"get into it"? How did you feel reading it—amused,
sad, disturbed, confused, bored...?
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Creating engaging prompts for students writing about fiction can be difficult. This is especially true because interpreting fiction is an inherently subjective, open-ended task. Worse, excessively narrow prompts, like asking a student to summarize a story's plot or to define what a certain symbol “means,” run the risk of driving students toward the implication that there is a “right” answer. In an online context, this may also discourage discussion (i.e., after a “correct” answer is given, students will no longer feel motivated to continue to “engage” with the text via blog posts, etc.). Thus, in a remote classroom environment, it is important to assign open-ended writing prompts that encourage the sort of deep discussion that's typically easier to facilitate face-to-face.
The following prompts may be good place(s) to start in terms of facilitating a this sort of discussion in the online context.
Teaching literary analysis in the secondary English classroom is an essential cornerstone of high school English and middle school English curriculum. When students learn the process of literary analysis, they will embrace the new challenge each literary text brings. How do you teach literary analysis essay?
When I first teach literature to my students, I use direct instruction strategies. I provide my students with literary analysis terms and examples. Then we begin short stories and excerpts together. Usually, we will analyze a couple of short stories together as a class before moving on to more substantial pieces, like novels. One blog post that might be helpful is this one about how to write a literary analysis response .
When I’m teaching a piece of fiction, I like to have set questions I can use throughout the year to ask my students. As students answer the same question about various texts throughout the year, they improve their analytical skills and begin to form a better understanding of how literature analysis works.
If you are teaching response to analysis and literary analysis, here are ten questions you should ask your students about the piece they are reading. These questions are some of the questions included in my Response to Literature Task Cards that work with any piece of fiction. Here are several questions to guide your students as they analyze literature.
Literary analysis questions about theme.
Literary analysis with sticky notes.
Teaching literary analysis can be fun, engaging, and accessible for all students! Increase student engagement and understanding in your next literary analysis unit (whether it be short stories or novels) with interactive and hands-on close reading organizers and scaffolded writing responses. Students will enjoy using sticky notes in class as they analyze the author’s use of various literary devices in complex short stories and novels.
What fellow teachers say about this resource:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Extremely satisfied
“ My students found this very helpful to organize their writing and the movement involved with using sticky notes was a hit. The kids loved getting to use sticky notes and to flip them up and down. It made the planning for their writing so much faster. Would highly recommend for all students but especially for any kids who have a hard time focusing.”
“ This is a great way to have kids write literary analysis in a different way instead of just asking for essays. It’s like a little trick to get them to do academic work while thinking they are just doodling on sticky notes. I even use this with AP Lit and just modify my expectations somewhat. I appreciate all the different handouts/options.”
My Literary Analysis Mini Flip Book combines the fun and excitement of sticky notes with the format of a mini flipbook. It is the perfect culminating activity for students to analyze a final short story in your short story teaching unit.
These Response to Literature Task Cards are an ideal way to get students talking about complex literary themes and ideas within any piece of fiction. There are two sets of tasks cards in this set, and you can use them again and again with any short story or novel.
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A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Introduction
Before Reading
Reading Context
During Reading
Reading Questions & Paired Texts
After Reading
Discussion/Analysis Prompt
Exam Questions
Exam Answer Key
Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.
Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.
Scaffolded Essay Questions
Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.
1. Consider the role that storytelling plays in the novel.
2. Examine Barney’s role in the novel.
By Morris Gleitzman
7th-8th Grade Historical Fiction
View Collection
A short summary and analysis of Virginia Woolf’s 1919 essay
Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘Modern Fiction’, which was originally published under the title ‘Modern Novels’ in 1919, demonstrates in essay form what her later novels bear out: that she had set out to write something different from her contemporaries. Analysis of this important short essay reveals the lengths that Woolf was prepared to go to discredit earlier writers and promote a new style of writing, which she calls ‘Georgian’ and was often referred to as ‘impressionist’ at the time, but which we now know better as ‘modernist’.
In ‘Modern Fiction’ (1919), Virginia Woolf takes issue with those Edwardian novelists writing in the early years of the twentieth century who, in some ways, might be seen as relics of the nineteenth-century realism outlined above: her three targets, Arnold Bennett , John Galsworthy, and H. G. Wells , are all labelled ‘materialists’ because of their preoccupation with predictable and plausible plots and their interest in describing the exterior details – the clothes a character wears, the furniture in a room – when what Woolf, as a reader, really wants to know is what is going on the heads of their characters.
