Writer's Effect: Language & Imagery

What this lesson covers

Writer's Effect: Language & Imagery is a 8-part O Level English lesson. Each part makes one point and then hands over to the next, so it can be read in a sitting or picked up again at the part you stopped on. It defines the idea in plain words before using it, works through an example step by step, breaks the topic into its parts and compares them, shows where it is used outside the textbook, names the mistakes that cost marks in an exam, ends with a recap of what to remember.

How it begins

The writer's effect question gives you a phrase and asks what it makes the reader see, feel or understand. Students answer it by labelling: "this is a metaphor", "this is alliteration". A label is not an explanation and, on its own, scores nothing. What earns marks is the picture. A metaphor works by comparison, so the mark comes from saying what is being compared to what, and what that comparison brings with it.

The 8 parts

1. Naming the device earns nothing
2. The three-part answer
3. Choosing which phrases to write about
4. Worked: one paragraph, three effects
5. The vocabulary that makes an answer sound analytical
6. Where marks go
7. What to remember
8. Watch one worked through