Lesson video

I'm Miss Howell.

Welcome to today's English lesson.

You will need a pen and a piece of paper for our learning today.

So please take a moment to make sure that you have everything you need at hand, and to clear yourself of any distractions so that you are ready to start the lesson.

Our lesson today, is going to look at a gothic text, entitled, The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.

In particular, we're going to work on your skills of analysing language.

So please get down the title for today, Learning How to Analyse Language.

Pausing the video here to complete that now.

Please now write down our key word for the lesson, which is trepidation, and the definition.

Pause the video here to allow you to do that now.

Before you can successfully analyse language in any text that you need to first ensure that you have understood what you have read.

We will therefore carefully read the opening to The Tell-Tale Heart.

We are about to read our extract for today's lesson.

The extract has been split into four sections.

First, next, then, and finally.

Prompt questions are provided to help you think about what is happening.

I'd like you to record your responses on your lined paper.

And I'll pause at the end of each slide to enable you time to respond to the question.

Please see if you can respond to that question in a full sentence, and where possible, use quotations from the extract to support your answer.

You will also need a different colour of pen or pencil to self assess and check your progress.

True.

Nervous.

Very, very dreadfully nervous I had been, and am.

But why would you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them.

Above all was the sense of hearing acute.

I heard all things in the heaven and the earth.

I heard many things in hell.

How, then, am I mad? Hearken, and observed how healthily, how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.

Object there was none.

Passion there was none.

I loved the old man.

Pause here, to answer the question.

He had never wronged me.

He had never given me insult.

For his gold, I had no desire.

I think it was his eye.

Yes, it was this.

One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture.

A pale blue eye, with a film over it.

Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold.

And so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, And thus rid myself of the eye forever.

Now this is the point you fancy me mad.

Mad men no nothing, but you should have seen me.

You should have seen how wisely I proceeded with what caution, with what foresight, with what dissimulation I went to work.

Pause here to answer the question.

I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.

And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it oh, so gently.

And then when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed so that no light shone out.

And then I thrust in my head.

Oh, you would have loved to see how cunningly I thrust it in.

I moved it slowly very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep.

It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed.

Pause here to answer the question.

Ha.

Would a mad man have been so wise as this? And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously.

Oh, so cautiously cautiously for the hinges creaked.

I did it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eyes.

And this I did for seven long nights.

Every night, just at midnight, but I found the eye always closed.

And so it was impossible to do the work, for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his evil eye.

I pause here to answer the question.

Now we will review your answers.

Using your different coloured pen, I would like you to edit, tweak, refine your own response with the answers to the questions as I take you through them.

Please pause the video as you may need to, to allow yourself to take down any feedback.

So in answer to the first question, then narrator to seems to be quite mad, despite his protest that he is not.

He mentioned having a disease, which has sharpened his senses and in particular, having a heightened sense of hearing, which leads the reader to infer the narrator is potentially psychotic.

Something to really look out for is whether you've been able to support your answers with quotations, as is modelled in the slide.

Well done.

If you managed to do that, but if not, do pause the video and take a moment to add these quotations that I've got on the side to support your own answer.

Then also in answer to number one, in fact, the three main symptoms associated with a psychotic episode are hallucinations, where someone sees, smells tastes, or feels things that do not exist outside their mind.

Delusions, where a person has an unshakable belief in something untrue, and confused and disturbed thoughts.

If you didn't have that information, then please pause the video here to give yourself a chance to write down that feedback in your different coloured pen or your pencil.

Then in answer to number two, the narrator is fixated on the old man's eye.

This is because he terrifies him, and makes his blood run cold.

Thirdly, the narrator, every night about midnight, is opening the door to the old man's room, and looking in with his head, so that he can spy on him as his sleeps.

And finally, the answer to number four.

The narrator for seven long nights, keeps going to the old man's room, poking his head through enough to shine a single thin ray of light upon the eye.

He does this as he's waiting for a night when the eye is not closed so that he can do the work.

Now we understand what is happening in this extract.

We can start to analyse language.

Just going to take you through some top tips, and steps to support you in how to go about analysing language.

There will be a moment to pause later to enable you to get down these notes.

But if you would rather pause the video as I take you through, then that's absolutely fine if you would prefer.

So our first step, when we're analysing language is to understand the text you are analysing.

We have just done that through answering those questions.

Secondly, you need to read the question you're given really carefully and underline the key focus.

Thirdly, you need to select the best quotation that answers the question from the text.

The fourth step is to identify techniques used by the writer.

By techniques, this could be linguistic devices, such as similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, et cetera, or it could be a particular word choice.

So an adjective, a verb and noun at that, et cetera.

And of course it could also be a combination of these two.

Then finally, our fifth step is to explain what the impact of the choices by the writer are, and how this links to the question that you were being asked.