Such a story points a way forward for Woolf and other writers, whom she labels ‘Georgian’ – i.e. more ‘modern’ and progressive than the materialist Edwardians.
In a later essay, ‘ Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown ’ (1924), Woolf attacked Bennett again, and summed up the difference between his type of fiction and the way life actually is:
In the course of your daily life this past week you have had far stranger and more interesting experiences than the one I have tried to describe. You have overheard scraps of talk that filled you with amazement. You have gone to bed at night bewildered by the complexity of your feelings. In one day thousands of ideas have coursed through your brains; thousands of emotions have met, collided, and disappeared in astonishing disorder. Nevertheless, you allow the writers to palm off upon you a version of all this, an image of Mrs. Brown, which has no likeness to that surprising apparition whatsoever. In your modesty you seem to consider that writers are of different blood and bone from yourselves; that they know more of Mrs. Brown than you do. Never was there a more fatal mistake. It is this division between reader and writer, this humility on your part, these professional airs and graces on ours, that corrupt and emasculate the books which should be the healthy offspring of a close and equal alliance between us. Hence spring those sleek, smooth novels, those portentous and ridiculous biographies, that milk and watery criticism, those poems melodiously celebrating the innocence of roses and sheep which pass so plausibly for literature at the present time. [Woolf, Selected Essays , ed. David Bradshaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 53.]
Readers need to say ‘enough is enough’ and embrace the kind of fiction Woolf had just started to write – her novel Jacob’s Room had appeared the year before, in 1922 – which sought to capture the wonder and reality of life more accurately than Arnold Bennett ever did.
Others had got there before Woolf: in ‘Modern Fiction’ she mentions Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad, praising them for moving away from such traditional realism or ‘materialism’ in fiction in favour of a newer and more subjective and psychological mode in English fiction. S
he also praises Anton Chekhov’s short stories – which would go on to influence Katherine Mansfield – and singles out his short story ‘Gusev’, in which nothing much happens, as a fine example of this new mode of fiction. This new impressionistic and psychologically focused mode of writing, which would move away from Victorian realism and push fiction into new territory, would later become known as ‘modernism’.
Discover more about female modernist writers with Woolf’s finest short stories , our pick of Woolf’s best novels and essays , our reappraisal of May Sinclair’s fiction , our introduction to the work of pioneering writer George Egerton , and our overview of the best stories by Katherine Mansfield .
Image: Portrait of Virginia Woolf by Roger Fry (c. 1917), via Wikimedia Commons .
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By quentin tarantino, pulp fiction essay questions.
Why does Tarantino tell the story in non-chronological order?
After a brief prologue, Pulp Fiction is divided into three chapters: Vincent and Mia's date, Butch's story, and Vincent and Jules's encounter with The Wolf. Presenting the story using a non-linear timeline allows Tarantino to stay with each character for a long period of time, using a structure more common to modern novels than to feature films. Telling the events out of order also allows Tarantino to delay the audience's recognition of surprising events, such as Jules and Vincent being in the same diner as Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, or Butch being revealed as Vincent's killer. The non-linear structure also encourages audiences to pay close attention to the development of the plot, demanding more effort than a typical action-thriller film.
What is the significance of the briefcase that Jules and Vincent retrieve for Marsellus?
Although the contents of the briefcase are never revealed, Tarantino indicates to the audience that they are extremely important and valuable, given how violently Jules and Vincent behave toward the men who currently possess it. Vincent and Pumpkin are the only two characters who open the briefcase, and their faces glow when they look inside. The briefcase is a classic example of the MacGuffin: any object or event that drives the plot of a film with little to no narrative explanation. What matters is not what is inside the briefcase; what matters is that Marsellus will do anything to get it. Tarantino's shameless use of the MacGuffin as a plot device is one of the film's many self-referential allusions to cinema and cinematic storytelling.
Why does Mia make Vincent participate in the twist contest?
