How to read like an English teacher - Part 1

If you have a job as an English teacher, it’s a fairly safe bet that you enjoy reading. You probably read a lot when you were younger too. I remember reading lots of Stephen King books when I was about 13-14 and feeling very grown up, because I got something that adults read and enjoyed.

You have also likely enjoyed the benefits of reading lots of books - the most obvious one being good literacy skills. Also, when analysing texts in the classroom, you can likely figure out authorial intent with ease, not stopping to think how you were able to do this - you just can!

When teaching, I sometimes find stepping out of my own perspective to be very difficult. I have been criticised (rightly) by some of my colleagues for pitching things way too high in the resources that I make, and not considering the needs of students who perhaps struggle with English - students who might even despise reading.

Psychologists refer to this as ‘the curse of expertise’ - if we are very good at something, we likely find it hard to imagine what it would be like to not be very good at it. That can make it difficult to anticipate the sorts of things that your students will need in order for them to access the texts that you’re putting in front of them.

In their own responses to texts, students can become stuck when writing PEE-style paragraphs once they have completed the first two parts. Thinking back, I have given my students some truly useless advice in these situations, such as “well, now you just need to analyse the quotation”. Many students likely have zero idea of what this actually entails. How do you analyse a quotation?

These issues have led me to try to examine the methods that I subconsciously use and take for granted in the classroom, and come up with some creative reading strategies that can be easily explained to students, so that they can use them when they are responding to texts independently. I call these strategies ‘how to read like an English teacher’. Here’s the first one:

Try something else

Recently, I was working with some A Level English Language students who were struggling with their analysis of a text that I had set for them. The text was taken from The Guardian, and was about the writer’s attempts to overcome her addiction to Diet Coke. I asked them to focus their analysis on the grammatical features of the text. We focused on the text’s sub-heading (known as a ’standfirst’ in the media), which read:

 “I have been obsessed with the sugar-free soda since I was four, spending £500 a year on up to seven cans a day. This is what happened when I tried to quit.”

The students said that they had been able to identify grammatical features, including the use of present perfect tense, and adverbial and non-finite clauses, but that they did not know what to say about the text’s use of these features.

So, I asked the students to try something else. We swapped one of the words in the sub-heading:

“I had been obsessed...”

Now, instead of present perfect tense, we were looking at past perfect tense. I asked students to explain to me how this had altered the meaning of the sentence. They said that it made it clear that the journalist had overcome the addiction - it was no longer the case that she was addicted to Diet Coke..

This helped us to contextualise why the writer used present perfect tense in the first place. Arguably, it creates tension - did she ditch Diet Coke? Was it difficult? It also creates a sense of vulnerability - Sirin Kale is clearly an accomplished and successful journalist if she is writing a feature article for The Guardian, but the use of present perfect tense reveals that even now she is battling addiction, making us realise that she is just a regular person.

We also discussed the adverbial clause - ‘since I was four’. We found that when we tried something else - this time, placing it at the front of the sentence (psst... don’t grass me up to Michael Rosen!) - the sentence lost its impact. It is far better if the main clause begins the sentence, as it foregrounds the interesting thing about the article - the obsession.

For the non-finite clause - ‘spending £500 a year...’ - we tried something else by putting a full stop after the adverbial, and changing it into an independent clause: ‘I spend £500...’ We decided that the non-finite clause gave it a matter-of-fact tone, which would not be achieved with the pause created by a new sentence. The journalist’s choice to represent her actions as something that can be mentioned in passing would help to surprise the reader, as most people would see that as an excessive amount to spend on a fizzy drink.

I have used this strategy with other year groups too. At GCSE, I used an extract from Peter Benchley’s Jaws that I found on Geoff Barton’s website. The extract depicts the great white shark attacking and eating a young boy, called Alex Kintner. Throughout the extract, it refers to both respectively as ‘the fish’ and ‘the boy’.

Exploring the text’s features, my year 11s had a feeling that this structural device was significant, but they had no idea what to say about it. I asked them to imagine that instead of ‘the fish’, the writer had opted for ‘the terrifyingly dangerous and gigantic great white shark’.

The students cringed at my suggestion, and argued that the writer’s original choice was far better, as it created mystery and intrigue. They told me that the lack of detail makes it more frightening. Bingo!

Why not name the boy, then? Why not refer to him using his name - Alex Kintner. Well, they suggested that it would make us more likely to feel sympathy for him when he is totally devoured by the shark, because if he was named, we would be more likely to connect with him. They argued that ‘the boy’ is effective because it serves to dehumanise the character, and that we begin to see him in the same way as the fish does: just another meal for it to eat.

In the examples that I have provided, the students were attempting to comment on grammatical and structural features within a text. In my experience, it can be harder to know what to say about these elements in a text compared to language techniques. Perhaps that it down to the fact that students have been commenting on things like metaphors and similes since primary school.

So, if your students cannot figure out what to say about a quotation, advise them to try something else. It might reveal something subtle and interesting that had not been immediately obvious.

The views in this blog are not necessarily shared or endorsed by the centre that I currently work at.

Photo at the top of the page by Alfons Morales on Unsplash