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SOUL OF CRITICAL ANALYSIS:
IMMERSION AND CREATION

Critically analysing literature (an unseen poem or a set text) is not easy.

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  1. Like a detective, you are expected to interpret the clues (the text) closely to figure out what happened (the writer's story/intent/message).

  2. How you interpret the clues is often related to how they are arranged and connected (literary strategies and structural composition).

  3. Finally, you have to write a report to show your understanding of the content and how the style reinforces the content. 

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For some students, embarking on this multi-step process can feel intimidating. 

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The two-workshop series, Soul of Critical Analysis: Immersion and Creation, consists of two parts.

 

  • Workshop 1, Immersion, aims to immerse students in the text by bringing it to life and engaging them in the experience. The text could either be a pre-selected poem/short prose or a poem/short prose selected by the client school.  
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    • Volunteer students will be enlisted to "enact" the text, using Readers' Theatre and dramatic re-enactment (no props).
       

    • Throughout this process, the facilitator will pose questions to prompt the students to verbally "annotate" their perceptions of the lines.
       

    • This dynamic brain-storming process, transforming text into performance, offers a multi-sensory experience to draw the students into the world evoked by the writer, triggering their interest and curiosity.
       

    • Guided by the facilitator, the class, through a big-group discussion will craft an introduction that will present the main points and the literary strategies. 
       

    • Students will be broken into small groups: each group will be in charge of writing and elaborating the main point, introducing supportive evidence, and linking it back to the poem's theme.   

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  • Workshop 2, Creation, challenges the students, working in small groups, to create their own poem/prose by emulating the theme and the style of the poem/prose studied in Workshop 1. For example, if the students did a close analysis of "Beasts of England", they would be asked to compose a song with a rhetorical function. Similarly, if Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman" were analysed, students would be asked to compose a poem featuring a profile of a persona. ​

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Having students engage with text from two different perspectives — both immersion and creation — stretches their minds and souls in understanding what it takes to produce great writing.

 

Though Workshop 1 and Workshop 2 can be done independently, their pairing offers an optimal experience.

 

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