Student Guide: Writing About Literary Elements & Devices

Accelerate your students' written analysis of literary elements and devices!

This printable, 13-page reference guide offers precise, student-friendly definitions, effects, and sentence stems for each of the following devices: Allegory, Alliteration, Allusion, Analogy, Assonance, Caricature, Characterization, Conflict, Consonance, Diction, Dramatic Irony, Farce, Hyperbole, Imagery, Irony, Juxtaposition, Metaphor, Mood, Motif, Paradox, Parody, Pathetic Fallacy, Personification, Perspective, Pun, Repetition, Rhetorical question, Rhyme, Satire, Setting, Simile, Symbolism, Tone, and Understatement.

Each device entry comes with multiple signal phrases that are designed to encourage students both to incorporate analytical language into their writing, and to express how the element or device affects the reader or the meaning of the text.

After I introduced this packet to my students in the middle of the semester, I saw the sophistication of their literary analysis improve dramatically. Download this packet today, distribute it to your students, and you could see improvements by the end of the week!

While my students were often successful in identifying stylistic devices, they struggled to articulate that knowledge in their writing. Even after I taught lessons about the way literary devices impacted the reader and the meaning of text, many would struggle to recall these lessons in a day or two, let alone to apply those understandings in their writing.

To facilitate their recall and application of these understandings, I typed up this packet, which offers precise, student-friendly definitions, effects, and sentence stems for each of the devices we covered in class. Now my students know that when they struggle to find the right words for a literary analysis, they can take out this reference, find the relevant device, and break right through their writer's block!

While the list of included devices is not exhaustive, it serves as an excellent starting point for students to perform at a high level on IGCSE, IB, AP and Common Core English assessments. Give your students this tool, and watch them succeed in answering higher-level questions about authorial purpose and the effects of language!

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