24 February 2018
The Paper 2 component consists of Visual Text and Comprehension. Regardless of the types of posters or advertisements, and comprehension passages, you will definitely encounter standard questions. Once you grasp the answering techniques for these standard questions, Paper 2 really becomes a breeze!
Thus, I would like to share valuable tips to breeze through Paper 2 in this month’s edition of my blog.
Standard Questions found in Visual Text
1. Who is the target audience?
To answer this question, you have to indicate the specific group of people instead of simply indicating a general group of audience.
For example, if a poster is a seminar on nursery schools, do not simply indicate target audience as “parents” but instead, be specific – “parents with young children”. The term “parents” is too general, certainly parents with grown-up children would not be interested for example.
2. What is the objective?
An objective is a purpose or aim. Typically, it can be
- to create awareness or inform
- to gather support
- to promote and sell a product
3. What is the intended message?
This refers to the hidden message, typically behind a phrase or a tagline. The intended message (aka hidden message) behind the tagline “now everyone can fly” is to tell people that “Air Asia fares are so cheap that everyone can afford”.
4. What is the intended effect?
An effect is a consequence brought about by an action. And to answer this question, students have to understand the consequence resulting from looking at a poster or advertisement. In short, it’s about the feelings aroused from the audience.
For example, the intended effect of the poster below would be “to make the audience feel sorry for the dog”.
For more practice, you may head to the nearest bookstores and grab a copy of my Visual Text Comprehension book listed below:
