How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019

Multiple-choice analysis
How to teach students to analyse texts effectively

Textual analysis is a staple of most English lessons. The surprising thing is that I don’t recall many of the ones I had as a student focusing on the analysis of a text. I studied poems and novels, but I just don’t think that the analysis of texts was at the forefront of English teaching at that time. The focus was on stories and ideas, and writing skills were the driving force back then.

The English classroom of today contains so much analysis that maybe we’ve gone too far the other way. The insistence on finding a simile and an obscure piece of rhetoric in the text has meant that ideas, thinking, appreciation and joy have been neglected because they get in the way of spotting techniques. The latter has made English a more concrete subject. For years, we struggled with it being abstract. How many times have I faced a parent telling me that their child, usually a boy, prefers maths and science? They inform me that he has a factual mind. I generally read that as ’he can’t be bothered to write and has little imagination’.

Spotting words and techniques does not analysis make, however. There is so much more behind a single word or simile: thoughts, ideas, philosophies, politics, issues, problems and religions. Neglect the abstract and you’ll have students underperforming in the subject. Analysis is the fusion of the concrete with the abstract.

What came first: the thought or the technique? Of course, thought came first and then man invented writing to communicate thought to a wider audience. I think there should be a greater emphasis on ideas and thoughts in the classroom. English lessons shouldn’t be shackled slave-like to a curriculum. They should dance, skip and pirouette from one large idea to the next. The only time when we touch earth is when we look at the texts. It’s our duty to balance analysis with new ideas and new thinking. I want students to leave my classroom able to communicate sophisticated ideas and thoughts clearly. They might never have to spot a simile again in their life, but they will be able to express a point on Facebook, and at least they’ll be using the appropriate version of ’there/they’re/their’ (I hope) and considering whether they can be bothered to add punctuation.

1. Multiple-choice analysis

One of the hardest things in English is getting students to form ideas and opinions independently. Even though teenagers have tons of opinions on a select range of topics, when faced with a text they can struggle to form them. As teachers, we know that students are capable but there’s often a hidden, secret barrier preventing them. Therefore, when faced with a struggling class, I use this little approach.

First, I give them a quote from the text. In this case, Great Expectations.

I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.¹

Then I give students four possible interpretations. To help them, I might throw in a silly one. They discuss which one bests describes the text.

Admittedly, there is often a slow warm-up before we get to high-level thinking. This is a shortcut that looks at symbolism early. It models analytical thought processes and shows what sort of things students should be thinking. They see what they could possibly say. It makes the abstract concrete. The next stage is to get them to pick their own quotations and construct four interpretations for each one. I really like this approach as it shows students that there isn’t just one answer: a common misunderstanding. We are not maths and science — there are no right or wrong answers in English, just better explanations.

Plus, there’s loads of fun to be had in making up silly interpretations. Did you know that Dickens might have named Miss Havisham after Hovis bread as he wanted to highlight her obsession with it? This isn’t true, of course, but it gets students to explore the choice of her name and to evaluate and justify possible interpretations.