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VICEnglishQuick questions
Unit 1: Reading and exploring texts and Crafting texts
Quick questions on Language features and their effects: 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 are figurative features?Show answer
Language that operates beyond the literal. Metaphor, simile, personification, symbol, motif, imagery, allusion. Figurative language compresses meaning and asks the reader to extend it.
What are dialogic features?Show answer
Language of speech and voice. Direct dialogue, indirect dialogue, free indirect discourse, internal monologue, register shifts, voice modulation, address to the reader. Dialogic features manage the reader's access to characters and to the narrator.
What are structural and rhythmic features?Show answer
Sentence length and shape, paragraph structure, repetition, parallelism, anaphora, juxtaposition, framing, ellipsis. Structural features manage the pace and architecture of meaning.
What is generic?Show answer
"The author uses imagery."
What is specific?Show answer
"The author uses a sustained motif of water across chapters one, four, and seven."
What is quote the figurative phrase?Show answer
Embedded in your sentence, not as a hanging block quotation.
What is name the figurative type precisely?Show answer
Metaphor, extended metaphor, simile, motif, symbol, allusion. Use the right name.
What are argue what the figurative move compresses?Show answer
Figurative language is a compression of meaning. What does this metaphor pack in. What is the literal alternative the author refused.
What is argue the effect on the reader?Show answer
What does the figurative move ask the reader to do.
What is place the figurative move in pattern if there is one?Show answer
A single image is one thing; a recurring motif is another. If the figurative move is part of a pattern across the text, name the pattern.
What is voice?Show answer
Who narrates and from what position. First-person retrospective, first-person present, third-person limited, third-person omniscient. The choice of voice shapes everything.
What is speech rendering?Show answer
How character speech appears. Direct ("I said no"), indirect (he said that he refused), free indirect (he refused, this time), reported, summarised. Each grants different access.
What is address?Show answer
Whether the narrator speaks to the reader directly, implies a reader, or refuses one.
What is tension between narrator and character?Show answer
A scene where the narrator's framing and a character's speech do not agree is a scene rich for analysis. The disagreement is the feature.
What is sentence length variation?Show answer
A long sentence followed by a short declarative is a deliberate move. A paragraph of all-short sentences is a deliberate move.