How to Do a Marxist Reading of a Text

Introduction to textual analysis

Practise you know how to read English language texts for textual assay? Reading a text is an essential role of studying English. Obviously, you can't write essays without reading and analysing your texts. But where should you start with textual analysis?

In this Function of our Beginner's Guide to Acing HSC English, we volition give yous a thorough explanation of textual analysis and how to read your texts and walk you through a pace-by-footstep procedure for creating flawless and insightful notes.

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Why exercise so many students find textual analysis difficult?

You, like many students, might feel that textual assay sounds ominously overwhelming, broad, and vague. Merely it shouldn't be. Why?

At that place is a process for reading and analysing your English texts.

Information technology's mainly due to students not adopting the right process for reading and analysing English language texts. Consequently, many students experience the following issues:

• Declining to appoint with their texts.
• Struggling to produce acceptable and useable notes.
• Difficulty writing essays that respond to the Phase 6 Outcomes or the Module requirements because they haven't "read" their texts in the well-nigh effective manner.

What is "reading" and what are "texts"?

When we discuss "reading" we mean the process of engaging with a text. This can include viewing a motion picture or reading a novel or looking at a picture. As we appoint with information technology, we try to understand the meaning it contains. This is a procedure of assay that we generally refer to as "reading."

Keeping thorough and accessible study notes is a very important part of reading a text. After you have read the text, you demand to note downward your findings. You will use these notes as the basis for your responses. Does this sound familiar?

The process of making and keeping notes for English is similar to noting downward the results of an experiment.

Similarly, when nosotros speak of "texts" for English, we mean a wide variety of text types (what NESA sometimes refers to as the medium of product) including (but non express to): novels, novellas, not-fiction writing, short stories, graphic novels, comics, images, plays, poems, films, television series, and websites. Each text type will require a particular approach to reading information technology, as things like plot, characters, and ideas are rendered differently in different mediums of production.

What is the process I should use for reading and analysing English texts?

The process of reading and analysing texts is something that often gets taken for granted in the school classroom. You demand to read, or view, your texts in order to understand them. And so you have to translate your reading into critical assay of the texts' significant. And so you need to collate this insightful assay into applied and constructive notes.

At Matrix, we teach our students the following process:

• Step 1: Reading or Viewing a Text for Themes and Ideas.
• Step ii: Making First Round of Basic Notes.
• Footstep 3: Read Your Text a 2nd Time to Identify Ideas / Themes.
• Step 4: Read Your Text a 3rd Time to Place Examples and Techniques.
• Step 5: Tabulate Your Notes.

Permit's discuss each pace of the process in detail.

The procedure for textual analysis

Stride one: Reading or viewing a text for themes and ideas

Reading a text for written report is a multi-stride process. To extract the almost information out of a text in the shortest corporeality of time, students should follow a logical process.

Let's take a look at the process involved:

Learn how to analyse texts like a pro

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So, what does this entail? Allow'due south have a wait at the specifics of reading a text:

ane. Read the text for the first fourth dimension – This may mean reading the volume or watching the film set for study. The starting time time you engage with a text should be to bask information technology and sympathize what is happening in it. You want to empathize what the plot is about and who the characters are.

2. Write downward your initial observations and feelings almost the text – Jot downwards whether y'all liked the text. Note down what yous think it is virtually and how it relates to your Module.

Don't worry if your annotations go messy.

3. Read the text a second time – This is when you lot should begin making notes. Underline and highlight important sentences and phrases in poems, plays, non-fiction texts, and novels. Brand notes nigh scenes in films. This step is very important because it is where y'all start unpicking how the composer has adult meaning.

four. Brand notes – Now you've read the text twice, you lot should be able to first identifying the themes in the text.

The notes you make are very important, you lot'll use these to write your essays and responses.

Write downwardly answers to the following questions:

• What are the prominent ideas in the text? – These are your central themes.
• Who are the significant characters?
• What are their roles?
• What are their characteristics?
• How practise these characters embody the ideas in the text?
• What are the characters' narrative arcs?
• How are the characters' experiences resolved or ended? – Analysing a grapheme's evolution in a text will aid you understand a composer's perspective on a theme.

5. Read the text a third fourth dimension– This reading is where you develop your agreement of the text. You must go through the text looking for where an thought is best represented. While you lot may have underlined or highlighted large swathe of your text on the 2nd reading, the third reading is where yous will be able to come across what is really relevant to your written report of the text. When you notice an example that conveys the detailed meaning that is relevant to your study of the text, you should write it down and make note of the technique.

What if my text isn't a film or novel?
Some text types may crave a slightly different approach.
Do you need specific help with analysing poesy?
Y'all should read our blog post, How To Analyse A Verse form In 6 Steps!

