English language Structure in texts

Ordering of events in the narrative

Is there a shift or change as a result of an event?

How does the text develop as it goes forward?

Is there a moment of crisis?

Is there any resolution?

How may the writer structure the text according to the development of characters?

How does the character develop as the text progresses?

Does the writer bring in a new character? With what effect?

Is there conflict? Contrast?

Does the narrative viewpoint remain the same throughout the text?

If so, with what effect?

Is there a move from a third person narrative viewpoint to a first person narrative viewpoint?

Are we seeing events through a limited narrative viewpoint?

Or an omniscient narrator?

Dialogue

Does the writer introduce dialogue at any time? With what effect?

Does the writer give us the character’s unspoken thoughts? With what effect?

Time

Is there a shift between tenses?

From the present to the past? With what effect?

Is the text in the present only? With what effect?

Setting

How does the writer develop a sense of place?

Does the writer move from the wide to the narrow? Or from the narrow to the wide?

From outside to inside? From inside to outside?

Is there a contrast between places?

Sudden change

Is there anything sudden or out of place or unexpected in the structure of the text? With what effect?

Beginning to end

What is different at the end of the text from the beginning of the text?

Why is this?

The writer

Think about how and why the writer has structure the text they way he/she has

Narrator

Who is the narrator?

First person, second person, third person, omniscient narrator, limited narrator, unreliable narrator, narrated interior monologue

Extra

Think about shifts in focus or perspective

Tracking

Track any images or symbols that recur (motifs) and whether they develop or change in meaning

Sentence strucutures

Main and subordinate clauses, complex or simple sentences.