Lesson video

I'm Miss Howell.

Welcome to today's English lesson.

All you'll need is a pen and a piece of paper.

So take a moment to clear yourself of any distractions and make sure that you have everything you need at hand for our learning today.

Our lesson today is going to continue our exploration of the Gothic text, "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", and we are going to keep our focus on analysing structure.

The text we will read contains reference to violence and death.

For some people, this will be a sensitive topic.

If that applies to you, you may want to do the rest of this lesson with a trusted adult nearby who can support.

Please now take a moment to get down your title, "Learning how to analyse structure in "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"", pausing here to do that now.

Now please write down your key word for the lesson, which is "audacious" and the definition pausing here to get that down now.

In today's lesson, we will continue to look at how to analyse structure in a text and you will develop the skills of being able to spot structural techniques and think carefully about what you learn because of the writer's use of such devices.

Over the next two slides, are a reminder of the structural techniques that we have explored.

If you need to pause to write down these techniques, then please do so.

So, we have already looked at character introduction, setting, foreshadowing, shifts in tone, focus, topic, location, and repetition of an idea.

We are going to add to our repertoire of structural techniques by looking today at juxtaposition.

This is when two things are placed side by side for comparison, often to highlight the contrast between the two things.

Think about what the writer is trying to highlight to the reader by juxtaposing two ideas.

Please pause the video here to add juxtaposition to your piece of paper and make sure you get down the definition as well.

A good example of juxtaposition can be found in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet".

Shakespeare juxtaposes light and dark in his famous tragedy, which, in a way, juxtaposed the two young, innocent lovers and their families' hate.

In a way, this helps to foreshadow the doomed fate of the lovers by the end of the play.

Another example is from "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens.

Your task is to read the opening of this novel by Dickens and I'd like you to write down what ideas are being juxtaposed and consider why Dickens would want to do for this, for what purpose.

Remember we must always consider why writers use the techniques they do, whether that in a language or structure, and what they want us as readers to understand or learn the choices they make.

Pause the video here to complete this task now.

So, using a different coloured pen, just edit, adapt your response with the answer as I take you through it.

Remember, if you need to pause the video to allow yourself to do this, then please do so.

In order to help his reader understand the factors responsible for the French Revolution, Dickens uses juxtaposition throughout the novel.

Here, in the opening that you have just read, the haves and have-nots are put side by side to highlight the presence of severe disparity and discord in the then French society, which ultimately was the reason for the Revolution.

By examining the given juxtaposition, readers can vividly imagine the calamitous atmosphere before the Revolution, and understand why it, therefore, came about.

We are going to now analyse the structural techniques that Stevenson has deployed in "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde".

We will do this using an extract that we have already looked at.

In a moment, you will re-read that extract from the text, and I'd like you to make a note of the structural feature that you can spot.

When you make your note, I would like you to make sure that you're including the structural device, a quotation to support, and then what you as a learner now learn or understand because of Stevenson's use of that particular device.

And remember our new structural technique and our particular focus for the lesson, which is juxtaposition.

So keep an eye out for that as well.

Pause here to re-read and make a note of the structural features you can spot.

Pause here to re-read and make a note of structural features you can spot.

Pause here to re-read and make a note of the structural features you can spot.

Pause here to re-read and make a note of the structural features you can spot.

Now, we will review your answers.

Using a different coloured pen, just edit, refine your work with the answers as I go through them.

Any point, if you need to pause the video to enable you to do this, then please do so.

In the first part of the text that you read, hopefully you were able to spot that Stevenson uses the character introduction of the gentlemen the maid can see from her window.

A quotation that supports that is, "innocent and old-world kindness of disposition", and we therefore learn the gentleman is seemingly a virtuous man who has a tender, warm face and demeanour.

Then in the second part of the text that you re-read, Stevenson introduces the character of Mr Hyde.

The quotation to support that is, "with an ill-contained impatience", and so what we learn here is that Mr Hyde ironically is not hiding his frustration at having to converse with the gentleman.

