One of the most difficult parts of VCE English is using quotes in your essays. Not only do you have to choose and memorise them, but they also need to be analysed. There’s no point in just sticking a quote in your writing for the sake of it!
Not all quotes will be suited to an essay, so you need to make sure that you choose them carefully. Countless students think that inserting random words from the text into their essays count as quotes.
Using quotes show that you have read your text, demonstrate your understanding of the authors purpose and makes your argument more credible.
Not sure how to use quotes properly? Here are some things that you should consider.
Keep the Quotes Short
It is a lot easier to embed and analyse quotes in your essays when they are short. Your teacher has does not want to see half a paragraph taken up by quotes!
Therefore, when choosing quotes for your writing, keep them as short as possible. Even singular words (if they’re important) can be used. Just make sure that you choose the most powerful words/phrase, and make sure it links to the theme of your paragraph (more on this later).
Example:
Let’s have a look at the quote ‘in order to overcome her grief, she avoided going to places that reminded her of him.’
This quote is quite long, with a lot of unnecessary words in it. Some key words that you could pull out would be ‘overcome her grief,’ ‘avoided,’ and ‘reminded her of him.’
Embed the Quotes into the Essay
When you use quotes in your essay, they should flow with your writing. You should avoid using quotes as standalone sentences, and make sure that they are part of a sentence. This will also help with your analysis later.
There are a lot of ways to embed quotes in your writing, and it all depends on what you are trying to say. However, if you can, you should avoid introducing quotes by saying ‘XXX said this,’ or ‘this is evident when they say XXX.’ Doing this is not always bad, but it should be limited as it doesn’t add a lot of sophistication to your essays. It is also not very concise to do this!
Don’t forget that square brackets can be used as well if you want to change up the words in a quote.
Example:
Instead of:
Rory made it clear that she was finding her homework difficult when she said ‘this is so frustrating, I just don’t understand how to embed quotes in my essay!'
Try:
Rory was finding her homework ‘frustrating,’ as she couldn’t ‘understand how to embed quotes in [her] essay.’
See how much better the second sentence flows?
If you want more tips on embedding quotes, check out this video:
Think About the Themes the Quote Encompasses
When choosing which quotes to analyse in a paragraph, you should always link the theme of the paragraph with the quote. This will make sure that the quote you are using is relevant.
Your teacher does not want to see quotes about hope in a paragraph about leadership (unless it makes sense of course!) Knowing the themes will also help a lot when it comes to deconstructing the quotes meaning.
Therefore, when you are coming up with quotes to use in your essay it would be useful to sort them out by theme.
Consider the 'Who,' 'What,' 'How' and 'Why'
It is very important that you analyse the quotes that you use in your essay. You should have a few sentences before and after the quote explaining its importance.
In order to do this, you should always think about the meaning of the quote and the message it brings. That’s why considering the ‘what,’ ‘how,’ and the ‘why,’ of the quote will help. By no means do you need to answer all these questions per quote, but it is a good starting point for your thinking.
‘Who?’
· Who said the quote? Perhaps the quote is reflective of their personality, or something that they were going through?
What?
· What is the direct meaning of the quote, and its context?
· What literary techniques does the quote use?
· What message does the quote give?
· What sort of impact does this phrase have on the audience?
How?
· How do the words in the quote create meaning?
· How does the quote support the overall idea in your body paragraph?
· How does the quote link to other events that occurred in the text?
Why?
· Why did the author choose this phrase? Why is it meaningful to them?
· Why are you using this in your essay?
KEY TIP: When introducing quotes into your paragraph, you need to make sure that it doesn’t sound like you are retelling part of a plot. Saying that this person said XX during XX incident sounds more like a plot summary than an analysis.
Analysing Quotes - Example
Let’s look at a quote from Nine Days, where a character states: ‘like so many things that shape us, it’s the smallest actions that add up to leave the deepest marks.’
This is quite a long quote, and there’s lots of unnecessary words in it. What do you think the key words are? In this case the most important phrases would be ‘smallest actions,’ and ‘deepest marks.’ Of course, depending on how you are embedding the quote you can use more words!
Next, it is important to think about its message and context. In very brief terms, the character is talking about the ripple effect of small actions, and the fact that every little thing can add up to create something bigger. It alludes to a lot of the bigger/more serious events that occurred in the novel.
After you combine all the brainstorming that you did for a quote, it might look a little something like this:
Charlotte expresses the idea of personal growth when she says that the ‘smallest actions…..leave the deepest marks.’ Although one may not realise it is the moment, all their life experiences ‘add up,’ and help shape their future, whether it be for better or worse. Jordan uses the quote to demonstrate the way that one develops individually – every single mistake, joyful moment and learning experience adds up to create a life story.
Hopefully some of these tips will help you embed and analyse quotes in your essays like a boss! Using quotes in your essays properly will certainly help you score higher and add a lot of substance into your essays.
