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ELA 4: Text Features in Plays, Poetry, and Prose 69 Views
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Description:
Spoiler alert: this has nothing to do with emojis. Look for your pizza poop icons elsewhere. Today's video is about the features of text in poetic writing.
Transcript
- 00:03
[Coop and Dino singing]
- 00:13
We all know that writing is made up of text, aka words.
- 00:17
Take a bunch of words, put them together in an order that makes sense, and voila! [Dino discussing texts]
- 00:20
You've got writing.
- 00:21
Easy, huh?
Full Transcript
- 00:22
But it’s not that simple. [Man on a scooter with his feet up]
- 00:24
We know, we know, how complicated can text get?
- 00:27
Well, depending on the various text features, like heading, capital letters, italics, indented
- 00:32
paragraphs, et cetera, et cetera…writing can take on many different forms.
- 00:36
And with different forms comes different meanings.
- 00:38
So let's look at three different types of writing that use different text features. [Coop teaching about the different types of writing]
- 00:42
First - poetry.
- 00:43
This one's a good place to start, because at first glance, it's pretty easy to identify
- 00:46
a poem. [Woman pointing to man with a poem t-shirt in a line-up]
- 00:47
Just take one look at the old Mother Goose story Humpty Dumpty and right away you can
- 00:51
tell it's a poem.
- 00:52
But how?
- 00:53
Are we all just born able to identify poems? [Poem Identifier Man wearing a red cape]
- 00:55
Well, as cool as that would be, it’s actually because of the poem's specific text features.
- 01:00
One example of a text feature common in poetry is a line break.
- 01:03
Sometimes, the author will suddenly stop a line in the middle of the sentence because
- 01:06
they want us to stop reading it at that moment, which can be used for emphasis.
- 01:10
Another text feature of poetry is rhyme or rhythm, which poets use to make their poems [Coop talking about text features in poetry]
- 01:14
sound more musical.
- 01:15
Here at Shmoop we think that's cool, We wouldn't lie, and we only eat gruel!
- 01:19
…We'll work on a better poem. [Person approaches shmoop cafeteria desk for a bowl of gruel]
- 01:20
Another type of writing that has its own unique text features is a play.
- 01:23
A play is meant to be performed by actors on a stage, and this means that the author
- 01:27
has to include specific text features that tell the actors what to do. [Actors acting in a theater play on stage]
- 01:31
One text feature of a play is the “Cast of Characters” - a list of everyone in the play.
- 01:35
Another text feature are the lines of dialogue which appear after the name of the character
- 01:39
who speaks that line.
- 01:40
This one is pretty crucial because otherwise, it would be less a play and more… some kind [Old man approaches table with mime heads]
- 01:45
of weird, silent performance art.
- 01:46
A third text feature specific to plays are stage directions.
- 01:50
Stage directions are sort of like dialogue lines, but instead of telling actors what [Stage directions highlighted]
- 01:54
to say, it tells them what to do – where to stand, where to move, and how to behave.
- 01:58
And they should definitely not be read aloud.
- 02:00
We know that from firsthand experience.
- 02:02
It's best not to yell, "Romeo dies tragically!" as you're falling down dying…. [Romeo falls down dead]
- 02:07
Our last type of writing is one that you're probably most familiar with, and that's prose.
- 02:11
Open up a magazine, novel, or webpage, and you're most likely reading prose.
- 02:15
See a bunch of block paragraphs, one after another, that seem to just blab on forever? [Paragraphs of blab, blab, blee, blee]
- 02:19
That's prose.
- 02:20
But even blabbering prose has its own specific text features.
- 02:23
For instance, most prose uses indented paragraphs to tell us when the author is starting a new idea.
- 02:28
And when an even bigger new idea is started, a chapter heading appears to indicate the
- 02:32
beginning of a new aardvark. [An aardvark appears]
- 02:33
…just checking to make sure you’re listening.
- 02:36
A chapter heading indicates the beginning of a new chapter.
- 02:39
As you can see, not only do different forms of writing feel and sound different, but their [Forms of writing sitting in a class room]
- 02:44
text features make them look different, too.
- 02:46
By understanding those features, you can better identify exactly what it is your teacher is
- 02:50
trying to make you read!
- 02:51
And then you can grumble on Twitter about how unfair it is that you have to read prose. [Students grumbling about class]
- 02:55
But, hey, at least you identified it as prose!
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