The Close-Study Paragraph That Quotes Too Much

The paragraph has three distinct problems, and the quotation volume is a symptom rather than the disease.

First, ratio of quotation to analysis. Four quotations in one paragraph, two exceeding a line, means the student's own prose is a minority of the paragraph. Markers assess the student's analysis, not the text's eloquence; a long quotation transfers the burden of interpretation onto the reader. The principle is that a quotation should be the shortest span of text that supports the claim - often three to six words - with the analytical weight carried by the student's sentences around it.

Second, quotation as substitute for argument. The paragraph summarises the soliloquy's argument rather than making a claim about it. 'The speaker considers death' is summary; 'the soliloquy's syntax stalls at the very moment it reaches for resolution, so that the verse enacts the paralysis it describes' is analysis. The second sentence requires only a fragment of quotation to anchor it.

Third, biographical opening. Inferring the playwright's state of mind from the text is a well-known weakness; it substitutes speculation for evidence and is not what 'context' means in Module B.

The revision should be organised so that each sentence does analytical work and the three required dimensions are addressed explicitly rather than incidentally.

A workable revision sequence:

1. Claim first. Open with an arguable proposition about the soliloquy's function - not a summary, not biography.
2. Language. Anchor with a short quotation and analyse word choice or figuration at the level of the word: which noun, which verb, which ambiguity.
3. Structure. Comment on where the passage sits in the play and how its placement shapes meaning - what the audience knows before and after, how the soliloquy's internal movement (question, qualification, collapse) mirrors or complicates the play's trajectory.
4. Form. Name the formal features - verse line, enjambment, soliloquy as a convention that grants privileged access while withholding certainty - and explain the effect of the convention itself, not just this instance.
5. Personal response. This is not 'I felt sad'. It is an evaluative judgement the student owns: 'The soliloquy is less a meditation on death than a demonstration that consciousness cannot examine itself without stalling - which is why the play withholds the resolution the speech keeps promising.' That is informed, personal, and arguable.

The revised paragraph should contain at most two short quotations, each followed by at least two sentences of analysis.

It will not, provided the remaining quotations are chosen for analytical yield rather than completeness. Evidence is assessed by how well it supports and develops an argument, not by volume. Four quotations doing the work of one is not more evidence; it is less analysis.

A useful test for each retained quotation: can the student write two sentences about it that would be impossible without it? If yes, keep it - and keep only the fragment needed. If no, the quotation is decoration and should be cut or replaced.

The student should also distinguish embedded quotation (a short phrase integrated into her own syntax) from block quotation (a displayed passage). Embedded fragments almost always produce stronger analysis because the student's sentence must supply the grammatical and interpretive frame. A block quotation invites paraphrase.

Finally, the reluctance to cut is worth naming directly: it often comes from anxiety that without the text's words the student has nothing to say. That anxiety is the real issue. Building the paragraph claim-first, then selecting evidence to serve the claim, converts the student from a compiler of quotations into an analyst - which is what 'informed personal response' rewards.