Has reading Shakespeare left y'all stumped?
Yous should read our footstep-by-stride blog post on How to Analyse Shakespeare.

Step 2: Making notes

Now that nosotros've discussed reading texts, we need to look at making notes. A student'southward notes will develop with each successive reading of the text. For example,

• 1st Reading – A broad understanding of the text – its plot, characters, and setting.
• 2nd Reading – A developing understanding of its core ideas, an understanding of character development, lots of examples underlined or highlighted in your texts or detailed notes of visual texts.
• 3rd Reading– Detailed notes well-nigh ideas. Each one of these central ideas is a theme. You want to organise the examples from your texts around these themes. When you do your tertiary reading, y'all should note how specific examples from your text reflect its central ideas. Yous must make notes as you get,  as you lot want to proceed rail of the insights y'all have while engaging in analysis.We've looked at how to read and how to start organising your ideas and examples. But sometimes it is difficult to know what ideas are worthwhile. Similarly, information technology tin be hard figuring out which instance is worth utilising and incorporating into your notes.

Let's take a expect at how to spot the key ideas in a text.

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Pace 3: Identifying ideas / themes

Agreement the plot and following what happens to the characters in the text is one thing, but understanding the ideas that these convey is an altogether different one.

When we refer to "themes" we actually mean the key ideas in the text.

Oftentimes nosotros refer to ideas as themes because they are common to a number of texts, but too whole genres or selections of art and literature. Knowing the genre of the text yous are studying will give you hints as to what sort of themes you should look for. For example, a Gothic text will have themes of expiry, disuse, and secrets. Even if yous know roughly what themes will be in a text, you still need to identify them.

Here are some practical approaches you tin can take:

1. Consider the plot– Ask yourself what the key ideas in the plot are. For case, is it most two people who are in love? And then dearest is a theme.
Does the plot involve people trying to find things? Discovery is a theme.
Do characters have trouble knowing if they are being told the truth or manipulated? The rift between appearance and reality is a theme.

2. Expect at the characters' positive and negative qualities – The characters' flaws are often the substance of the ideas the composer is trying to convey. We can expect to a characters' narrative arc to see what ideas are in a text.
For case, InOthello, the principal characters are very proud and jealous. Pride and jealousy are key ideas in the play. We see these qualities reflected in the characteristics of other characters in the play, too.
InNineteen Fourscore-Four, the primary character, Winston, and his lover, Julia rebel confronting the government. We can say resistance is a central idea in the text.

three. Expect for recurring symbols in the text – A recurring symbol, or motif, can embody a primal idea in a text.

For example, InBlack Swan, Nina'due south character has to perform the roles of the Black and White Swan from Swan Lake. She has to exist two opposing characters – pure and innocent and powerful and provocative – at the same time. We tin say that dualism is a central theme in the text.

Epitome: Aronofksy's Nina as the White Swan looks vulnerable and uncertain

Epitome: Aronofksy'due south Nina equally the Black Swan looks confident and predatory

Similarly, InThe Not bad Gatsby, many characters are bad drivers. This is symbolic of how out of control society is. We can say that personal responsibleness is a key theme.

4. Consider the ideas that are explicitly stated in a text – Sometimes composers are very straight with the ideas they feel are important in a text. They might talk over these ideas at length in the text – either directly or in the conversations that characters have. For example,

• In theHandmaid's Tale, Offred speaks explicitly virtually her proper name and the character she has to play in Gilead. This ways that identity is a key theme in the text.
• In The Motorbike Diaries, Che writes at length nigh the divide between rich and poor and how he perceives this equally beingness unfair. He is discussing the theme of class deviation.

Now that we've identified some themes, we need to call up almost gathering prove. Let'due south await at some strategies for identifying evidence.

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Pace 4: Identifying examples and techniques

Essays for Stage half-dozen must be prove-based. This means that students must provide examples from the text to back up their arguments. They must then discuss how the techniques in those examples develop a certain pregnant or reinforce a theme.

One of the difficulties students face is identifying examples and the techniques in them. Unfortunately, this is a skill that must be learned and practised rather than solved with a quick tip or gear up.

To be constructive at identifying techniques, students must exist aware of a wide range of literary/ dramatic/ poetic/ filmic techniques and their various applications.

That method looks like this:

Flowchart: How to Identify Examples and Techniques

i. Familiarise yourself with the specific techniques the texts medium of production uses. You can find a list of literary techniques and their furnishings here and here. Y'all can notice a list of filmic techniques hither. Information on analysing poetry can exist constitute here.

two. Read or view your text, focusing on places where the thematic ideas you are interest seem nigh prominent and visible.

