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Critical Essay: Analysing Texts Effectively?

(edited 4 years ago)

I was wondering if anyone who has gone through the Higher English course had any advice of how I should go about analysis my texts efficiently. I'm study The Cone Gatherers, which is rich in themes and characterisation, but I feel as if there's almost too much!

Would you recommend I focus on one theme at a time, working my way through the novel specifically pinpointing that aspects of the novel? Or should I just add quotes/ideas to a list as I go along? It just doesn't feel as if my current notes/analysis has any structure and we haven't really being working through it systematically.

So basically, how did you find was the easiest way to gather evidence and ideas for your critical essay? How exactly are the critical essays marked? What seperates a 23/25 or a 25/25 from a 19/25 or a 21/25? I really appreciate any advice, as I said, I'm not quite sure how I should go about this. Is it a lengthy process that I should be working on throughout the year?

Thanks!

i haven't studied the cone gatherers, however i studied To Kill a Mockingbird at higher and it also has hundreds of themes, motifs, sub-plots...it's just filled to the brim :P the hard part is having all of that information in your head, then looking at an exam question and refining that knowledge to suit the question-if you start talking about every random point in the book it will fail.
It's probably easier to structure it-what i'd recommend is searching through past paper questions that are suitable for the text and list all of the techniques relevant-this should help to structure it a bit.
have you seen the marking criteria for each essay mark? it's a bit of a help :P don't overload your essay with quotes-2 or 3 strong quotes are better than 20 pointless ones. One thing everyone forgets to do (including myself) is evaluate the text-at higher it needs to be more sophisticated than "i like this quote" You should try and take a step back from it and think, what is the point of this quote? What has it done for me? Has it increased my understanding of a particular character or theme?
I hope i've helped a bit, english is a toughy to study.