Part 1: How to Analyse Your English Texts for Evidence (Free Textual Analysis Planner) | 2022 update

Introduction to textual analysis

You, like many students, might feel that textual analysis sounds ominously overwhelming, broad, and vague. But it shouldn’t be. There is a process for reading and analysing your English texts.

In this Part of our Beginner’s Guide to Acing HSC English, we will give you a thorough explanation of textual analysis and how to read your texts and walk you through a step-by-step process for creating flawless and insightful notes.

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In this article, we discuss each step:

1. Read the module rubric for the text you are studying
2. Make general notes
3. Identify themes and arguments
4. Identify examples and techniques
5. Organise your notes

Step 1: Read the module rubric to guide your textual analysis

NESA provides syllabus rubrics for each English module. These rubrics explain what you will need to discuss in your textual analysis in order to get a Band 6. So, high-achieving students will read of the corresponding module rubric before they view the text they are studying. This allows them to direct their focus while they view their text and begin to think about how they can approach the module rubric statements.

You can find the full HSC module rubrics and quick breakdowns here:

English Advanced

• Texts and Human Experiences | Common Module
• Textual Conversations | Module A
• Critical Study of Literature | Module B
• The Craft of Writing | Module C

English Standard

• Texts and Human Experiences | Common Module
• Language, Culture and Identity | Module A
• Close Study of Literature | Module B
• The Craft of Writing | Module C

Step 2: Make general notes

When you view your text for the first time, there’s no need to desperately annotate every technique you see. Instead, just enjoy it and try to follow the plot.

Between viewings and at the end, jot down your thoughts about the following:

• What was the text about?
• What were the prominent ideas in the text?
• How might these ideas be connected to the module rubric statement?

Later, you can use these notes to refresh your memory of the text and inspire your textual analysis.

Here’s an example of what that would look like:

To help you make sense of the plot, themes and contexts of HSC English texts, we’ve created the cheatsheets for the following texts, as linked below.

Textual Analysis for the Common Module: Texts and Human Experiences

• The Merchant of Venice
• Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Rosemary Dobson
• Go Back to Where You Came From
• The Crucible

English Advanced | Textual Analysis for Module A: Textual Conversations

• Mrs Dalloway and The Hours
• The Tempest and Hag-Seed
• King Richard III and Looking for Richard
• Poetry of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
• Donne and W;t

English Advanced | Textual Analysis for Module B: The Critical Study of Literature

• T.S. Eliot poetry
• Emma
• Henry IV, Part 1

You can find all our cheatsheets for English Standard, here.

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Step 3: Identify themes and arguments for your textual analysis

Often we refer to key ideas as themes because they are common to a number of texts, but also whole genres or selections of art and literature.

Knowing the genre of the text you are studying will give you hints as to what sort of themes you should look for. For example, a Gothic text will have themes of death, decay, and secrets. Even if you know roughly what themes will be in a text, you still need to identify them.

Here are some practical approaches you can take:

1. Consider the plot

Ask yourself what the key ideas in the plot are. For example, is it about two people who are in love? Then love is a theme.

Do characters have trouble knowing if they are being told the truth or manipulated? The rift between appearance and reality is a theme.

2. Look at the characters’ positive and negative qualities

The characters’ flaws are often the substance of the ideas the composer is trying to convey. We can look to a characters’ narrative arc to see what ideas are in a text.

For example, In Othello, the main characters are very proud and jealous. Pride and jealousy are key ideas in the play. We see these qualities reflected in the characteristics of other characters in the play, too.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the main character, Winston, and his lover, Julia rebel against the government. We can say resistance is a key idea in the text.

3. Look for recurring symbols in the text

A recurring symbol, or motif, can embody a key idea in a text.

For example, In Black Swan, Nina’s character has to perform the roles of the Black and White Swan from Swan Lake. She has to be two opposing characters – pure and innocent and powerful and provocative – at the same time. We can say that dualism is a key theme in our textual analysis.

4. Consider the ideas that are explicitly stated in a text

Sometimes composers are very direct with the ideas they feel are important in a text. They might discuss these ideas at length in the text – either directly or in the conversations that characters have. For example,

• In the Handmaid’s Tale, Offred speaks explicitly about her name and the character she has to play in Gilead. This means that identity is a key theme in the text.
• In The Motorcycle Diaries, Che writes at length about the divide between rich and poor and how he perceives this as being unfair. He is discussing the theme of class difference.

5. Once you’ve identified some themes, think about what kind of arguments we can make

None of this has to be set in stone, as you will develop your arguments as you look over the evidence you’ll collect from the text. This is just to get you familiar with the talking about the text in light of the module rubric.

Here’s an example of themes and arguments you could make about Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four for the HSC English Common Module.

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Step 4: Identifying examples and techniques

Essays for Stage 6 must be evidence-based. This means that students must provide examples from the text to support their arguments. They must then discuss how the techniques in those examples develop a certain meaning or reinforce a theme.

To be effective at identifying techniques, students must be aware of a wide range of techniques and their various applications. We’ve complied all the textual analysis techniques you need to know for various text types. You can access them through these links:

• Literary Techniques Toolkit
• Visual Techniques Toolkit
• Film Techniques Toolkit
• Poetic Techniques

With this in mind, here’s how you can identify critical examples and their techniques.

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Step 5: Organise your textual analysis notes

Making tables is the most efficient way to produce textual analysis notes for English. The principle behind making tables is to extract all of the relevant information from a text and place it in an easy to access document.

When you prepare for exams or write practice essays, you don’t want to be fishing through novels for quotations or skipping through films for the appropriate scene. Instead, you want to be able to find the example you need for your textual analysis as quickly and easily as possible. This is what tables are for.

Let’s look at an example of a study table:

Template

Example from Othello

The above table has 5 important columns for textual analysis:

• Theme/ Character: the key idea, or the character you are focusing on.
• Evidence: The quotation or a description of the scene you are using.
• Technique: The technique(s) present in the example. It might be useful to define the technique if it is not a common one.
• Effect: Explain the effect of the technique. Good textual analysis discuss how the technique develops the meaning you see in the quotation.
• Research: Go online and start looking for the appropriate information for your module. You may need to find contextual information for Module A, or critical perspectives for Module B.

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