<p>I desperately need help. Before this year I was acing English with all my marks about 95%...then this year comes around and I get a 78%.. uh oh</p>
<p>What we've been doing is something I have never learned: analyzing the text in literature. We're not actually analyzing points in the book, but how words and different techniques are used in a certain passage. I was wondering if there are any books that can explain to me a majority of techniques, or how to go about writing explications/commentaries?</p>
<p>There's always the classic "How to Read a Book," which I thought was a scam when I first encountered it in a bookstore. It contains sections on how to read all sorts of books, but literature figures in prominently. I'm not quite sure if it's the book you'd need, but nevertheless, I think it's a worthwhile book to work through.</p>
<p>Perhaps what would be best is just picking up an AP English Literature book or something similar and working through it.</p>
<p>Are you talking about literary terms? If you have to identify and analyze literary terms just search for "Literary Terms" on google. one of the website gives you a complete list of the terms and one of the website has many examples of how they are used in analysis.</p>
<p>funny you say that it's a process. i was always under the impression that a process involved a series of steps.</p>
<p>personally my own is advice is to forget using a book. use your damn brain. look for words. connect them with other words. look for patterns. make a list if you have to. things will start to connect in your head. that's all you really need when it comes to analyzing literature.</p>
<p>here's a quick one for you. ever read Ethan Frome. i couldn't even remember the title of the book, i only read when we had to read it in class. i do remember there was someone who was a hypochondriac (all i needed to look up the title on sparknotes). that, and something else. the author used a lot of semicolons. it wasn't just a coincidence. i forget what it meant. the point is that after a while you just start to pick up on things. sometimes you're lucky and it's as obvious as it was in this book, other times it isn't.</p>
<p>i agree with the post above, we were required to read it last year in AP English Lang and the book isn't dry or boring at all, the author is pretty funny and it's dialogue-like diction keeps u awake, lol</p>
<p>Find an educational book that deals with Louise Rosenblatt's theory of Reader Response. If you look that over it should help you understand what some teachers want. I'm currently taking a course in teaching literature and we've talked about it a good deal in there.</p>
<p>Been suggested already, but How to Read Literature Like a Professor really helps. Our teacher required us to read it over the summer and it really helped a lot. Although the book's humor can be dry at some points, it gets the point across.</p>