fall from grace as Meena's idol is foreshadowed by the image of her "broken" halo, formed from hair torn out of her head during the "fight"
Anita's fall from grace as Meena's idol is foreshadowed by the image of her broken "halo", formed from "hair" torn out of her "head" during the fight
Anita's fall from grace as Meena's idol is foreshadowed by the image of her broken halo, formed from hair torn out of her head during the fight
Anita's fall from grace as Meena's idol is foreshadowed by the image of her "broken halo", formed from hair torn out of her head during the fight
Remember that ordinary words such as "hair" do not usually need to be enclosed in quotation marks
8.
"I had expected Anita to undergo some sort of emotional crisis since Deirdre's departure but she remained as brassy and belligerent as ever, somehow managing to delegate her trauma workload to her little sister, Tracey"
Meena sees that Tracey bears the most obvious burden of grief at the sisters' abandonment by their mother, believing that Anita "somehow manag[ed] to delegate her trauma workload to her little sister"
Meena sees that the "emotional crisis" from which she expected Anita to suffer has been imposed as a burden on Tracey
Meena can see that Anita's apparent lack of grief at being abandoned by her mother has been transferred instead to Tracey
All of the above
Did you know that you can slightly alter quotations to make them grammatical? In the first response "managing" has been replaced by "manag[ed]". The brackets show which letters have been altered from the original quotation
9.
"But the rest of my body went into emotional shock upon realising that I had been prone in this bed for over six weeks, that summer had handed over to autumn and that winter was standing in the wings sucking a throat lozenge and waiting for his cue"
Meena, as narrator, is shocked by the nearness of winter, personifying the season as an actor "waiting" for his cue to come on stage
Meena, as narrator, is shocked by the nearness of winter, personifying the season as an actor "waiting for his cue" to come on stage
Meena, as narrator, is shocked by the nearness of winter, personifying the season as an actor waiting for his cue to "come on stage"
Meena, as narrator, is shocked by the nearness of "winter", personifying the season as an "actor waiting for his cue" to come on stage
It's not enough to state that an author has used a specific literary device; you should also explain what effect the literary device creates
10.
"I saw that Tollington had lost all its edges and boundaries, that the motorway bled into another road and another and the Bartlett estate had swallowed up the last cornfield and that my village was indistinguishable from the suburban mass that had once surrounded it and had finally swallowed it whole. It was time to let go and I floated back down into my body which, for the first time ever, fitted me to perfection and was all mine"
In Meena's vision, while Tollington loses "all its edges and boundaries", she, by contrast, fits the boundaries of her own body "to perfection"
In Meena's vision, while Tollington loses all its "edges and boundaries", she, by contrast, fits the "boundaries" of her own body to perfection
In Meena's vision, while Tollington loses all its edges and boundaries, she, by contrast, fits the boundaries of her own body "to perfection"
In Meena's vision, while Tollington loses "all its edges and boundaries", she, by contrast, fits the boundaries of her own body to perfection
Be sure to enclose the entire quotation in quotation marks
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