Approach to Unseen Texts

There is a strategy for approaching unseen texts that you need to respond to in exam situations.

Firstly, read the question before you read the text. Because these tasks are worth few marks, only read to answer the question. Spend your time according to the amount of marks for each question. For two marks you need to answer the question in one paragraph with references to two examples from the text. For three marks, three examples in one or two paragraphs. In the HSC exam, for questions worth five or six marks you need to synthesise and address two texts in relation to each other. This is a mini essay.

In a class assessment task you might be addressing one text at a time. 

There are some literary features which are common to all texts - look for these as your answers. There is no point looking for metaphor or personification if there are no examples in your text. (Of course, if you can comment on metaphor, symbols, imagery, etc, then do so.) Otherwise, look for:
- structure
- voice, persona, tone, point of view
- title
- punctuation (if there is no punctuation, that is noteworthy)
- composer, who constructed a text in context, for audience, a purpose, and to effect a responder
- text type/ genre/ style
- ideas
- literal (exactly what it says)/figurative language (figurative opens up simile, metaphor etc)/inferential (what does it suggest). Every word used falls into these categories. 
- words
- sentences
- layout on the page
- mood/atmosphere
- representations
- how the composer positions the reader and why
- also look for patterns and repetitions - they are noteworthy.

Your answer should address What (describe), How (explain) and Why (analyse). For the question worth the most marks you should evaluate the effectiveness of the techniques, ie, make a judgement.

Yr 11 Adv: Narratives that Shape our World - Resources

Here are some focus questions for this module:

- How does narrative shape our understanding of the world?

- How do representation of cultures, ideas and ideologies in narratives shape our positions in the world?

- How does narrative shape our ideas about identity, belonging and who we are?

- In what ways are characters in texts imaginative rehearsals for ways of living?

- Can an unreliable character be a reliable narrator?

- How is narrative point of view used to create authority in texts?

Teachers can use a range of texts, chosen by a theme or idea. At some schools teachers are using texts that used to be on the HSC prescribed text list but are now no longer. They do this because the texts are available, however, these texts cannot be taught in same way as taught in the old HSC.

For example, if using The Great Gatsby and the sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the focus must be on the texts as narratives that shape our world, rather than as Mod A: Comparative Study of Texts and Context - Intertextual Perspectives. Both texts can be read in terms of ideas about romantic love, mortality and hope, however, the texts must now be taught in terms of the new rubric. It needs to cover all the core principles of literary devices (more to come!), ie, close study of texts, as well as how stories impact our idea of ourselves. You can relate this to who gets to tell the stories now; how social media had connected people around the world to share their stories; how people appeal to stories of the past for their identity; how this concept has been challenged, and what the political implications are for these ideas

Key is this: In this module, students explore a range of narratives from the past and the contemporary era that illuminate and convey ideas, attitudes and values. They consider the powerful role of stories and storytelling as a feature of narrative in past and present societies, as a way of: connecting people within and across cultures, communities and historical eras; inspiring change or consolidating stability; revealing, affirming or questioning cultural practices; sharing collective or individual experiences; or celebrating aesthetic achievement.

So, in The Great Gatsby and the sonnets of Barrett Browning, what are the values of their contexts, how have their stories been used, and how do they fit with our values today? You can argue that the representation of romantic love in these texts is flawed and damaging. How do these texts tell us about who we are today? What are our views about romantic love, identity, mortality, expectations for happiness in life, and how are these ideas valued according to different contexts? What were the original contexts? For each text, how has context influenced the text? Who was the original audience? How did they react to the text? What values or ideas does the text present? What languages choices are made? How do these language choices create the message of the text? Do these values and ideas change in new or modern contexts? How and why? How do you think your reaction to the texts differs from the original audiences' reaction? (This is called Reception Studies)

Next post....more on resources for Gatsby and Barrett Browning

Yr 11 Adv: Narratives That Shape our World

The Advanced course Mod A: Narratives that Shape our World aims to teach students to think about the purpose of storytelling in a broad way. Students consider the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. Units can be focus on stories of nationhood, culture, ideologies, our aspirations, and how stories can be used to include or exclude people, as individuals or as communities. Stories can be written, valued and rewritten. Canons can be challenged or championed; countercanons can critique canons. Is it possible for groups to 'own' stories?

Let's look at what the syllabus says!

Module A: Narratives that Shape our World

In this module, students explore a range of narratives from the past and the contemporary era that illuminate and convey ideas, attitudes and values. They consider the powerful role of stories and storytelling as a feature of narrative in past and present societies, as a way of: connecting people within and across cultures, communities and historical eras; inspiring change or consolidating stability; revealing, affirming or questioning cultural practices; sharing collective or individual experiences; or celebrating aesthetic achievement. Students deepen their understanding of how narrative shapes meaning in a range of modes, media and forms, and how it influences the way that individuals and communities understand and represent themselves.