As a challenge to stretch yourself, you can see if you can identify multiple techniques used by the writer in one quotation.

So there could be a simile, and then there might be a particular interesting adjective, or verb choice within a simile, that you could also comment on.

Now is the moment to pause here, to go back and write down those steps.

If you've not done so already, and you feel you need to.

And it might help you with the analysis of language that we're about to move on to.

We are now going to work through each of those steps to successfully analyse language.

Remember we have already achieved step one.

So our second step is to write down the question, how does power use language to describe how the narrator feels about the eye.

Pause the video here to do that now.

Hopefully we've all recognised the key focus of the question is how the narrator feels about the eye.

And so within that step, we should have underlined that focus.

If you haven't now is the opportunity to do that.

Now for step three, you are to reread the section of text on the slide that you are going to answer the question on.

Make sure that you select your quotation, and you only need one or two.

Ensure that this is the best quotation you could use to answer the question.

Pause here to complete that now.

Now for step four.

So you should have selected at least one quotation, preferably more than that.

And you now need to identify, using accurate subject terminology, the techniques and all the key words in that quotation, that tell you how the narrator feels about the eye.

Remember, if you are completing a challenge, you should be trying to pick out more than one technique within your quotation that the writer has used.

Pause the video to complete that now.

Now finally, for step five, you should have picked out the techniques and identified them.

And now you need to explain what the impact of these choices by the writer are.

Then you must link that back to the question.

So what does this tell you about how the narrator feels? Remember if you're doing the challenge, you need to complete this with each technique you have identified.

Pause the video to complete that now.

Now we will review your answers.

As I take you through this feedback, it would be really useful to take your different kind of pen, and, or your pencil, and just write down the answer as I go through them.

It might be that I have got picked different quotations to you, and therefore my analysis is slightly different, but you will be writing up your analysis.

So it is important that you take down this feedback because you might decide that you'd rather use the quotations I have selected.

So the key quotation I've selected to answer the question is in pink, on your slide, vulture, a pale blue eye.

So if you're getting to this quotation, pause the video to write it down.

This is the best quotation because there is a lot we can analyse.

It really reveals how the narrator feels about the eye.

So I picked out the key techniques, which is the noun vulture, and the noun phrase pale blue eye.

So this is the step where I've identified the techniques.

And then step five, in order to be really successful, the effect of techniques should be detailed and really carefully thought through.

So thinking about really in detail, the connotation that the particular technique, or the word choice.

And so that's what I've done here.

So the noun vulture might imply the narrator feels very intimidated about the eye.

When thinking about the connotations of vultures, because they're predators who prey on the vulnerable, weak, the use of this now might suggest the narrator feels trepidation.

And if he does not attack the eye first, he will fall victim to it.

And then with that pale blue quotation, we have the adjectives, or the noun phrase, the adjectives form the noun phrase.

Could have connotations of sickness or death.

The skin tends to blue colour in death, and paleness is often a sign of being ill.

Therefore, this could suggest that the narrator feels that the eye could be a harbinger of death, and a such an ill omen.

Which is why he's so terrified of it.

So you can see there how detailed, and how really carefully I consider the impact of these particular language choices by the writer.

So just do, take a moment, to make sure that your work is just as carefully thought through.

Pausing again if you need to.

Your next task is a write up your answer into a complete paragraph.

So you could, if you want to, use the sentence starters that I provided for you on this slide and the next slide, to support you with this.

You can also use the feedback in the quotation I analysed, in order to support you as well.

Or you could pick the quotation that you did in the independent task, if you would like to.

So your sentence starters to support you with your writeup can be found here and here.

So pause here to complete the independent task, and then breaking need to use sentence frames.

Please go back to the previous two sides.

Now we will review your answers.

So using your different coloured pen, with edit, refine your work with the answers as I go through them.

Remember if you need to pause the video at any point to allow yourself to take that down, that feedback, please do.

So the narrator clearly feels very intimidated about the eye.

He compared the eye to that of a vulture.

The use of the noun vulture might imply the narrator feels very intimidated about the eye.

Vultures are predators who prey on the vulnerable and weak.

So the use of this noun may suggest that the narrator feels trepidation, and that if he does not attack the eye first, he will fall victim to it.

Furthermore, the use of the adjectives pale blue could have connotations of sickness or death.

The skin turns a blue colour in death and pale is often a sign of being ill.

This could imply that the narrator feels that the eye could be a harbouring of death and as such an ill omen.

Which is why he so terrified of it.

So the key thing to make sure that you have got within your own response is you have identified correctly, your subject terminology within the quotation, and you have explained the impact of those choices by the writer in a really thoughtful and detailed way as I've modelled that for you.

Once you have edited your own work, that brings us to the end of our learning today.

So thank you for your focus, and I hope you have enjoyed the lesson.