How do you comment on passages?

Answer 1

In English language the "ability to read with understanding written material in a variety of form, and to comment on its effectiveness" can help us explore them and question why they exist in the first place.

The passage must be analysed carefully and points made. The usual structure for a simple commentry goes something like this:

1. Identifying the genre of the passage, i.e. [Fiction] mystery, historical, supernatural, romance, Science Fiction, war, human interest, adventure, crime, or [Non-fiction] biography, autobiography, travel, history, geography...

2. Identifying the writer's purpose - why he/she wrote it, i.e. to persuade, to ridicule, to inform, to humour, to entertain, to scare, to offer a point of view and contrasting points of view...

3. Identify the tone of the passage, i.e. persuasive, critical, sarcastic, serious, formal, informal, confidential, etc. Tone is conveyed by the choice of words and the way they are put together. A passage may pass through several tones of voice, especially is it is telling a story or describing a series of characters, or a situation unfolding between them.

4. Identifying vocabulary. Pick out particular words or phrases which help to arive to a conclusion of the writer's purpose. How are these words/phrases effective in determing the purpose of the writer?

5. Identifying figures of speech. The most commonly used figures of speech are a simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, contrast, oxymoron, hyperbole/exaggeration, euphemism, rhetoric, repetition, pun, irony, idiom.... It is not enough to just say a word/phrase is a certain figure of speech. You must explain how it is effective in its use. To do so you must learn the effects that different figures of speech have and then analyse the passage according to that.

6. Identifying the structure of the passage. Punctuation and grammar have a lot more to do with a passage than what we might think at first. For example, long sentences can give a flow to the passage. If the benefit of long sentences is used badly it can make a passage seem boring and tedious to read. Short sentences are usually used to arrest the reader's attention about a particular point. However, if overused they can make the passage jerky and amateurish. Sentences separated by commas emphasize the sense of an inventory. Exclamation marks in dialogues can give the impression that the words are being yelled or said in a loud voice. Any chronological order of events must also be identified - situation, problem, resolution, climax, flashbacks. By grammar we are talking about parts of speech: nouns, verbs, the varied use of adjectives (descriptive detail), adverbs, conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, imperatives to, perhaps, convey the senses - sound, sight, taste, smell.

Conclusion: It is best at the end to identify and explain features that contribute to the strengths/weaknesses of the passage, first impression and how (if) they have changed and why.