Students analyse and evaluate one or more print, digital and/or multimodal texts to explore how narratives are shaped by the context and values of composers (authors, poets, playwrights, directors, designers and so on) and responders alike. They may investigate how narratives can be appropriated, reimagined or reconceptualised for new audiences. By using narrative in their own compositions students increase their confidence and enjoyment to express personal and public worlds in creative ways.

Students investigate how an author’s use of textual structures, language and stylistic features are crafted for particular purposes, audiences and effects. They examine conventions of narrative, for example setting, voice, point of view, imagery and characterisation and analyse how these are used to shape meaning. Students also explore how rhetorical devices enhance the power of narrative in other textual forms, including persuasive texts. They further develop and apply the conventions of syntax, spelling, punctuation and grammar for specific purposes and effect.

Students work individually and collaboratively to evaluate and refine their own use of narrative devices to creatively express complex ideas about their world in a variety of modes for a range of purposes and critically evaluate the use of narrative devices by other composers.

Next post....what this looks like.

General Sample Essay Questions 1

By senior years students should be able to write essays in response to these questions to demonstrate their understanding of the core principles in the study of literature. You should be able to write an essay in response to each of these questions by the end of Year 11 Preliminary course.

1. Literary analysis is the examination of how the component parts of a text contribute to the meaning of the whole. Demonstrate how this applies to a text you have studied.

2. The study of literature is the examination of how writers manipulate language to create an experience for readers. Discuss.

3. In order to enjoy literature a reader needs to be open to ascribing meaning to texts. Discuss.

4. The senior English course teaches how literary forms and features serve functions that contribute to the meaning of texts. Discuss.

5. Writers create texts for specific purposes and employ literary techniques to support those purposes. Discuss.

6. A close study of the various elements of a text and an understanding of the relationship between them serves to clarify a text's meaning. Discuss.

7. In a close reading of text a reader notices patterns and then endows those patterns with meaning. Discuss with reference to a text you have studied.

8. Textual integrity is the unity of a text, and how its coherent use of form and language produces an integrated whole in terms of meaning and value. How is textual integrity demonstrated in the text you have studied.

9. How do the distinctive qualities of a text help shape its meaning?

10. Explain how your prescribed text invites us into a different world and broadens our understanding of human experience?

11. Through the telling and receiving of stories we become more aware of ourselves and our shared human experiences. Explain with references to your studied text.

12. "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." - Joan Didion The White Album. How does this statement apply to the texts you have studied?

13. Effective fiction uses narrative voice to engage the reader's emotions and intellect. To what extent is this true in a text you have studied?

14. Writers use literal and figurative language to express ideas and position readers. How is this employed in a text you have studied?

15. Composers construct texts using representations to portray situations and experiences to position readers. How is this successfully employed in the text you have studied?

16. T.S. Eliot wrote that the tools of the critic are comparison and analysis. How does a close study of the various elements of form, features and function work together to create meaning, and how does this compare between two texts you have studied?

17. "Literature is the history of the human psyche." - Ugo Angelo Canello. How does the text you have studied use characterisation, setting and situations to express ideas about human behaviour?

18. “Culture, when it comes to food, is, of course, a fancy word for your mom.” ― Michael Pollan. How are ideas about family, identity and culture represented in the text you have studied?

Yr 11: Reading to Write: Recommended Reading

In order to write well about reading, you need to be familiar with how professionals do it. You need to read examples from writing teachers, literary critics and writers. It is much broader, more interesting and more nuanced than making TEE tables of low-hanging literary techniques (noteworthy that 'technique' is a word that is NOT in the NESA Glossary!) And it is much more interesting than what you might have heard on the Book Club tv show, in which the members never had access to enough words to be really say anything significant.

Read these, or extracts from these. Or one of these. (To be honest, I like some of these better than others, and note that quite a few of them start with a declaration of doing close reading, that is, New Criticism, rather than applying any critical theory lens, such as Feminism, Marxism, etc).

Adler, Mortimer J, & Van Doren, Charles - How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Bloom, Harold - How to Read and Why

Clark, Roy Peter -The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve your Writing

Clark, Roy Peter - Help! for Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Writer Faces

Clark, Roy Peter - How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times

Clark, Roy Peter - The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English

Clark, Roy Peter - Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

Cuddon, J.A. - Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory

Davidov, Shelley & Williams, Paul - Playing with Words: An Introduction to Creative Writing Craft

Eagleton, Terry - How to Read Literature

Eagleton, Terry - How to Read a Poem

Foster, Thomas C. - How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

Foster, Thomas C. - How to Read Poetry LIke a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse

Fish, Stanley - How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One

Grenville, Kate - The Writing Book: A Workbook for Fiction Writers

Hirsch, Edward - How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry

Holden, Anthony and Ben - Poems that Make Grown Men Cry

Holden, Anthony and Ben - Poems that Make Grown Women Cry: 100 Women on the Words that Move Them

King, Stephen - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Kundera, Milan - The Art of the Novel

Lamott, Anne - Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Lanham, Richard - Analyzing Prose

