Review by Amanda Bindel, Common Sense Education | Updated November 2015
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Literary Analysis Guide

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Serviceable literary resource with examples and explanations

Grades This grade range is based on learning appropriateness and doesn't take into account privacy. It's determined by Common Sense Education, not the product's publisher.
9–12
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Price:  $2.99
Platforms:  Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch

Take a look inside

5 images
Choose from poetry, prose, rhetoric, or figures of speech.
All devices come together to form meaning and style.
Each technique includes questions to help with understanding.
Most categories include examples from literature with explanations.
Some also include example literary analysis paragraphs.

Pros: Examples from literature and example analysis paragraphs.

Cons: No search function and little contemporary literature.

Bottom Line: Some content and feature limitations aside, an excellent resource for AP lit.

How Can I Teach with This Tool?

The Literary Analysis Guide is a great tool for AP students to use as a review to prepare for the AP exam. AP lit teachers could recommend it to students for individual study or incorporate it into lessons to offer examples from literature for specific literary devices or use the model paragraphs to show students how to write a literary analysis.

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Standards:

Explore literary devices and techniques for poetry, prose, rhetoric, and figures of speech. Each genre has its own wheel with spokes for different devices specific to that genre moving out of the core meaning and style. Poetry, for example, includes title, diction, syntax, meter, lines, and more, while prose includes conflict, setting, characterization, and dialogue. Each category is explained and includes sample questions to help better understand it in a piece of literature. Some include examples from literature or an annotated example.

Classic literature doesn't need bells and whistles, and neither does this solid resource. The black-and-white, all-text interface has no audio, but it's packed with information. The breakdown of literary devices by genre looks cool and is significant, with the wheel showing how all the devices affect meaning. Students, especially those in AP lit courses, will appreciate the sample analysis and examples from literature for each device. It'd be nice to see more contemporary lit included, or at least some diversity in authors. A search feature would be helpful as well.

Overall Rating
Engagement Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return?

Black-and-white text with no images provides lots of information but little pizzazz.

Pedagogy Is learning content seamlessly baked-in, and do kids build conceptual understanding? Is the product adaptable and empowering? Will skills transfer?

Literary devices are explained, demonstrated, and analyzed through the interactive resource, but most works are older classics with little diversity.

Support Does the product take into account learners of varying abilities, skill levels, and learning styles? Does it address both struggling and advanced students?

Resource is cataloged well but has no way to search and no way to mark favorites for easy future reference.

Common Sense Reviewer
Amanda Bindel Classroom teacher
About our ratings and privacy evaluation.

Key Standards Supported

Reading Literature

  • RL.9-10.1

    Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

  • RL.9-10.2

    Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

  • RL.9-10.3

    Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.

  • RL.9-10.4

    Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).

  • RL.9-10.5

    Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise.

  • RL.11-12.1

    Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.

  • RL.11-12.2

    Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.

  • RL.11-12.3

    Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).

  • RL.11-12.4

    Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare as well as other authors.)

  • RL.11-12.5

    Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.

  • RL.11-12.6

    Analyze a case in which grasping a point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony, or understatement).

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