GCSE English Language Skills Short Fiction Extracts – Vol. 1
• I can read and understand a fiction/non-fiction text
• I can identify key words, phrases, and techniques
• I can provide an explanation or analysis of the language used
• I can provide a suggestion of the writer’s intentions

Task: Read the following passage and annotate any language features:
The sky is pale blue-grey as a pebble and feathered with cloud, the sound of the ocean is quiet as a mother shushing her baby, when the girls walk down to the shore in their nightgowns.

The Power¸ Naomi Alderman (2016)
Support:
• Identify techniques and any words/phrases that stand out to you e. g. simile, metaphor, alliteration, noun, adjective, verb, adverb etc.
• Consider connotations – can you link any of the words/phrases to a feeling or idea?
• Work with a partner to share ideas
Challenge:
• For each technique you identify, provide a brief explanation
• Which words/phrases/techniques would be best to zoom-in on and provide deep, detailed analysis for?
• What mood/tone is created in this passage?

Task: Read the following passage and annotate any language features:
It is a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people; where the crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants, who, after establishing their own possession, took to letting them out in lodgings. Now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As, on the ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear, so, these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever.

Bleak House¸ Charles Dickens (1852)
Support:
• Identify techniques and any words/phrases that stand out to you e. g. simile, metaphor, alliteration, noun, adjective, verb, adverb etc.
• Consider connotations – can you link any of the words/phrases to a feeling or idea?
• Work with a partner to share ideas
Challenge:
• For each technique you identify, provide a brief explanation
• Which words/phrases/techniques would be best to zoom-in on and provide deep, detailed analysis for?
• What mood/tone is created in this passage?