04/08/2025
For pupils heading towards National 5 exam work (and Higher exam work later) developing a habit of reading newspaper and magazine articles will be very useful preparation for the R.U. A. E. (Reading for Understanding, Analysis and Evaluation) exam paper.
While teachers and tutors can drill you on the different question types and the ways to answer them, reading magazine and newspaper articles regularly will help you to understand the sort of content that turns up in the exam passages, and the sort of language used to present that content.
The exam passages are often opinion pieces: that means articles where the writer expresses an opinion on a (current) event, trend, item or situation. Previous exam passages have included opinions on Peppa Pig, on MacDonalds, on "Frozen" the Disney film and on China's green economy. The questions were based around WHAT the opinion was and HOW that opinion was shown.
Making a point of reading online opinion pieces regularly, with a template to inform your reading work, will mean that you can cope with whatever passage(s) is presented to you in the exam.
Good sources of online magazine and newspaper articles:
Dogo News ( https://www.dogonews.com/)
The Big Issue (https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/)
The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/uk/commentisfree)
The New Scientist (https://www.newscientist.com/section/comment/)
The National Geographic (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/)