Quick questions on Imaginative and persuasive texts: QCE English Unit 2 Year 11

Voice: third-person limited, focalised through her. Sentence shape: short, declarative, withholding. Image: the radio, the window, the unspoken thing, the rain that has not started. Controlling idea (implicit): something is being said that cannot be undone.

The opening uses anecdote (grandmother), inclusive pronouns (we, our), historical reference (1972), and a clear contention (the proposed reform is a small instalment).

Establishing and sustaining a specific speaker / narrator. Voice includes vocabulary, sentence shape, register, hesitations, omissions.

Building through specific scenes rather than summary. Scene grounds the reader in sensory experience.

Specific sensory rendering. Concrete images outperform abstract claims.

The overall shape of the piece. Linear, fragmented, retrospective. The shape supports the controlling idea.

The interpretive claim the piece is making (whether explicit or implicit). Without a controlling idea, the piece drifts.

What the piece chooses not to say can be as significant as what it says.

The specific position the piece argues. A contention is more specific than a topic; arguable; defensible.

Who you imagine reading. What they already know and believe. What you need them to accept.

The two to four sub-claims that build the case.

Statistics, expert opinion, anecdote, hypothetical, analogy.

Appeals (to authority, fairness, fear, compassion), inclusive language, rhetorical questions, anaphora, tricolon, modal verbs.

The stance toward the topic and audience. Measured, urgent, sympathetic, defiant.