Completa gli esercizi seguenti per consolidare le competenze di scrittura di un critical commentary in inglese. Lavora in modo accurato, usando il literary present e un registro formale; quando ti viene chiesto di produrre testo, scrivilo direttamente in inglese sul quaderno.
- Which of the following is the most effective thesis statement for a critical commentary on Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est'?
- A) The poem is about World War I and soldiers dying in the trenches.
- B) I really liked this poem because it made me feel sad about war.
- C) Owen dismantles patriotic rhetoric through visceral imagery and a fractured rhythm that mirrors the soldiers' trauma.
- D) Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 and died in 1918, one week before the Armistice.
- In a critical commentary written in English, you should normally use the past tense to describe events that happen within the literary text (e.g. 'Gatsby waited for Daisy').
- Vero / Falso
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The acronym PEEL, which guides the structure of analytical paragraphs, stands for Point, Evidence, ___ and Link.
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Match each literary device to its correct definition. | Colonna A | Colonna B | |---|---| | Enjambment | The deliberate placement of two contrasting elements close together to highlight their difference. | | Juxtaposition | A narrative technique that hints at events which will occur later in the story. | | Foreshadowing | The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or lines. | | Anaphora | The continuation of a sentence beyond the end of a line of verse, without terminal punctuation. |
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Which sentence uses a quotation in the most academically appropriate way?
- A) The narrator feels lonely. 'I wandered lonely as a cloud.' This shows loneliness.
- B) Wordsworth's opening simile, 'I wandered lonely as a cloud', establishes the speaker's emotional isolation from the human world before nature restores him.
- C) I wandered lonely as a cloud is a very famous line by Wordsworth and everybody knows it.
- D) The poem starts with the cloud line and then talks about daffodils, which the poet sees.
- Naming a rhetorical device such as 'alliteration' in the text is sufficient evidence; the commentator does not need to explain its effect on meaning or tone.
- Vero / Falso
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Sentences such as 'It can be argued that' or 'The imagery suggests' are preferred to 'I think that' because they create a more ___ register suitable for academic literary analysis.
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Rewrite the following sentence to make it suitable for a critical commentary: 'I think the writer is trying to say that war is, like, really bad and stuff, you know?'
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Which opening best fulfils the function of an introduction in a critical commentary?
- A) This commentary will talk about many interesting things in the text.
- B) Once upon a time there was a writer called Joyce who wrote a book.
- C) Published in 1914, James Joyce's 'The Dead' closes 'Dubliners' with an epiphany that re-examines the relationship between memory, paralysis and Irish identity, themes this commentary will explore through Joyce's use of symbolic snow and free indirect discourse.
- D) I am going to write about a short story and I hope you enjoy reading my work.
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Match each section of a critical commentary to its main rhetorical function. | Colonna A | Colonna B | |---|---| | Introduction | Develops one analytical point through evidence and explanation. | | Body paragraph | Announces the specific aspect that the paragraph will analyse. | | Topic sentence | Synthesises the analysis and reflects on the wider significance of the text. | | Conclusion | Contextualises the text and presents the thesis statement. |
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Read the following extract from Charlotte Brontë's 'Jane Eyre': 'Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present.' Write a PEEL paragraph (about 8-10 lines) analysing the effect of the direct address to the reader and the syntactic brevity of the second sentence.
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In a commentary on a poem, which is the correct way to quote two consecutive lines within a running sentence?
- A) The speaker confesses that 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both', dramatising a moment of irreversible choice.
- B) The speaker says: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood And sorry I could not travel both. That is the choice.
- C) 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood And sorry I could not travel both' - quote from Frost.
- D) The speaker confesses that two roads diverged in a yellow wood and he was sorry he could not travel both of them at the same time.
- A critical commentary and a book review share the same purpose: both express the writer's personal enjoyment and recommend whether others should read the text.
- Vero / Falso
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When writing about literature in English, the convention is to use the so-called literary ___, so we write 'Macbeth murders Duncan' rather than 'Macbeth murdered Duncan'.
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You must plan a 350-word critical commentary on the closing paragraph of George Orwell's '1984', in which Winston loves Big Brother. Outline a step-by-step plan covering thesis, two body paragraphs and conclusion.
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Choose a short text studied this year (poem, extract or short story) and draft, on your notebook, a complete critical commentary of about 300 words, including a clear thesis, two PEEL paragraphs with integrated quotations, and a conclusion that reflects on the wider significance of the text.