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“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”

— Tony Robbins

te ao Māori principles

There are five key principals that we, as an English Department, consider important as part of a holistic study at school.

• Mana – The prestige and authority of the writer. Writers can build mana through impactful stories that uplift readers.
• Whanaungatanga – The connections and relationships between characters, writers, and readers. Literature brings people together.
• Kaitiakitanga – Guardianship and protection of stories, language, and knowledge. Writers have a duty to share stories responsibly.
• Wairuatanga – The spirituality and deeper meanings conveyed through literature. Stories can be profound and moving.
• Mauri – The essential life force or vitality of the writer coming through in their work. Writing with purpose and energy.
• Aroha – The empathy, compassion, and love writers show through their words. Literature builds understanding between people.
• Tikanga – The customs, protocols and values upheld through storytelling. Writers adhere to cultural principles.

Exercises

Text Analysis Week 1

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Bringing it all together

It is likely that you have read the text by this point. If you haven’t you still have time to get through it over the course of the next two weeks; however, you should certainly read it a couple of times before your assessment. In the same way that you are always recommended to do ‘more’ in maths and science classes, it’s the same for reading a text. Read it at home, or at school, or in the car (if you don’t feel ill), at the beach etc. The differing locations can have an effect on your understanding.

Reading it at least twice will allow you to understand the text better, and to recognise the passages or sequences which will likely have an impact on your overall interpretation.

Making it your own

There are always study guides available, and that meets a certain market in English education; it is a simple quick fix solution. But it doesn’t make you a better reader, or a better interpreter of knowledge.

Teachers aren’t watching you every moment of every day, so of course you can access these kinds of information portals. But it’s not your understanding or analysis. You aren’t going to connect with the text that way. It may help to make a couple of things easier to comprehend, but that’s about it.

Instead, try reading matched with writing. Read a short passage, and then write down your thoughts about it – especially noting if you find it dull or boring. But don’t leave it there, write why you found it dull and boring. This is engagement.

Engagement is a great word because it means all the emotions in response to something. If you love something, you’ve engaged with it; similarly if you can’t stand something, you’ve engaged with it. The difference (and the thing that makes it ‘engaged’) is the why. Being able to articulate that position is the thing that makes all the difference.

The Four Pillars

There are four things that we have spent time on throughout this and all the other units leading up to this unit.

1. APRICOT: You’ve made notes on how these key elements add to any analysis of any texts. Being able to recognise who the audience is; what the writer’s purpose is; what register they have used; identifying the imagery and discussing the representation from that imagery; logically talking about the content and the context; showing how the writer’s organisation of the content helps with the understanding; and what tone they chose to incorporate… assists in your ability to explain some of the finer details.
2. GST: The genre specific techniques are important. You must show to the marker that you understand how that genre works. Look back at your essays from previous units and pick any body paragraph at random – do you use the techniques of the genre (for example, if you look at a Shakespeare essay, do you talk about the stage, or shared lines, or soliloquy? If you did, great – you’re on track to demonstrate how the genre works. If you only use ‘metaphor’ or ‘adjectives’ then how does the marker know that this is a dramatic or Shakespearean text?
3. Patterns: Using the acronym My Poor Dad Once Ate Six Nuggets In The Freezer, you can look closely at the way the writer uses patterns to create effects. As with everything, explaining why they did this – what did they hope to achieve – is vital.
4. Personal Response: As above, being able to incorporate your own thoughts and responses are helpful. Most mark schemes will have a component around personal response, or originality, or being ‘convincing’. These come under the heading of personal response. You can do this one of four ways:
   1. Adjectivals – the use of adjectives as descriptors for your understand cannot be understated, for example: a common line in essays could be something like “Jim’s attitude towards war is shown through his dialogue…”; however, this can be improved by using adjectivals “Jim’s antagonistic attitude towards war is shown through the frustrated tone of his dialogue…” This demonstrates your understanding of his characterisation. This is the easiest way to improve any essay from a comprehension perspective.
   2. Modal verbs – We, as examiners of the style and language of writers, are only really interpreting it. One can never be sure about the intentions or purpose of the writer – unless otherwise stated. As a result, using low modal verbs can assist in your analysis. Using low modality means you are suggesting something, rather than outright stating it. For example: “Perhaps Shakespeare is suggesting to his own King James I that with the attainment of power such that Macbeth obtains, there is a deeper psychological turmoil that can be overwhelming and disempowering”. Other low modal verbs include ‘could’; ‘can’; ‘may’; ‘might’; ‘possibly’;  ‘low probability’; ‘tends to’; ‘likely’; ‘unlikely’; ‘chance’ and so on.
   3. Reaction – As you ‘read’ your text, make a note of your emotional connection or response to the narrative. This metacognitive approach (thinking about thinking) is an important part of your analysis. Using ‘I’ within academic documents is a little immature, instead you can use ‘the reader’ (specifically for novel and short story) or ‘the audience’ (more general) to describe your own response. For example: “The audience are aware of Jane’s criminal intentions and therefore feelings of both anticipation and concern are intensified.” NB: you may also use the pronoun ‘one’ as in “one may be saddened by the death of the soldier…”
   4. Engagement – Of all the techniques in this area, this may be labelled incorrectly. By engagement I am encouraging you to write with a degree of enthusiasm towards the text. Typically, there is very much a nondescript approach by students towards the given text. By using simple phrasing, you can demonstrate that you are a ‘student of literature’ and have found the text captivating. For example, ‘Interestingly, Jackson uses the dramatic Dutch Tilt in ‘Heavenly Creatures’ despite being highly unorthodox in contemporary mainstream cinema.” Other engaging language includes ‘alluring’; ‘amusing’; ‘curious’; ‘intriguing’; ‘mellifluous’; ‘inviting’; ‘captivating’; ‘thought-provoking’ and so on.

The good news is that you can combine these into one sentence pretty easily.

And, doubling up on your ideas will help to demonstrate the knowledge you have for the subject and demonstrate the range of techniques.

You’ll notice that this is a very long sentence – that is ok. We are looking for higher level academia which moves away from the simple sentence style, and extends the sentence to incorporate more higher level constructions.

Ko te reo te tuakiri | Language is my identity.  
Ko te reo tōku ahurei | Language is my uniqueness.
Ko te reo te ora. | Language is life.