Unit 3: AOS 1 Reading and Creating Texts Analytical Task

Area of Study 1: Reading and Creating Texts

• Identify, discuss and analyse how the features of texts create meaning and are interpreted
• Identify and analyse explicit and implied ideas and values in the text
• Examine the ways readers are invited to respond to texts
• Develop and justify their own interpretation of texts

• ANALYTICAL
• Prepare sustained analytical interpretations of texts and how features of the texts create meaning
• Use textual evidence to support their responses
• Plan, draft, clarify and edit their ideas and writing
• Produce clear, coherent, crafted and convincing writing

What does this mean?

You will study two texts for this AOS. You will produce an analytical essay in response to one text and you will produce a creative response to the other text.

The analytical response

Most students will be fairly familiar with this task. It's the most similar to what you've probably been taught from years 7-11 and think of as a text response. You're teachers probably taught you to analyse the themes, characters and ideas of the text and maybe to include how the social/historical context of the text influenced those elements. All of those skills will still be relevant for this task.

What I believe are the most interesting areas to explore for this task

The easiest entry point into a text is the plot and main characters. If you ask anyone who has read a book what it's about, generally you'll get a pretty accurate answer. People will say things like, "well it's set in...", "it's about this man/woman who...", "first they.... And then .... Happens."

That stuff is all well and good, it's important to know the text, but in terms of the complexity of the task that is pretty easy stuff - it's recall of names and events.

This task asks you to do a lot more juicy stuff than just regurgitate information.

It wants you to:

1. Think about what the author was thinking, feeling, doing and hoping to achieve when constructing this text 

2. Think about how the reader is likely to respond to the text (and how the author achieves this)

3. View the text as a student and therefore use your understanding to put forward your interpretation of the text 

4. Respond to and resolve an essay question regarding the text

Some students fall into the trap of writing about the text as if the text is truth. They make statements like "Romeo is a hopeless romantic". This statement takes for granted that Romeo exists, and of course he does in a literary sense, but only because Shakespeare depicted him. Shakespeare gave him words, attitudes, responses and actions and he used those to portray him in a particular way. That stuff is more interesting and more complex than Romeo himself.

Another way of thinking about this is that instead of focusing on the what of the text, you should focus on the how and why.

For example, if you tell me the "what" of a text you'll tell me facts, what happened, what the values in the text are, what the audience is likely to think about a theme.

If you tell me the "how" of a text you'll begin to reveal the author's views, values and construction. You'll have to start analysing the construction of the text, how characters were developed and explored, how themes were investigated and how language or structure was used. That is much juicer than just what happened.

Finally if you get to they "why" of a text you'll begin to suggest the author's possible motivations, what her message could be, what she wanted to problematise for her audience, what her views and values are and how these play out within her text. And the only way to do that is to synthesise your understanding of what was presented in the text, how it was constructed and how you and the audience interpret it. A synthesis task is at the very top (or second top depending on the version you look at) of Blooms taxonomy as it is a complex thinking task. If you can do that well, and substantiate with evidence from the text, you will be rewarded in this task.