Shadowing Practice: how to do critical literary analysis | English made simple - Learn English Speaking with Video

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We study poems, plays, and books in English class, but strangely if you really think about it, we never actually learn how to analyze literature.

Rather, we were expected to pick it up along the way.

This, however, is unfortunately easier said than done, and as a result, we're just left with the too vague

or go deeper comments on our essays without actually knowing how to improve.

Today we're going to change that.

Here is my five -step critical literary analysis guide

that I developed over the course of my high school career

that got me an A -star in IGCSE English and A7 in IB English HL.

It honestly made my life so much easier

because it meant I could spend the minimum amount of time worrying about English exams

and spend more time on things like my university applications.

If you want to improve your English grades, watch this.

There is just one thing you need for this critical literary analysis framework, your text.

The steps will be simple, but you have to follow them exactly.

They're also all linked together with the fifth step being the most important

because that's what's actually going to make your analysis precise and deep.

In order to demonstrate these steps in real time, I'll be using one of my favorite poems, A .E.

Hausmann's Because I Loved You Better, as an example.

But this method works on both a large scale, so on a whole poem or a book, and small scale, so on individual sentences and quotes.

If you want to know how you can use this method to analyze a full book,

make sure to check it out on my free Patreon linked down below.

Step one, summarize what is actually happening.

The first step is to summarize exactly what is happening.

Don't worry about literary meaning or devices or anything like that at this stage.

Focus on just the plot, as if you're trying to give a factual report.

And this doesn't have to be very long either, you just have to make sure that you understand fully the sequence of events.

If you want to, you can write this out to practice the first few times, but afterwards you can just do it in your head.

For example, the poem that we're going to discuss, Because I'd Like To Better, tells the story of a man,

our speaker, who has just confessed to his lover that he likes them, probably more than a man should, in his words.

Basically, he's confessed that his feelings are stronger than he would like to admit to himself.

Unfortunately, the other person does not reciprocate his feelings and has asked our speaker to forget him entirely, which our speaker promises to do.

In the third stanza, the scene cuts to a tomb.

It is of our speaker.

He has died trying to keep his promise, and he asks his lover to stop by his headstone

and know that he has died trying to keep his word to him.

Step two, generalize it to a wider human experience.

Right now, what is happening in this work is limited to our speaker.

So why are we affected by it?

Why do we care about the fiction at all when they are all stories about other people?

But because they talk about the general human condition, experiences the majority of us will go through at least once in our life.

That's why we relate to fiction, to songs, to movies, and so on.

So once you've established the plotline of the work, it's time to extrapolate from it the general human condition that it is describing.

In the case of our poem, for example, it talks about three main universal experiences.

First, loving somebody, having a crush, but then having your feelings rejected by the other person.

A devastating experience for everybody.

Sometimes it hurts so much that it feels like you're dying.

Second, still loving your crush, for lack of a better term, even after the rejection.

In this poem, for instance, the speaker still feels very much in love with this you figure, even after his metaphorical death.

And third, and this is a slightly more nuanced experience, but feeling like you ought not to love someone, not being able to help it,

but also not being able to quite admit it even to yourself.

That is why perhaps the speaker says that he likes his lover, even though his actions clearly point to a deep love for this other person.

And if you know the authorial and historical context of this poem,

you'll understand why the poet and the speaker is not in a position where he can freely admit to his feelings,

and he probably also has a layer of internalized homophobia

that is stopping himself from being able to accept it even to himself.

If you're interested for more on this check out my free Patreon where I explain more on this poem as well.

Step three, name the emotions.

Next we have to describe what we're actually feeling from this work.

I know this slightly sounds like some strange group therapy session

but one key part of literary analysis is being able to explicitly describe exactly what this is making us feel.

That is also why reading makes us more emotionally mature people

because we're able to exactly understand and name what we were feeling.

So first, put an emotion to the work.

For instance, in Because I Like You Better, the big feeling here is sadness.

Step four, be a bit more specific.

As you can probably tell though, sadness alone is not nearly satisfactory enough to describe all of the nuanced feelings going on in this poem.

And there is definitely more than one feeling going on here too.

So the next step is to be more specific with the emotions and how we describe these emotions.

Let's apply this back to our case study, our poem.

We know that the speaker feels sad, but he's also feeling many smaller emotions under this sadness umbrella.

So essentially we're trying to splice this larger emotion into all of its smaller and more intricate parts.

First we have his resigned acceptance that his lover does not love him back.

Next we have the speaker's yearning and a deep love for his lover, hoping that his lover will still remember him even after his metaphorical death.

There's also a degree of self -blame.

This is why as we mentioned before he uses like instead of love

and why he says all this was because he liked his lover.

Blaming his own emotions and affection for this other person for all of the sadness and not the other person.

We can also see that the speaker is feeling ignored because his emotions, which for him was life -endingly deep,

was nothing but annoying or irksome to his lover.

That is why he uses the word irksome.

