A student is not only a consumer of a text. Your job is to assess and evaluate the ways writers communicate to their readers.
Students should come to a text with an open mind. To get the most out of your reading you should make an imaginative and creative leap of the imagination. Engage with the text. Take a pencil and a note pad and be prepared to annotate the text and make notes in the note pad.
- Annotate - underline and make a note in the margin of the text and or on a separate sheet of paper - where there are references to:
- Important events that progress the text- the plot
- Identify key structural moments in the text
- Give titles to parts and chapters of novels, give titles to acts and scenes of plays, give concise and detailed subtitles to poems
- Make notes and annotate the presentation and development of main characters
- the presentation and development of key relationships
- the main features and function of minor characters
- Make notes and annotate the main features of the narrative voice of the text
- what genre of writing are you reading - for example - descriptive, action, reflection, dialogue, etc
- Pay attention to dialogue - how do characters speak, speak to each other - consider accent, register, idiolect
- The most significant writing techniques in the text - for example - imagery, symbolism, contrast, alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhetoric - see key terms and phrases in the blog
- Identify and comment on settings - this will include locations, weather, seasons, time of day / night
- Identify and note down what you consider to be the main themes of the text - common themes include love, appearance and reality, power, the presentation of men and women, justice, class.
- Comment on the features of genre present in a text - gothic, romance,
- Identify episodes or extracts in a text that link to context - by context I mean extracts that have a direct link or relationship to the broader society the text was written in and how that text is received today.
- Beyond this you should do a little research on the internet and elsewhere on how the text has been received by the literary, cultural establishment - this can include different interpretations and film versions.
Exam Reading
If you are taking an AS in English Literature exam or an A2 English Language and Literature exam or a second year IB English exam - second year students only, you will be reading a lot of material in the exam room.
For the AS English Literature students you will have read and studied this material during the course. For the A2 English Language and Literature students you should have read and annotated the material for the SECTION B question. However you won't have read the SECTION A material before. The IB students won't have seen the material before.
Here are some tips on reading unseen material in the exam room.
You should read the question very carefully before you start reading the unseen material. With a pen you should underline the key words and phrases in the question. This should help you focus on exactly what you are being asked to do. The way you read the unseen material will be affected by the question.
I strongly recommend that you read the unseen material at least twice.
First reading tasks:
- This should be a speedy read.
- What is the main topic of the material?
- How is the material divided up? Paragraphs are a clue to structure and subject development in a text.
- Give each paragraph or section of the text a separate heading or title.
- Identify the narrative voice. Consider such things as 3rd or Ist or 2nd person. Objective or subjective? What are the attitudes and assumptions being commuinicated towards the main topic of the text.
- Identify the genre and the sub genre of the text.
- The genre includes such things as - travel writing, speeches, polemical writing, review, reports, scientific writing, biographical and autobiographical writing.
- Sub genres of writing include - descriptive writing, dialogue, scripted interview, factual writing, reflective writing, fictional writing, argument
Second reading tasks:
- This should be a slower more careful reading. This reading is focusing on details.
- The key task to this reading is technique. You should underline the key writing techniques used to communicate the main theme or topic or addresses the questions in your exam paper.
- As you do this you should note the attitudes and assumptions being communicated by these techniques.
- You must also consider the effects these techniques have on a general reader.
Always read within the time frame given in the exam question.
Give yourself plenty of practice at reading unseen material. You can do this easily by reading a good quality weekend newsparer. Check this link.
Difficult Reading
If you find the reading difficult here are a couple of suggestions:
- Read the text again slowly. Perhaps even twice as slow as you did the first time.
- Check out words and phrases you don't understand in a dictionary and look for examples of the word or phrase in use on the internet.
- Read the text paragraph by paragraph. Identify what seems to you to be key words or phrases in each paragraph. Find other words and phrases that share the same or similar meaning in a dictionary or book of synonyms. Try and summarise the whole paragraph using your own words.
