We are learning to understand how the author uses evaluative language choices or attitudes to shape readers' opinions of characters.
Text
Roald Dahl The Witches Jonathan Cape Ltd & Penguin Books Ltd.
Success criteria
I can find evidence of evaluative vocabulary words or groups of words which help me to appreciate characters' appearances and behaviours.
Links to the Victorian Curriculum - English
- Victorian Curriculum (English) Speaking and Listening: Language
- Level six: Understand the uses of objective and subjective language and bias (Content description VCELA364)
- Victorian Curriculum (English) Writing: Language
- Level six: Investigate how vocabulary choices, including evaluative language can express shades of meaning, feeling and opinion (Content description VCELA352)
- Victorian Curriculum (English) Reading and Viewing: Literature
- Level Six: Identify and explain how choices in language, including modality, emphasis, repetition and metaphor, influence personal response to different texts (Content description VCELT342)
- Level 5: Analyse the text structures and language features used in imaginative, informative and persuasive texts to meet the purpose of the text (Content description VCELY320)
- Level 3: Examine how evaluative language can be varied to be more or less forceful (Content description VCELA272)
Links to Victorian Curriculum - English as an Additional Language (EAL)
Pathway B
Speaking and listening
Level B2
Level B3
- Use longer descriptive phrases
(VCEALL417)
- Understand how modal verbs express probability and possibility
(VCEALL418)
Reading and viewing
Level B2
- Read simple, unfamiliar informative, imaginative and persuasive texts, with support (VCEALC345)
- Understand and use a range of learnt metalanguage to talk about text (VCEALL363)
- Read texts that contain compound and complex sentences (VCEALL364)
Level B3
- Access, interpret and evaluate information from a range of print and digital texts, including visual, multimodal and interactive (VCEALC424)
- Understand and use the appropriate metalanguage to talk about the structures and features of a text (VCEALL442)
- Follow the meaning of complex sentence patterns (VCEALL443)
Writing
Level B2
- Write creative texts based on models provided or studied in class (VCEALC378)
- Select some descriptive vocabulary appropriate to context (VCEALL396)
- Use a varied and appropriate vocabulary (VCEALL394)
Level B3
- Write creative texts incorporating personal experiences and ideas from other texts (VCEALC457)
- Create mood and feeling through the selection of appropriate vocabulary and idiom (VCEALL475)
- Use some antonyms and synonyms (VCEALL473)
The Witches
Pages 66 -7
That face of hers was the most frightful and frightening thing I have ever seen. Just looking at it gave me the shakes all over. It was so crumpled and wizened, so shrunken end shrivelled, it looked as though it had been pickled in vinegar. It was a fearsome and ghastly sight. There was something terribly wrong with it, something foul and putrid and decayed. It seemed quite literally to be rotting away at the edges, and in the middle of the face, around the mouth and cheeks, I could see skin all cankered and worm eaten, as though maggots were working away in there.
There are times when something is so frightful you become mesmerised by it and can't look away. I was like that now. I was transfixed. I was numbed. I was magnetised by the sheer horror of this woman's features.
(Acknowledgement: Roald Dahl The Witches, Jonathan Cape Ltd & Penguin Books Ltd.)
Lesson sequence
Background for the teacher:
Attitudes about characters can be expressed through evaluative vocabulary which:
- express feelings to help the reader align or not with a character
- make judgements about people's behaviour
- consider the quality of things or people's appearance.
- Read through the extract provided from The Witches. Ask students to tell you their opinions of the witch. Ask them to provide examples of words which help form their opinion?
- Explain that authors like Roald Dahl often use evaluative vocabulary to help us align or not with a character. We can think positively or negatively about the character by what the author tells us about the appearance of the character or the actions of the character. It might be through the nouns, the verbs or the adjectives the author uses. Often the author will adjust the force of the words to make a certain kind of impression. Roald Dahl uses strong, quite forceful words to create an intense, negative impression of the witch.
- Select examples from the extract to model or illustrate.
For example: That face of hers was the
most frightful and
frightening thing I have
ever seen. Just looking at it
gave me the shakes
all over. In these two sentences, Roald Dahl:
uses evaluative adjectives - frightful and frightening
'amplifies' the intensity by using the superlative form 'most frightful', and includes an embedded clause to post-modify the noun 'thing' where the adverb 'ever' is used to intensify the impact, as does 'all over'
uses the idiom 'gave me the shakes' to reveal reaction
the combination of most frightful and frightening adds to the intensity of the description.
- Ask students in pairs to highlight other choices. When students report back, highlight other choices on a copy of the text for all to see. As they report, ask them to consider what the selections reveal:
Do they express people's feelings (affect)?
Do they praise or criticise peoples' behaviour (judgement)?
Do they assess objects, settings and appearances (appreciation)?
Are they positive or negative?
How is this achieved? Through:
evaluative nouns, verbs or adjectives?
metaphor or simile?
- Identify examples of when
graduation or
grading is used to
adjust the level of intensity of emotion and attitude - that is, is the volume turned up or down?
How is this achieved? Through:
the choice of word
using an intensifier
repetition
coupling of words
a cumulative effect
- Once the text has been highlighted, point out what Roald Dahl is doing:
His choices express negative attitudes about the witch, about her appearance. These attitudes are mostly expressed through strong, highly amplified evaluative adjectives such as frightful, frightening, crumpled and wizened.
He also intensifies these attitudes by coupling words or using a series of words or phrases as well which act cumulatively, for example:
so
crumpled and wizened
foul and
putrid and
decayed
to be
rotting away at the edges, and in the middle of the face, around the mouth and cheeks.
He also uses some intensifiers such as
most frightful,
so crumpled.
Extension
Something else important to narrative as he lets us know what the boy feels/ reacts about what he is seeing:
Just looking at it gave me the shakes all over.
And later, after describing the witch's face, Roald Dahl tells us more about the boy's reaction to what he saw:
There are times when something is so frightful you become mesmerised by it and can't look away. I was like that now. I was transfixed. I was numbed. I was magnetised by the sheer horror of this woman's features.
These instances of providing insight into a character's thoughts or reactions are very important in narrative. They build action - reaction sequences and help us align with the character, to care about him and to want to read further.
What other Roald Dahl texts do you know where he uses this technique of providing vivid descriptions of characters using highly amplified evaluative language choices?
Let's
remove and change the choices to see what the effect is.
Her face was scary. Just looking at it made me feel sick. It was really ugly. It was rotting and looked like worms had eaten it.
Let's
remove some of the choices
That face of hers was frightening. It was crumpled and wizened. It was a ghastly sight. There was something terribly wrong with it, something foul. It seemed quite literally to be rotting away at the edges, I could see skin all worm eaten.
What would be the effect if we were to change these choices to more positive choices? Try this and see. Rewrite the description and the boy's reaction to present the witches in a positive way.