Analysing Language and Structure

What is Analysing Language and Structure?

Within English, which covers grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, poetry, drama and the skills for clear communication, this topic explains Analysing Language and Structure. English topics help you read closely and write with purpose, so each one here explains a skill and shows how it works in a model text.

Check that you can explain Analysing Language and Structure in your own words and give one example from everyday life. If you can do that, you have understood the core idea.

Understanding Analysing Language and Structure helps you read texts more closely and write with more control, which earns marks in both reading and writing papers.

Analysing Language and Structure in detail

When analysing a text, consider the writer's choices of language (word choice, imagery, tone, sentence forms) and structure (how the text is organised: openings, shifts in focus, paragraphing, pace and endings). Use the method Point, Evidence, Explain: make a point, support it with a short quotation and explain the effect on the reader.

Comment on specific words rather than just naming techniques, and link them to the writer's purpose, meaning or the reader's response. Structure may move from the general to the particular, build tension or end with a twist. Strong analysis shows how and why a text works.

How the interactive helps you understand Analysing Language and Structure

Click a step, or use the Previous and Next buttons, to move through the sequence one stage at a time. Auto-play moves on for you.

Before you change anything, predict the result. Then change one value at a time and check whether your prediction was right. This is a quick way to build a correct mental model of Analysing Language and Structure.

Real-life uses and examples

• Use Analysing Language and Structure to make your own writing more precise and vivid.
• Support a point about Analysing Language and Structure with a short, accurate quotation.
• Plan an essay paragraph by linking the technique to the reader’s response.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Quoting a long passage instead of picking a short, precise phrase.
• Naming a technique without explaining its effect on the reader.
• Learning the definition without testing it. Use the quiz and the interactive to check that you can apply the idea.