3. Look for quotations, scenes, or images that seem to embody the idea that you are concerned with. These will exist the parts of the text that you take highlighted in your text or fabricated notes about.

4. Attempt to rate the value of the technique that the quotations are using. Non all techniques are equal. If you accept a pair of side by side quotations and 1 uses alliteration (three words in a row beginning with the aforementioned letter – "she studies solidly and scored an A on her physics test") and the other is a metaphor (information technology makes something into something else – "she was a gun in the physics exam and got an A"), then the metaphor is going to convey the idea with more forcefulness and clarity.

Similarly, in movie, a two-shot (a shot that places two characters in the same shot to evidence a relationship) will be less constructive than a selective focus shot (where a two-shot switches the focus from character to another without panning or moving the camera to demonstrate a alter in the relationship between the characters). A general rule to follow is:

The more complex the process of representing, the more constructive the technique is for your statement.

five. Brand note of the example and its technique in your table. You lot must ensure that y'all can relate the examples y'all take chosen to the concerns y'all need to discuss. The more detailed you tin can exist in your notes, the more you will be able to elaborate on your points in an essay.

6. Get together every bit many examples as you can. Yous will use these to populate your table with. It is worth remembering that some examples volition exist suitable for several themes or ideas in your text.

For some units such as Module A or Module B, analysing and identifying techniques will not be enough. Yous volition also need to talk over context or critical views. this ways you will demand to engage in some enquiry. Let's have a look at how to go almost this.

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Footstep 5: Tabulate your notes

Making tables is the near efficient way to produce study notes for English. The principle backside making tables is to extract all of the relevant information from a text and place it in an like shooting fish in a barrel to admission certificate.

When you set for exams or write practice essays, you don't desire to be fishing through novels for quotations or skipping through films for the appropriate scene. Instead, you want to exist able to observe the example you need as quickly and simply every bit possible. This is what tables are for.

Let's expect at an example of a study table:

A Sample Study Table For English Notes
	Theme/ Character	Example	Technique	Effect	Enquiry
What to do	Organise your notes past theme or graphic symbol	Provide a quotation or example from the text.	Notation and describe the technique used.	Explain how the technique affects or shapes your understanding of the significant in the instance.	Look for what others say well-nigh this theme or instance from the text? Effort to look for scholarly articles. Wikipedia is a adept place to begin research, merely it is not always reliable or authentic. Afterward reading a Wikipedia commodity, you should look at its sources and read those manufactures. Often Wikipedia articles included suggested further reading, these are platonic places to further keep your enquiry. We discuss Wikipedia and other research resources in Affiliate 3 of this guide. Make note of your findings and keep runway of the references.
Example	"The Difficulty of Year 11"	Year 11 English language is like scaling Mountain Everest.	The use of "similar" signifies this is a simile.	This simile compares Year 11 English to climbing a large mountain. This argues that Year eleven is hard and requires a lot of careful training.	25th June: Lots or people agree that Twelvemonth eleven English language is difficult. Some say that universities require to study specific units of English and accomplish specific marks. I should expect into why that is to develop my notes farther. 26th June: The Matrix blog states that "The English language Advanced Modules are more complex and demanding than the English Standard Modules." (https://www.matrix.edu.au/english language-studies-vs-english-standard-vs-english language-advanced)
Example From Othello	Iago's Villainy	Iago: And what'southward he then that says I play the villain?  / When this communication is free I give and honest (2.three. 330-331)	Rhetorical Question (hypophora – asks a question and immediately answers information technology).	Iago is giving them logical and helpful advice. The use of hypophora is a manipulative technique. Answering the question he'southward asked immediately means that Iago'south listeners aren't given time to formulate an respond against it.	24th June: Non certain why Iago is evil? 26th June: Found a quote by R.Drupe: "This is of the same order equally the grotesquely exaggerated hell-imagery in his speeches, which we should non take at face up-value. Iago, in truth, likes to think of himself as evil, as the villain: he plays the function in capital messages." Berry argues that Iago revels in his villainy and his concealment of information technology. (R. Berry 1972.  http://world wide web.jstor.org/stable/2868648)

The to a higher place table has v important columns:

• Theme/ Character: the key idea, or the character you are focusing on.
• Example: The quotation or a clarification of the scene you lot are using.
• Technique: The technique(due south) present in the example. Information technology might exist useful to ascertain the technique if it is not a common one.
• Issue: Explicate the upshot of the technique – discuss how information technology develops the pregnant you lot meet in the quotation.
• Research: Go online and start looking for the appropriate data for your module. You lot may need to find contextual data for Module A, or disquisitional perspectives for Module B.

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