Year 10 - English
'The Cellist of Sarajevo': expressing a personal and critical response to a text
Fiction: read around the world
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Study Guides
This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
In this unit, pupils read extracts from four novels from around the world, and use them to develop their narrative writing. In particular, pupils explore writers' use of structure. At the end of the unit, pupils consider their own use of paragraphs for effect and write an engaging narrative.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to express a personal and critical response to a text.
Key Notes
- In order to evaluate, we should form a personal and critical response to the text.
- To form a personal response, we can reflect on how a text made us feel, what stood out and what we like/dislike.
- Each reader can form a different opinion on the same part of a text.
- We can use superlatives to help us express our judgements on a text.
- We can use tentative language to express that our opinions are ideas, not facts.
Vocabulary To Learn
- Evaluative: to be evaluative is to judge something carefully
- Critical: being critical means judging the quality of something
- Superlative: a word to express the highest or lowest quality of something
- Tentative: expressing possibility rather than certainty
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Students may think that being critical means to talk about the negative aspects of something.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain this English learning goal in two key points.
In order to evaluate, we should form a personal and critical response to the text. To form a personal response, we can reflect on how a text made us feel, what stood out and what we like/dislike.
2. Define this language term and use it in a sentence. 'Evaluative'
to be evaluative is to judge something carefully.
3. Correct this common English misunderstanding.
Mistake: Students may think that being critical means to talk about the negative aspects of something. Correction: We can be critical by judging something positively or negatively.
More Lessons In This Unit
- 'After Dark': exploring Murakami's extended metaphor Study Guide
- 'After Dark': selecting evidence to support language analysis Study Guide
- 'Suite Française': evaluating ideas about a writer's craft Study Guide
- 'Suite Française': forming opinions on fiction Study Guide
- Analysing images of hope and destruction in Galloway's 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' Study Guide
- Analysing Saramago's use of structural devices in 'Blindness' Study Guide
- Crafting an engaging narrative Study Guide
- Developing reading skills by responding to Murakami's 'After Dark' Study Guide
- Emulating Murakami's craft to write a descriptive opening Study Guide
- Emulating Saramago's use of structure in 'Blindness' Study Guide
- Exploring and emulating Galloway's use of symbols in 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' Study Guide
- Exploring structure in Murakami's 'After Dark' Study Guide
- Exploring the use of time in Galloway's 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' Study Guide
- Structuring paragraphs effectively in creative writing Study Guide
- Using inversion and asyndeton to craft interesting sentence structures Study Guide
- Using onomatopoeia and alliteration to craft interesting sound imagery Study Guide
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