Free VCE English as an Additional Language Flashcard Review

The deliberate techniques a reader or viewer uses to draw meaning out of a text: predicting, skimming for gist, scanning for a detail, close reading a passage, inferring from context, annotating, summarising in note form and rereading. In Unit 3 Outcome 1 you are assessed on applying them to your List 1 text, not on describing them.

Skimming is reading quickly over a chapter or scene to get the overall gist, movement and mood. Scanning is running your eye over the page hunting for one specific thing — a name, a date, a repeated word, a quotation you already half-remember. Skim on a first read; scan when you are building a quotation bank for a topic.

A first reading is for the whole shape: what happens, who wants what, how it ends. A close reading is a slow examination of a short passage where you attend to individual word choices, sentence length, punctuation, imagery and what is left unsaid. Exam-level analysis is built from close readings of about six to eight key passages, not from a single first reading.

Annotation turns reading into retrievable evidence. Margin notes that name the concern, the technique and the effect (not just 'sad') let you rebuild an argument in minutes under exam pressure. Code your annotations by concern so that when a topic names one, you can find five pieces of evidence across the whole text rather than only from the chapters you remember best.

Pausing at a chapter or scene break to ask what is likely to happen next and why. It matters analytically because when the text defies your prediction, that gap is usually where the author has made a deliberate structural choice — a withheld revelation, a reversal, an ironic outcome — and that choice is exactly what an analytical paragraph can discuss.

Watch once for story, then rewatch selected sequences with the sound off to see framing, colour, blocking and editing, and again with only the sound to hear score, silence and vocal delivery. Record the timecode of key shots. Discuss the film as constructed by a director and crew, not as events that simply happened.

Working out a word's likely meaning from the surrounding sentence, the word's parts and the tone of the passage, instead of stopping to look it up. Useful for keeping momentum on a first read; on a close read, verify the key words in a dictionary, because an EAL analysis that misreads one loaded word can misread the whole passage.

A condensed record of a text or a spoken text written in phrases, abbreviations and symbols rather than full sentences. It captures main ideas, sequence and key supporting detail. It is a study and listening tool — never a substitute for the continuous analytical prose required in the examination.

A targeted revision method: choose the six to eight passages that carry the text's central concerns, reread them until you can quote three or four short phrases from each accurately, and note what each passage lets you argue. This gives you evidence that works across many possible topics rather than one memorised essay.

What drives a character to act — the want, fear, loyalty, guilt or need behind the behaviour. Strong analysis distinguishes what a character says motivates them from what the text implies really does, and connects motivation to the text's concerns rather than treating it as psychology for its own sake.

Stated motivation is the reason a character or narrator gives aloud. Inferred motivation is what the reader deduces from actions, silences, repeated images and the reactions of others. Where the two conflict, the text is usually inviting judgement of that character, and naming that gap is high-level analysis.

Lead the sentence with the interpretive claim, not the event: 'Her refusal to return home reveals a loyalty to the past that the text presents as costly', then attach a short quoted phrase as proof. If a sentence could be written by someone who had only read a plot summary, it is retelling and earns nothing.

A character constructed to contrast with another so that the other's qualities stand out more sharply. Analysing a foil is a way of discussing values: the pairing usually shows the text endorsing one way of acting and questioning another.

The protagonist is the character whose choices drive the narrative and through whose experience the concerns are explored; the antagonist is the force opposing them, which may be a person, an institution, a set of social expectations or the protagonist's own past. Naming a non-human antagonist accurately is often the sharper reading.

Direct characterisation is explicit description or comment on a character by the narrator or another character. Indirect characterisation builds the figure through their speech, actions, thoughts, appearance and the way others respond to them. Indirect evidence usually yields more analysis because you must explain the inference.

The pattern of change (or pointed refusal to change) in a character across the whole text. Track the arc by choosing three moments — early, middle, late — and stating what has shifted in what the character values. A topic asking about growth, learning or regret is really asking you to trace an arc with evidence from all three stages.

The presentation of a character's unspoken thoughts as they occur. It gives the reader privileged access to motive and doubt, and often creates a gap between the character's private thought and public speech — a gap that can be analysed as irony, self-deception or social pressure.

The unresolved strain between characters produced by competing needs, unequal power, withheld information, divided loyalty or incompatible values. In analysis, name the source of the tension and what concern it dramatises, rather than simply reporting that two characters argue.

External conflict is between a character and another person, group, institution or environment. Internal conflict is within a character, between competing desires, loyalties or beliefs. Most set texts run both at once, and the strongest paragraphs show how an external pressure produces the internal division.

An unequal distribution of authority, money, language, age, status or knowledge that shapes how two characters speak and act toward each other. Look for it in who interrupts, who is named and who is not, who can leave a room and who cannot — these are analysable textual details, not general observations.