← Unfamiliar written texts: close reading

The method: four aspects, run on any passage (every paper)

Name the aspect, quote, explain the effect, return to the question's theme.

The four aspects, as the standard defines them

4 terms
Audiences and purposes
Who the text addresses and what it sets out to do. The least-used aspect, so the fastest way to stand out
Ideas
Themes, attitudes, beliefs, experiences, feelings, insights, meanings, opinions, thoughts, understandings within the text. The question names the idea — use its words
Language features
Figurative language, syntax, style, symbolism, diction, vocabulary, sound devices. Syntax and diction are the strongest and least used
Structures
Narrative sequence, beginnings and endings. Where it starts, what is withheld, whether it circles back
Exam-style "Discuss the ways in which storytelling is explored in the passage" Two specific aspects, in the four-step method. ASPECT 1 — STRUCTURE: the passage opens mid-anecdote and only names the speaker in the final line. QUOTE the delayed naming. EFFECT: the reader is inside the story before they know whose it is, so they experience the telling before they can judge the teller. LINK: storytelling is presented as something that captures you before you consent to it. ASPECT 2 — DICTION: the verbs of speech shift from neutral ("said") to performative ("announced", "spun", "let slip"). QUOTE two. EFFECT: the vocabulary reframes talking as craft rather than report. LINK: storytelling is shown as a deliberate act of shaping, not merely recounting. JUDGEMENT (for Merit/Excellence): the two aspects work together — the withheld name and the performing verbs both make the reader complicit in the telling. ✓ Two DIFFERENT aspects (structure + language), each with evidence, effect, and a return to the named theme — then one sentence connecting them. ✕

Two examples of one aspect is not two aspects

Two metaphors is one aspect (language features) used twice. Q1 and Q2 ask for two specific aspects of written texts — so pair a language feature with a structural point, or with audience and purpose. This is the single most common way to cap an otherwise strong answer.

A fast self-check before you commit to your two aspects

  • Can I name both aspects in one sentence, and are they genuinely different categories (not two examples of the same one)?
  • Do I have a short, exact quotation ready for each — not a whole sentence I would need to block-quote?
  • Can I state the effect on the reader for each, in different words than I would use for the other aspect?
  • Does at least one of my two chosen aspects link back to the question's theme more directly than the other — if so, write that one second, so the answer builds toward its strongest point.

Practise just this