Mia is an impatient and impulsive character who Vincent must essentially obey for the duration of the date, so that he does not incur the wrath of her husband and his boss, Marsellus Wallace. Mia delights in pushing Vincent out of his comfort zone, which likely informs her decision to bring Vincent to Jackrabbit Slim's in the first place, a restaurant that makes him visibly uncomfortable before they even walk in, prompting her to call him a "square." Vincent brings up the story of Marsellus having a man thrown off a roof for massaging Mia's feet, a story that Mia flatly denies. Knowing she is often a target of gossip and perhaps even ridicule among Marsellus's associates, Mia decides to try to embarrass Vincent in return by making him participate in the twist contest in front of the entire restaurant, which they end up winning.
Why do Jules and Vincent argue at great length about "divine intervention"?
Jules and Vincent's disagreement about whether or not their survival at Brett's apartment was an act of divine intervention speaks to a larger debate in the film about fate and free will. Jules believes that their chances of survival were so microscopic that the act is a miracle, indicating a higher power at work. Vincent, on the other hand, merely believes that the event was a coincidence that, although unlikely, still has some precedent. Jules's epiphany leads him to renounce a life of crime, something which Vincent believes will render him a "bum." Interestingly, if Vincent had reached the same conclusion Jules did, he might never have been sent to kill Butch the following day, and would still be alive. Thus, Tarantino seems to suggest that Jules's philosophy is ultimately the correct one.
Why does Butch risk his life to recover his gold watch?
Butch is the only character who we see as a child, when he was visited by a man named Captain Koons. In a long monologue, Koons explains to Butch that he was held alongside Butch's father in a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam, where his father hid a gold watch in his anus for five years before dying. The watch was a family heirloom dating back to Butch's great-grandfather. Koons himself stashed the watch in his own anus for two years, and imparts it to Butch at a very young age. Thus, the gold watch is for Butch a family heirloom and a symbol of his dead father's love. Butch's sensitivity to the disappearance of the gold watch is ironic given how stoic and cold-blooded he is in virtually every other way. In this way, Tarantino shows how a symbol of masculinity and patrilineal affection actually renders Butch vulnerable and emotional.
The Question and Answer section for Pulp Fiction is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.
Pulp Fiction study guide contains a biography of director Quentin Tarantino, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.
Pulp Fiction essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Pulp Fiction directed by Quentin Tarantino.
In high school and college literature classes, one common type of writing assignment is the comparison and contrast essay. Identifying points of similarity and difference in two or more literary works encourages close reading and stimulates careful thought.
To be effective, a comparison-contrast essay needs to be focused on particular methods, characters, and themes. These ten sample topics demonstrate different ways of achieving that focus in a critical essay .
This page features 22 of my favorite short stories with questions . These reading activities are perfect for classroom use. Written by some of the greatest authors in history, these stories are short enough to cover in a single class period, and rich enough to warrant study. I tried to select stories that students would find highly interesting. I chose stories with ironic endings, interesting twists, and clever plot movements . This collection will nurture your students' love of reading and storytelling. I also prepared ten multiple-choice and long response questions for each text. These questions cover a range of reading skills from comprehension and inferring to interpreting themes and identifying figurative language techniques.
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These reading activities are available in both the old-school paper format (.RTF and .PDF) and the updated Ereading Worksheet format . With the print-out versions, I optimized to reduce paper use. Most of these fit onto 4 sides. With the new Ereading Worksheets (online versions), I was not limited by paper sides, and was able to ask follow-up short response questions to each multiple-choice. I recommend that you use these if you have the tech at your disposal. They can be completed on any Internet connected device. Students receive instant feedback, and they can print, save, or email score sheets . They can also share their results on Facebook. These activities are easy to integrate with Google Classroom . Definitions of challenging vocabulary words can be found with one click. And perhaps most importantly, these activities are more accessible to students with disabilities . Without further introduction, I present 22 of my favorite short stories with questions, available as worksheets and online activities.
I hope that these stories and resources help you accomplish your goals. Please let me know if you find any errors or have any feedback. Leave a comment below or contact me directly at [email protected] . Thank you for visiting my website.
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If you can't find specific discussion questions for your novel, use our Generic Book Club Discussion Questions for Fiction.
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15 of the Best Questions for Teaching Literary Analysis Teaching literary analysis in the secondary English classroom is an essential cornerstone of high school English and middle school English curriculum. When students learn the process of literary analysis, they will embrace the new challenge each literary text brings. How do you teach literary analysis essay?
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Pulp Fiction study guide contains a biography of director Quentin Tarantino, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.
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