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VICEnglishQuick questions
Unit 1: Reading and exploring texts and Crafting texts
Quick questions on Close reading and textual analysis: VCE English Unit 1 Area of Study 1
15short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is you read more slowly than feels natural?Show answer
A paragraph that takes thirty seconds to read might take ten minutes to close-read. The slowness is not waste; it is the work.
What is you read for how, not what?Show answer
A close reading does not ask what the passage is about. It asks how the passage produces its effects. The shift from what to how is the move.
What is you return?Show answer
A close reading reads the passage at least twice, sometimes four or five times. Each return finds something the previous pass missed.
What is word?Show answer
The specific lexical choices. A verb that does more than a neutral verb would. A noun that names something precisely.
What is sentence?Show answer
The shape and rhythm of sentences. A short sentence after a long one. A sentence that builds.
What is paragraph?Show answer
The way the paragraph opens and closes. What it begins with and ends on. The relation between its sentences.
What is position?Show answer
Where the paragraph sits in the text. What it follows. What it precedes.
What is annotate as you read, not after?Show answer
The first reading is the best reading for marking texture, surprise, and friction. Mark where the writing slowed you down, where you re-read, where you noticed something.
What is use a small vocabulary of marks?Show answer
Underline for word choice. Bracket for sentence shape. Margin note for structural or relational observation.
What is keep questions in the margin?Show answer
A close reader writes questions as well as observations. "Why this word here." "What does this sentence break do."
What is re-read the annotated page?Show answer
A page annotated once and left is half-used. A page annotated and returned to is where the analysis grows.
What is state the observation precisely?Show answer
"In paragraph three, the writer breaks a long sentence with a short declarative."
What is argue what it does?Show answer
"The break registers the speaker's recognition that the previous reasoning has failed."
What is connect to a larger reading?Show answer
"The pattern of long sentences interrupted by short declaratives recurs across the chapter, marking the speaker's repeated arrival at conclusions they did not seek."
What is technique-spotting?Show answer
"The author uses a metaphor. This makes the writing more engaging."