This could foreshadow an altercation between the two men.

Then in the third part of the text that you re-read, here is where Stevenson utilises juxtaposition.

And he juxtaposes these two characters of Mr Hyde and the gentleman.

And what we see here within the quotations is that juxtaposition, because you have the gentleman who is surprised and a trifle hurt, whereas Mr Hyde is broke out in a flame of anger.

So we learn that Mr Hyde is completely juxtaposed to the other gentleman.

And this allows the reader to learn the unprovoked and senseless nature of this brutal reaction by Hyde.

Finally, in the last section of the text, Stevenson shifts the focus from the attack to the body of the victim, and those quotations which support this are, "incredibly mangled" and "insensate cruelty".

By focusing on the body of Hyde's victim, the reader learns the full brutality of the attack, as the body is so mutilated, reinforcing how completely illogical this savagery was.

Your next task is to write up the structural analysis into a paragraph.

You need to write about all four techniques that we have just looked at in his feedback and structure this into coherent sentences.

You need to think carefully in particular about how you explain what you learned as the reader, due to those structural techniques that we've looked at.

And make sure that it is really specific.

So an example is when you're looking at structural techniques, you want to avoid general statements that don't really mean anything.

So if, for example, you were looking at character introduction and you just said in your explanation, "we now learn more about the character", that isn't really explaining what you actually learned about that particular character in this particular text.

So you need that really specific effect in order to effectively analyse structure.

What you can see on the slide is I have provided you with some sentence frames to support your write up, if you need them.

Pause here to complete your write up, remembering that you need to incorporate all four structural techniques in this write up using sentence frames, should you need to.

Now, we will review your answers switching now to your different coloured pen to enable you to see clearly the edits and refinements that you are learning based on the feedback we're about to go through.

And then just remember to pause the video at any time during the feedback, should you want to make those edits to your own work.

So, hopefully in your first paragraph, that first structural technique that we looked at was the character introduction.

So looking at the model, firstly, the writer uses a character introduction of the gentleman the maid can see from her window.

It is clear that he's innocent and had an old-world kindness of disposition.

From this, the reader learns that the gentleman is seemingly a virtuous man who has a tender, warm face and demeanour.

So what I'd like to check is that you also have got this three part structure to your paragraphs where you've written about each structural technique.

So you can see here in my model paragraph, the first sentence makes it clear the structural technique that the writer has used.

Then the second sentence imbed the quotation.

And the final sentence informs us about what the reader is learning because of that structural technique.

So just reflect on your own work and make sure that your answers are as clear and also have that same structure to them as the model does.

Then the writer introduces the character of Mr Hyde.

He had an ill-contained impatience with the gentlemen.

As such, the reader learns that Mr Hyde ironically is not hiding his frustration at having to converse with the gentlemen.

This could also foreshadow an altercation between the two men.

From these two character introductions, the writer has juxtaposed Mr Hyde and the gentlemen.

The latter was surprised and a trifle hurt that Hyde broke out in a great flame of anger so suddenly at him.

By juxtaposing characters in this way, the reader learns that Mr Hyde is being contrasted to the gentleman's kindness suggesting he is the opposite and a brutish character.

It also allows the reader to learn the unprovoked and senseless nature of this brutal reaction by Hyde.

And then finally, the focus shifts from the attack to the body of the victim.

This has been incredibly mangled due to the insensate cruelty of Hyde.

By focusing on the body of Hyde's victim, the reader learns the full brutality of the attack as the body is so mutilated, reinforcing how completely illogical this savagery was especially when aimed at someone who is innocent suggesting that no one is safe from a character like Hyde.

So hopefully, what you have spotted, but in your own work there, is your really specific effect of each of those structural techniques that Stevenson has just used and that you have also explored juxtapositions today.

Once you have edited your own work, that will bring us to the end of our lesson.

Thank you for your focus.

And I hope you have enjoyed our learning today.