Susan Marshall

English and Literacy Coordinator, Eynesbury College, Australia

From affective to effective; writing academically valued texts in response to literary works in the senior school

In most senior school curricula the study of literary texts requires students to engage with their reading on a number of levels such as personal, reflective, emotional, analytical and critical. At the same time, they are expected to consider the text as a product of a range of socio-cultural influences.

This presents quite a challenge for senior school students, given the multi-dimensional nature of texts, their complex constructions, intertextual meanings and possible readings.

When it comes to writing about literary texts there is a huge shift from the junior and middle years where responses remain largely at the affective/personal level. The problem for many students in senior years is how to write about abstract ideas in an objective and academic way, whilst still engaging with these ideas at a personal and reflective level. In literary study, the themes of the texts and the ways they are realised linguistically provide the basis for students to produce critical readings of the text.

To be literate, and therefore successful, in English Studies students need to demonstrate an understanding of and an ability to utilise and manipulate a range of language features that characterise this academic field.

In this paper I will explain one approach to how students can be explicitly taught to craft critical responses to literary texts that emanate from an initial personal engagement. Using a student’s initial affective, informal and personal essay I will outline the steps necessary to craft this into one which employs a number of grammatical resources – complex nominal groups, nominalisation, theme and rheme patterns, modality – thereby more than meeting the performance standards and criteria for assessment of the critical discussion of literary texts in English at this level.