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Mock
season is upon us once more. What could be a joyous time, a celebration of all
the progress made, can also be a time of sheer panic. Exams are only a matter
of months away and there will be some students who still don’t understand a
particular text or concept.
Having
recently marked my set of mocks, that panic set in. Students had done
everything I asked of them. They were including and analysing quotations well
and they knew the events they wanted to reference, yet one thing was lacking:
awareness of a text as a conscious construct. Whilst my top end answers were
exploring authorial intent, those who I was hoping would achieve a 5 or 6 were
not; instead they discussed the characters as real people and demonstrated a
distinct lack of understanding that everything in a text has been created and
explored for a reason. It seems authorial intent was ignored in these exam
answers at the expense of throwing in as many quotations attached to pointless
subject terminology as possible.
Authorial
intent is so important to consider. Understanding and identifying it makes a
text a living, breathing thing. I want my students to appreciate that the words
they are reading exist because someone once had something important to say.
Instead of remaining quiet, they wanted to teach and educate others in their
society. They saw it as their duty to criticise and raise awareness of what
they deemed wrong with their world. They aimed to warn their readers, expose
injustices and celebrate life’s wonders. Texts are tools which are used to
build better people. At the same time, they can be weapons, used to strike the
heart of complex issues. In other words, a text is the voice of a writer. They
may be using that voice to speak personally or for those who do not have a
voice. Either way, a text is a conscious construct, something which my
students, in their mocks, were still not appreciating.
Analytical Verbs
I initially came across this idea
when it was presented at the Knowledge Symposium at the Jane Austen College by
Lia Martin last year. The task seems deceptively simple, yet really asks
students to manipulate their knowledge of a text by completing the beginning of
a sentence in different ways. For example, one could provide their students
with the following sentence to help them consider authorial intent.
Shakespeare
may have written ‘Macbeth’:
- to criticise
- to teach
- to warn
- to reveal the importance of
- to celebrate
My
students initially scoffed at the idea. After modelling analytical paragraph
after analytical paragraph and asking them to produce the same, here I was
asking them to write five sentences. They had a go and I was impressed with the
results. Sometimes less is more. Like anything, they found some of these verbs
harder to complete than others. ‘Macbeth’ is a tragedy and ‘celebrate’ has
positive connotations. The two, surely, should not go together. And yet after
some discussion, they found that actually celebration does occur in the play.
It could be argued, for example, that the play is a celebration of the divine
right of kings; Macbeth has not been chosen by God and so suffers a downfall
spurred by his ambition. When paired with the fact that many see ‘Macbeth’ as
an example of pro-royalist propaganda, it is clear to see that Shakespeare
could be celebrating true kingship, true royalty and warning anyone who seeks
to overthrow those chosen by divinity that they will not, under any
circumstances, succeed; fate will always catch up with them.
It was
an interesting task and one which helped students begin to appreciate that
texts are a conscious construct, something they need to understand if they are
to access the higher bands of the mark scheme. The example above is just one
way of opening a sentence using analytical verbs. Ideally, students should
open their sentence in a way that will allow them to hone in on specific
details.These are just some of the examples I considered for ‘A Christmas
Carol’:
- Dickens uses the Cratchit family to
criticise/teach/warn/celebrate etc.
- Scrooge is placed by Dickens in desolate places
with the Ghost of Christmas Present to criticise/teach/warn/celebrate etc.
- Dickens
personifies the qualities of Ignorance and Want to
criticise/teach/warn/celebrate etc.
The
more I presented students with these analytical verbs, the more competent they
became with using them. And yet something was missing. The class never seemed
to seamlessly integrate these ideas into their essays. Their sentence on
authorial intent remained just one sentence and they would always ‘bolt it on’
to the end of a paragraph full of language analysis as an afterthought.
So I
went back to the drawing board.
When
asking students to review their mocks, I gave them back the question they had
completed. This was from the AQA Summer 2019 paper, which gave students the
Captain's speech from Act I, scene ii and asked them how far Shakespeare
presents Macbeth as a violent character. I then gave them the following task:
Perhaps
Shakespeare presents Macbeth as such a violent character at the beginning of
the play:
- to criticise
- to teach
- to warn
- to reveal the importance of
- to celebrate
Students
completed the analytical verbs, we discussed them and made some slight
adjustments based on what they had said. Here are two examples of what one
student wrote:
Perhaps
Shakespeare presents Macbeth as such a violent character at the beginning of
the play to
teach that he
is very much capable of committing brutal acts.
Perhaps Shakespeare presents Macbeth as such a violent character at the beginning of the play to celebrate his
success with using violence, which in contrast, fuels his desire for power and
leads to his demise.
None of those answers are incorrect, but they don’t go deep enough and they lack clarity. I know what the second example is trying to say but it is not as clear as it could be.
Because/but/so
Perhaps
Shakespeare presents Macbeth as such a violent character at the beginning of
the play to teach audiences that he is very much capable of committing brutal acts because
they are something which will eventually lead to the destruction of his loyalty
and his character’s downfall.
Perhaps
Shakespeare presents Macbeth as such a violent character at the beginning of
the play to celebrate primarily, his success as a violent yet
loyal soldier to Duncan, something which fuels his ambition but
eventually leads to his character’s demise, revealing that ambition and
violence are both dangerous qualities for one to possess.
Extending responses
As you can see, there is still work to be done here. The answers
aren’t perfect and not as clear as they could be but development is beginning
to occur. One sentence, however, still isn’t enough. After review, I asked my
students to extend their ideas yet again, using their first analytical verb to lead in to a second analytical verb. For
example, if a student had said ‘Shakespeare is criticising…’ they would, having
finished discussing that idea, say something like, ‘Through this criticism
of… Shakespeare may also be teaching audiences…’
Notice the use of tentative language too, something I have really stressed with
my students to use if they can. Here is an example of what the same student produced:
Shakespeare
initially presents Macbeth as violent, but this is presented in a positive
light. His actions are examined by the Captain who informs Duncan Macbeth ‘fixed’
his enemy’s ‘head upon our battlements.’ The certainty of the action ‘fixed’
implies that Macbeth is comfortable with violence and is very much capable of
carrying out such brutal deeds. A head on a battlement acts as a warning. This
could be Shakespeare
teaching the audience that violence and strength, admired
qualities, could eventually mutate into toxicity and brutality if given the
chance. Through
this lesson, he reinforces that ambition
can result in tragedy, as is the case with Macbeth and no amount of violence
can free him from this vicious cycle.
Compared to previous attempts, the
answer above is really pleasing and shows progress. Whilst there is still work
to be done on the clarity of the answer, there is a clear and sustained
awareness of authorial intent, something which was missing first time round. I
also like the way this student has changed a verb to ‘reinforces’. They have
removed the ‘because’, ‘but’ and ‘so’ but have extended their ideas in other
ways as their answer develops.
I’ll keep working on this method with
students to improve their answers because once a student truly understands the
idea of a conscious construct, they are more likely to look at the bigger picture
and consider major ideas. Why has this text been written the way it has with
these characters and ideas? What is the author trying to say?
I think it is also important to note
that there is more to authorial intent than a set of analytical verbs. This is
not a simple solution to a complex issue and should not be treated as such. This
method is just one way in to exploring a text as a conscious construct that I
found particularly helpful so I thought I would share.
Analytical verb resources can be found
here.
Stuart
@SPryke2