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SAEnglish

Responding to Texts (30%)

6 dot points across 6 inquiry questions. Click any dot point for a focused answer with worked past exam questions where available.

How do writers and speakers use language features to position an audience to respond in particular ways?

Analyse how language features, conventions and structures position audiences to respond to texts and their ideas.
How to analyse the way language features and structures position an audience, and how to write about effect rather than just spotting techniques.
7 min answer →

Whose perspective does a text privilege, and how is that perspective constructed through representation?

Analyse the ways texts represent people, places, ideas and events, and the perspectives they privilege or silence.
How to analyse the perspectives a text constructs and the choices behind its representations of people, ideas and events.
7 min answer →

How do the stylistic features and conventions of a text shape its meaning and effect?

Analyse how stylistic features and text-type conventions create meaning and shape audience response.
How to analyse stylistic features and the conventions of different text types, and write about them as deliberate, meaning-making choices.
6 min answer →

How does the context a text is produced and received in shape the meanings we make from it?

Analyse the ways context shapes the production, meaning and reception of a text.
How to use context - social, cultural, historical and personal - to deepen analysis without sliding into a history lesson or generic background paragraph.
7 min answer →

How do you select, embed and analyse textual evidence so it proves your interpretation?

Select and integrate relevant textual evidence to support and develop an interpretation.
How to choose, embed and analyse quotations and textual detail so evidence proves your reading rather than decorating it.
6 min answer →

How do you structure an analytical response that argues a clear interpretation of a text?

Plan and write a coherent, well-structured analytical response that develops a sustained interpretation of a text.
How to plan, structure and sustain an analytical response - thesis, paragraph design and through-line - for the Responding to Texts assessment.
8 min answer →