Students must learn how to interpret, analyse and evaluate texts if they are to be effective students in the English classroom and in preparation for participation in Australian life more generally (Victorian Curriculum: English).
Interpreting, analysing and evaluating
Literacy strategies targeting vocabulary instruction and reading comprehension support students to understand how individuals and groups use language patterns to express ideas and key concepts to develop and defend arguments.
These strategies allow students to comprehend what they read and view by applying their growing contextual, semantic, grammatical and phonic knowledge. They develop more sophisticated processes for interpreting, analysing, evaluating and critiquing ideas, information and issues from a variety of sources.
Close reading activities, accompanied by writing orientated towards note-taking and annotating, allow students to use their growing knowledge of textual features to explain how texts make an impact on different audiences.
The strategies have been grouped according to whether they address understanding at the word and sentence level or paragraph and text level.
Literacy in Practice Video: EAL - Argument Analysis
In this video, a teacher uses an unseen text to support a Year 10 C2 EAL class to analyse a media article, and begin to present an analysis of the author’s intent. The video was recorded in a single lesson and begins with the teacher engaging students in deconstructing the text of a news opinion article by Corinne Baraclough. Students are guided by the teacher to attend to the way the author uses words to persuade the reader.
Read the in-depth notes for this video.