The Art of Writing English Literature Essays LO: To be able to use textual evidence effectively and embed quotations

How to use textual evidence High level responses focus on what the writer is doing and saying and the effects of the text on the reader. Low level responses view the story from the perspective of the characters.

Textual Evidence Ladder Sustained critical analysis A/B Developed and sustained analysis Analysis Grade C Explaining how the techniques work and effect on the reader Commentary D Combines narrative summary with identification of feature of interest and some comments on these. Identification E Focuses on techniques used by the writer Description U Story telling embellished with detail Narrative summary U Storytelling: summarising the action or content of the text

Which Level? For each example, try to identify where it sits on the ladder of textual evidence.

Embedding quotations- what’s wrong here? The tension between the life force and the gravitational pull of death is dramatised in Plath’s poetry through her consistent use of colour symbolism: ‘Look how white everything is, how quiet and snowed in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly. As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands’. Here Plath equates whiteness with the ultimate peacefulness of death. Most of the quotation is irrelevant/does the quotation prove the point being made? Where is the dynamic between life and death? Does the whiteness, as expressed in these lines, simply denote death? The quotation is set out wrongly.

Embedding Take the most important part of your quotation(s) and embed within a sentence. Your sentence should still make sense if you remove the quotation marks. The tension between the life force and the gravitational pull of death is dramatised in Plath’s poetry through her consistent use of colour symbolism. In ‘Tulips’, for example, whiteness is associated with ‘snow’ and ‘winter’ and the obliteration of identity, ‘I am nobody’. In contrast, the tulips are associated with the painful feeling of being alive. Plath describes them as ‘too red’, so red, in fact that she is ‘hurt’ by their colour. The tulips’ redness forces her out of her comfortable numbness, making her aware of her emotional pain, her heart, which she describes metaphorically as a ‘bowl of red bloom’.

Check your learning Read back through your essay on settings. Check that you have embedded your quotations, if not, rewrite your sentence(s). Which rung on the ladder are you? Try to rewrite to achieve at least a grade C.