There's also the sense of not belonging because his feelings, which are natural and uncontrollable as we all know, are not accepted by society.

Hence why he says that his feelings are more than suits a man to say.

Presumably because society has historically told men that they have to be stoic and restrained in their emotions.

Step 5.

Why this?

And this is the key difference between a B and an A star answer.

Finally, we have the most important step.

This is the one step that everyone misses in their literary analysis, and why your analysis might sound vague or not deep enough.

The last step is to explain exactly why the author chose these words to express themselves,

and all of these smaller emotions that we were able to identify in our previous step.

For example, for this poem, let's say that you want to analyze the quote, throw the thought away.

A B -level answer, or a 5 -6 level answer if you're doing the IB, might say the poet uses the metaphor to say

that the speaker will throw the thought away to show how much he wanted to get rid of his thoughts.

However, that analysis is still just explaining the plot of what is happening in those words, that the speaker wants to throw away the thought.

It does not explain why Hausman chose the verbs throw or the word thought.

We have to fully explain this if we were to make it a top -level answer.

For example, we might analyze the word throw like this.

The speaker promises to throw his thought away as though it were nothing more than an irksome piece of trash

and not as devastatingly deep feelings for his lover.

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So linking the word throwaway, which is commonly used for trash,

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and how much the speaker of the poem is feeling like his emotions are literally being treated like trash.

102

Likewise, we might analyze Hausmann's specific choice of the word thought like this.

103

Furthermore, Hausmann describes the speaker's uncontrollable feelings and emotions as a thought, as though it was a conscious thing the speaker could control,

104

and therefore just stop thinking about.

105

Pay close attention to the difference between the first answer,

106

which only explains the effects of the word and the plot of what is happening in that line, and the other two answers,

107

which specifically comments on why these words were intentionally chosen by Hausmann and the effect that those words have on the reader.

108

So this is the simple five -step guide to critical literary analysis.

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As you can see, the steps themselves are extremely simple, but it can be tricky to execute them accurately.

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But actually being able to follow them explicitly is the difference between a vague and a deep understanding of the literary text.

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And that is why I've posted another full example analysis, this time for a whole book, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, for free on my Patreon,

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where as you know I post all of my study resources for free.

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Thank you so much for watching and bye!

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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Deze spreekles is gebaseerd op de video “how to do critical literary analysis”. Deze woorden komen het vaakst terug: step, feeling, speaker, emotion, poem. Deze video bevat 113 zinnen en 1684 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 7:39. De spreker praat snel, ongeveer 220 woorden per minuut, dus reken op verbonden en ingeslikte klanken. 87% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden, dus de woordenschat is goed te volgen.

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

15 woorden uit de video die het leren waard zijn, met uitspraak en betekenis:

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
poem zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈpoʊ.əm/	gedicht, vers
emotion zelfstandig naamwoord	/ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/	emotie
lover zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈlʌvɚ/	minnaar, minnares
literary bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/ˈlɪt.(ə.)ɹə.ɹi/	literair
analyze werkwoord	/ˈæn.əˌlaɪz/	analyseren
sadness zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈsædnəs/	verdriet, droefenis
trash zelfstandig naamwoord	/tɹæʃ/	vuilnis, vuil
vague bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/veɪɡ/	vaag
fiction zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈfɪkʃən/	fictie
poet zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈpoʊ.ət/	dichter, poëet
crush werkwoord	/kɹʌʃ/	verpletteren, pletten
explicitly bijwoord		uitdrukkelijk
confess werkwoord	/kənˈfɛs/	bekennen
universal bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/	algemeen
ignore werkwoord	/ɪɡˈnɔː/	negeren

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Woord	Betekenis
check out werkwoord	onderzoeken
throw away werkwoord	weggooien

Grammatica in deze video

De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:

Structuur	In de video
Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt	has just confessed · has asked · you've established
Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet	were expected · are not accepted · being treated
Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding	feelings, which are · throwaway, which is

Uitspraak om op te letten

De spreker gebruikt 18 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals we're, you're, doesn't. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.

De klanken “sh” en “zh”: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, trash /tɹæʃ/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, crush /kɹʌʃ/, establish /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/
Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: literary /ˈlɪt.(ə.)ɹə.ɹi/, universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, historically /hɪˈstɔɹɪkli/, presumably /pɹɪˈzuːməbli/

Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:

Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: analyze /ˈæn.əˌlaɪz/, vague /veɪɡ/, afterwards /ˈæf.tɚ.wɚdz/, likewise /ˈlaɪkˌwaɪz/, verb /vɝb/
/æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: analyze /ˈæn.əˌlaɪz/, sadness /ˈsædnəs/, trash /tɹæʃ/, establish /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/, afterwards /ˈæf.tɚ.wɚdz/
/g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: vague /veɪɡ/, ignore /ɪɡˈnɔː/, exam /ɪɡˈzæm/

Zo oefen je met deze video

Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als poem, emotion, lover.

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?

Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.

Shadowing-techniek: lees de volledige stap-voor-stap-gids →