In the newest iteration of the English Language & Literature course, both HL and SL students face the same task of writing a textual analysis on a given non-literary text. At HL, students need to write one on each of the texts provided, while SL students can choose one from two.
How should a response be structured?
You need to deconstruct a non-literary text, identifying the meaning and message (almost certainly with content related to a burning global issue) and examining how features and conventions of the text type as well as stylistic choices on behalf of the author contribute to this message.This process of textual analysis of form and content is explained in Paper 2 - Analysis and Evaluation. It is essential that you focus your reponse on the Guiding Question. You can if you choose - though I do not recommend it - reject the Guiding Question and create your own one, or explicitly outline your own line of inquiry in responding to the text. Responding to the Guiding Question is not optional. You must do so, and it should become the main focus of your response. This is not a commentary on the text you are given, but is a guided textual analysis, using the Guiding Questions.
Here is a structural guide that should help to focus your response, ensure that you analyse and evaluate - rather than just describing - but still, through the movement paragraph, give you a chance to give a quick overview of the 'big picture' of the text and its structural elements, before getting into more detailed deconstruction:
Structure of a Single-Textual Analysis
Introduction
Conceptual response to the subject matter of the text;
Outlining the title, author, date and context of the text;
Thesis Statement: ‘Through the use of x, y, and z, we see… (overarching thematic message on display).
Movement Paragraph
Working through the text from beginning to end, this paragraph is crucial in order to outline text’s wider meaning, identifying the key movements and shifts, using embedded quotations, and exploring how the text conforms to, or deviates from, its conventions.
Body Paragraph 1 - response to the Guiding Question
Author-Choice-Effect for choice ‘x’ from the thesis statement, connected to the focus of the guiding question;
Direct evidence from the text, quoted and deconstructed;
Explanation of effect of choices upon the meaning of the text, connected to the text’s larger purpose.
Body Paragraph 2 - continued response to the Guiding Question
Author-Choice-Effect for choice ‘y’ from the thesis statement, connected to the focus of the guiding question;
Direct evidence from the text, quoted and deconstructed;
Explanation of effect of choices upon the meaning of the text, connected to the text’s larger purpose.
Conclusion
A brief reiteration of the purpose, meaning, conventions and choices. Some interesting additional thought / irony is preferable here.
Adapting for the new Paper 1
You must be cognisant of time. At SL, you now only have 75 minutes; at HL, you have 2 hours 15 minutes, but you need to write two guided textual analyses. You should, of course, spend time reading, thinking about and annotating the text(s), as well as planning your response. If you spend 20 minutes doing this, that would leave approximately 50 minutes only to write (each of) the guided textual analys(e)s.
To this end, the structural guide above is probably too long. Consider having an introduction, the movement paragraph (which is crucial), one or two body paragraphs both tightly focused on the guided question (which must be answered), and then a conclusion.
"Movement" paragraphs
The 'movement' paragraph is an essential component of a good single-text analysis. It ensures that you cover the whole text, including features of layout, structure and form, and gives an overview (with embedded quotation) of how the text shifts and develops to its conclusion, before you can go into closer analysis regarding smaller details of how stylistic choices impact meaning. In this way, it acts as a bridge between the broad introduction and the analysis of minutaie in the body paragraphs, and your guided textual analysis as a whole reflects the structure of an hour-glass.
Here are two examples of movement paragraphs to help explain this more clearly:
From November 2014 - Extract from Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America:
The extract chronologically charts the life and physical characteristics of Agnes, from when she was given a ‘homely’ name to juxtapose with ‘striking’ good looks, only to turn out ‘not to be attractive at all’ in her early life. The third person narrative perspective follows Agnes as she becomes ‘On-yez’ with an ‘accent grave’ during her ‘Mishmash decade, after college’ in New York City, partying with ‘not very bright rich people’ - through her desperate desire to be someone and something more interesting, but never quite fitting in and being told patronisingly that she must be from ‘O-hi-o’, the italics reflecting the character of the people she met, in the limited dialogue that characterises the middle of this extract. Moving forwards chronologically again in Agnes’s life, the final section of the extract - again framed by health and physicality - describes Agnes’s return to Ohio to escape the pollution of New York City so she would no longer ‘feel like [she’s] got five years to live’. We get the sense of her sadness of ‘saying goodbye to something important’, but even in her return and marriage to Joe (a very different character and name again) she is plagued by futile dreams and physical problems, the climax of the piece being her ‘vandalizing’ of the romance of their marriage in the self-aware futility of having a baby.
The comic strip employs the traditional conventions of illustrations and speech bubbles setting up an argument and culminating in the punch-line in the final panel. This comic strip plays on the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, instead calling it ‘Madam and Eve’, and follows the young girl protagonist as she quizzes two teenaged boys about their maths examination scores. Through the illustrations, we see the girl as being much younger, but her rhetorical questions and exclamatory tone - ‘Where is your maths teacher? I’d like to have a word with him’ - suggest that she is less than impressed with the boys’ understanding of their failings, and is passing a social comment on the failing education system. The boys don’t change their position in the illustrations, but in the final panel, when it seems they’ve learned their folly (with the clutching of the head in the penultimate panel), they only reinforce their ignorance - ‘Simple as 2+2=5’ - and complete the satire with the suggestion that they could become teachers themselves.
MY PROGRESS
How much of Paper 1 - Structuring a Guided Textual Analysis have you understood?
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