Marsden, John - Everything I Know About Writing

Mullan, John - How Novels Work

Oliver, Mary - A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry

Paglia, Camille - Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty- Three of the World's Best Poems

Prose, Francine - Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

Schmidt. Michael (ed) The Great Modern Poets: The Best Poetry of our Times

Sutherland, John - 50 Literary Ideas you Really Need to Know

Sutherland, John - How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide

Tredinnick, Mark - The Little Red Writing Book

Tufte, Virginia - Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style

Virago - Writers as Reader: A Celebration of Virago Modern Classics

Willis, Ika - Reception

Wood, James - How Fiction Works

Resources on Rhetoric

Forsyth, Mark - The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase

Lanham, Richard - A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms 

Rhetorical Devices: A Handbook and Activities For Student Writers

http://bmshri.org/sites/default/files/sri_sahithya/A_Handbook_of_Rhetoric.pdf

http://www.hellesdon.org/documents/Advanced%20Rhetoric.pdf

There is a relatively new genre called Bibliomemoir, where a writer writes about reading books. Some of these include:

Ellis, Samantha - How to be a Heroine, or, What I've Learned From Reading Too Much

Ridge, Judith (ed) - The Book That Made Me

Next post....Sample essay questions

Yr 11: Reading to Write: Resources

There are teachers who have made a big investment of time to gather resources and create programs for this unit. Teachers can approach this unit in a variety of ways - through theme, or text types, or the reader/writer relationship.

Of the sample units available on the NESA site the focus questions include:

- How do we see ourselves as readers and writers?
- What is the relationship between reading and writing?
- How does knowledge of this relationship affect our experiences of reading and writing?
- What are the various ways that reading and writing can be enjoyed?
- How can reading make me a better writer? How can writing make me a better reader?
- How does reading and writing across a variety of connected texts deepen my understanding of concepts and illuminate meaning? (This is the kind of question you would ask in a syntopical bookgroup!)
- What makes powerful writing and engaging reading?

Here are the NESA pages.
Standard: http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-english/english-standard-2017
Advanced: http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-english/english-advanced-2017

You can access these resources just as easily as teachers can. You should also look at the glossary, that is, the vocabulary you should be familiar with in Senior English. Any of these words could be in your HSC English exam! (There is no listing of the words Analyse or Technique in the glossary!)
http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-english/english-advanced-2017/glossary

There are other resources, made by the English Teachers' Association (ETA) that you can't access, but you can look at the results of a project the ETA has been working on - the Textual Concepts. You can find the standard for Stage 5 (what you should be familiar by the end of Year 10). It would be good to understand these concepts.
http://englishtextualconcepts.nsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/S5%20Syllabus%20Content.pdf

Next post... recommended reading!

Yr 11: Reading to Write: Transition to Senior English

The Common Module Reading to Write: Transition to Senior English is in both Standard and Advanced courses. It aims to teach students core principles of studying literature through close reading of texts, and reflecting on the process of reading, writing and making meaning. It it useful for developing the skills required for all the other modules. You will be required to draft your writing, integrate feedback, redraft, edit and proofread your work.

Let's look at what the syllabus says!

Year 11 Common Module – Reading to Write

Transition to Senior English

In this module, students undertake the intensive and close reading of quality texts from a variety of modes and media. In doing so, they further develop the skills and knowledge necessary to appreciate, understand, analyse and evaluate how and why texts convey complex ideas, relationships, endeavours and scenarios. Central to this module is developing student capacity to respond perceptively to texts through their own considered and thoughtful writing and judicious reflection on their skills and knowledge as writers. Students read texts that are engaging thematically, aesthetically, stylistically and/or conceptually to inspire or provoke them to critique skilfully, or to respond imaginatively. Through the study of texts, students develop insights into the world around them, deepen their understanding of themselves and the lives of others, and enhance their enjoyment of reading.

The careful selection of critical and creative texts that address the needs and interests of students provides opportunities for them to increase the command of their own written expression, and empower them with the confidence, skills and agility to employ language precisely, appropriately and creatively for a variety of purposes.

Wide reading and reflection provides students with the opportunity to make deeper connections and identify distinctions between texts to enhance their understanding of how knowledge of language patterns, structures and features can be applied to unfamiliar texts. Through imaginative re-creation students deepen their engagement with texts and investigate the role of written language in different modes, and how elements, for example tone, voice and image, contribute to the way that meaning is made. By exploring texts that are connected by form, point of view, genre or theme, students examine how purpose, audience and context shape meaning and influence responses.

Through responding and composing for a range of purposes and audiences students further develop skills in comprehension, analysis, interpretation and evaluation. They investigate how various language forms and features, for example structure, tone, imagery and syntax are used for particular effect. They analyse and assess texts using appropriate terminology, register and modality. By reading and writing complex texts they broaden the repertoire of their vocabulary and extend control of spelling, punctuation and grammar to gain further understanding of how their own distinctive voice may be expressed for specific purposes.

Next post... what this looks like.