NZ NCEA Level 3 English

A critical response is an argument about a text, not a retelling of it. The question gives you a specified aspect of the text to argue about, and the first job is to work out exactly what that aspect is and what you are going to say about it. Most weak essays fail here: they answer a nearby question, usually "what happens in this text" or "what techniques does the writer use", rather than the one set.

The aspects a question can name

Questions on written, visual and oral texts draw on four families of aspect. Knowing the family tells you what kind of evidence to gather.

A question often combines two families, for example how a writer's use of setting (an idea) shapes the reader's sympathy (a purpose and audience effect), or how the ending (a structure) changes what the title means. Underline both parts. An essay that treats only one of them has answered half a question.

Taking a question apart

Take a sample question: "Explore how a writer uses an unreliable narrator to make the reader question what they are told." It breaks into pieces.

1. The text type and technique: an unreliable narrator, which is a feature of narrative voice.
2. The effect asked for: the reader questions what they are told.
3. The verb: explore, which asks for a developed discussion rather than a list.
4. The implied relationship: the technique causes the effect, so the essay must show how, not only that the technique is present.

Rewrite the question in your own words before planning. If your rewrite has dropped the effect clause, you are about to write a feature-spotting essay.

Other common verbs ask for slightly different shapes. "Discuss" and "explore" invite a developed argument that may recognise complications. "To what extent" asks for a position with a degree attached, so the answer is never a flat yes. "How does" asks for method and effect together. "Compare" asks for two texts to be held against each other throughout. No verb permits a summary.

From a question to a focus

A focus is the particular angle you will take inside the question. The question is wide; the focus narrows it to something an essay of about 800 words can actually prove. For the unreliable narrator question, a focus might be: the narrator's confidence is built through certainty of tone and lack of doubt, and it is the small gaps between what he reports and what others do that let the reader see he cannot be trusted.

A good focus has three features.

• It answers the question directly, using its terms.
• It makes a claim that someone could disagree with. "The narrator is unreliable" is a label, while "the narrator is unreliable because his self-justifications grow louder the less the events support them" is an argument.
• It is narrow enough to evidence with a handful of well chosen moments.

Choosing a text for a choice of questions

When several questions are offered, choose by the evidence you can bring, not by which question sounds most interesting. Run a quick test on each: can you name three or four specific moments in your text that bear on this aspect? Can you say what each does? If a question makes you reach for one big theme and a vague sense of the whole text, it is the weaker choice. A question on a technique you know well, applied to a text you know well, will give you more precise material than an ambitious question you can only half support.

Gathering material before writing

Spend a few minutes listing moments, not paragraphs of ideas. A moment is a specific place: a line of dialogue, a shot, a stanza break, a scene transition, the first sentence of a chapter. Next to each, note the aspect it shows and the effect it has. Group the moments that make the same point. Those groups become the body of the essay, and a group with only one moment in it is usually a sign that a point needs more support or should be dropped.

Texts, aspects and the plan

The plan that follows from a focus is a short sequence of claims, each backed by its moments, in an order that builds. Question, focus, claims and moments are one chain: if any link is missing, the essay will drift. Checking the chain before writing is quicker than discovering the drift on the third page.