The Individual Oral Commentary (IOC) : A Student's Guide To Preparing and Presenting

The Individual Oral Commentary (IOC): A Student’s
Guide to Preparing and Presenting
Some questions to help you prepare an introduction to an oral commentary…
• Where is this extract from? (“This extract has been taken from…”). Be precise.
• Briefly, what’s happening in this section? (“This is the moment when…”).
• What has happened in the plot line that has directly led to this moment, including the events
immediately prior to it, and what occurs as a direct consequence? (“Prior to this, we have
seen…”; “Subsequently in the play,…”).
• Therefore, what’s the importance or significance of this passage in terms of …
• plot and development? (Exposition? Establishment of a particular mood? Complication?
Turning point? Climax? Anti-climax? Resolution? How does setting contribute to this? Are
there any parallels with other moments in the plot that help us to understand this moment?)
• character/relationship and development? (What do we see of the character /relationship
earlier? What happens to them later? How does this moment contribute to this development?
Any parallels or stark contrasts to other characters or relationships that help us to understand
this moment?)
• theme and issues development? (What bigger ideas about society/human nature are being
explored through the events and character-behaviour in this section? Where else have these
ideas been presented and how will they be resolved?)
• style and mood? (Any general /overview observations about the mood, poetic form
[verse/prose], dramatic form [soliloquy/ duologue/ ensemble/shared lines/the spectacle on
stage/ stagecraft]?)
• What will you be discussing? What are your three or four main concepts? (“Firstly, I will be
exploring how….Then I will go on to look at…).
• Remember, there are different ways to approach the passage, whether by the development
of a long speech / conversation in terms of content and mood, or character by character and
ideas about each, or by developing impressions of a relationship. However, you will probably
always take a sequential approach (i.e. roughly look at the way the extract unfolds) but will
signpost according to your focus (“The first impression the audience is given of Nora / the
relationship of Nora and Torvald …”)
• Finally, in the body of the commentary itself, don’t forget to mention the playwright throughout
and how the audience may be affected by the literary and dramatic techniques they use.

© David McIntyre, InThinking
www.englishalanglit-inthinking.co.uk 1

A brief reminder of what to do during the planning time of the oral:
• Read the passage carefully and put it in context.

• Read it again and briefly annotate in terms of interesting features of style.
• Look at the extract as a whole and identify patterns of ideas, i.e. potential concepts.
• Decide whether the extract lends itself to 1) a sequential approach - i.e. can you break the
text into ‘sections’, making one or two claims about each, so that your analysis follows its
development? - or 2) an overview approach (finding 3 or 4 recurring ideas in the text and
taking your evidence from all over). For the latter, colour coding might be useful to ensure
you don’t miss anything.
• Look over your initial annotation of the text…identify and analyse the writing techniques
that can be used to back up each of your concepts:
diction, analogies, sound effects, rhythm and rhyme, punctuation, sentence/line lengths
and constructions, stanza divisions, verse form, narrative technique, perspective and tone,
dramatic devices/visual staging effects, mood, impact on reader/audience…
• Now list your thesis strands (i.e. four or so main concepts/claims) near your context notes.
These will help you to introduce the commentary.
• Outline your introduction – identification of writer and poem/dramatic episode, overview of
literal content (5Ws – what, where, when, who, why), contextualization in terms of typicality /
plot, thesis and thesis strands.

© David McIntyre, InThinking
www.englishalanglit-inthinking.co.uk 2

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A brief reminder of what to do during the planning time of the oral:

• Read the passage carefully and put it in context.

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