The Sunday News
Charles Dube
“DEVELOPING effective writing skills” will help you to understand how your ideas can be organised in written work for both the examination and coursework components throughout the year. Learning takes place throughout the full length of the course pursued, not necessarily for examinations. The chosen exercise is more relevant to the study of literature texts than language.
We are looking at developing skills required for critical writing, develop skills required for empathic writing and practise using quotations to support critical responses. Suggestions provided here will help learners become more confident in writing extended answers to Literature questions. Whatever the question you are answering, you will need to write a plan. Talk of writing a plan, you become an enemy of many learners.
But, it needs to be done if good work is to be produced by learners. A useful plan should have two parts: 1. Gathering ideas for your answer. 2. Organising your ideas in a logical order. Writing which has not been planned tends to ramble and can lack a clear focus. It makes good sense to allocate some time to planning. You can start writing with confidence. You should not be worried that at times as you are writing you move from the original plan. The fact is, a plan provides a good starting point for your writing.
Critical writing is analytical. This means that you have to give your own views, support your views with evidence from the text and comment on the effects of particular words used by the writer. Often questions requiring critical writing will ask you to consider how the writer presents a particular aspect of the text. All questions will make some reference to writers and how they communicate important aspects of the text to readers.
These questions may ask you to consider characters or themes in prose texts, or thoughts and feelings in poems. The shared view is that the most important in these questions is the emphasis on the writer and their writing. You are expected to explore how writers write as well as what they write. Successful critical writing shows a detailed understanding of the content, a sensitive appreciation of the writer’s use of language, structure and form.
It also shows an ability to use literary terms effectively and confidence in providing an informed personal response. Questions which ask for empathic writing allow learners to engage more creatively with the text. In these tasks you have to adopt the voice of a particular character. Empathic writing needs to be rooted firmly in the text you have studied. It is important to remember that empathic writing must be true to the character as portrayed in the text.
Successful empathic responses show: a detailed understanding of the story from the character’s point of view, a sensitive appreciation of a voice which is suitable for the character and confidence in providing an informed personal response. We are reminded that good empathic responses are informed by a student’s detailed appreciation of the text and the characters. In critical responses, you should include many well-selected references to the text.
Brief quotations can help to support the points you make. Where you cannot recall the precise quotation, you should provide a clear reference to the relevant part of the text. In order to achieve the highest marks, you then need to explore how writers use the key words in your quotations to achieve particular effects. Link your quotations to analytical comment on the words writers use. Take note though that in empathic responses you will not be expected to use quotations.
In fact, doing so would interrupt the flow of the voice you are trying to create. Your support from the text in empathic responses takes the form of words or phrases that the character would typically use, and the use of relevant information from the text. In this article we are trying to show how learners can develop further the necessary skills of analysis useful in answering Literature questions. Some of the key areas to be considered are the ways in which prose writers begin novels and short stories, develop plots and present characters.
A short story, as the name suggests, is shorter than a novel. A short story generally concentrates on a single event and has a small number of main characters. Story writers or prose fiction writers use a variety of methods to bring their characters to life. You will need to consider the following when studying characters in prose texts: what the characters do, what the characters think and feel, what characters say and what other characters say about them. These are all aspects of characterisation — that is, ways in which writers present their characters.
What is characterisation? This refers to the ways in which writers present their characters. Good essays about characters consider the role of the writer. We are reminded that characters do not live independent lives. It is the writer who creates and develops them, in novels and stories. Other areas to be considered are the ways in which writers explore themes, create settings, and convey mood, sequence events and use narrative viewpoint to tell their story.
Key terms: Critical responses are those that consider evidence in the text and weigh up different arguments. Empathic responses are those that show understanding and sympathy for the characters and try to imagine what it would be like to be a character in a text. “Empathic” comes from the word “empathy” which means the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. In critical essays, evidence from the text should be in the form of brief quotations or references which support your points.
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