Who Is Telling This?
Introduced| English | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Point of view/pɔɪnt ɒv vjuː/ | The position from which a narrator or speaker relates the events. |
Somebody is always telling it
- Narrators or speakers relate accounts to readers and establish a relationship between the text and the reader.
- That relationship is built before any event is described.
- So identifying the narrator is not preliminary work — it changes what every later detail means.
The narrator is your tour guide; notice which rooms the tour never enters.
Narrators and speakers relate accounts and establish a ____ between the text and the reader.
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That relationship is built before any event is described.
Perspective and point of view are different terms
- Perspective refers to how narrators, characters or speakers see their circumstances.
- Point of view 叙述视点 refers to the position from which a narrator or speaker relates the events.
- One is a way of seeing; the other is a place to see from. Exam questions use them precisely.
Write about the narrator: everything you can quote belongs to that layer
Perspective, point of view, or a mistake?
Sort each phrase by the term it actually uses.
Point of view refers to...
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The first option defines perspective — the exam uses both terms precisely.
A speaker or narrator is not necessarily the author
- The CED states this outright, and it is the commonest error in student writing.
- "The author says she is frightened" attributes a character's state to a person outside the text.
- Write the speaker, the narrator, or the character's name — never the author's.
The narrator of a story is the author of that story.
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The CED states outright that a speaker or narrator is not necessarily the author.
The speaker is not the author. Writing "the author feels" hands a character's state to a real person outside the text and costs marks on every AP rubric. Name the speaker, the narrator, or the character — and keep the author for statements about the writing itself.
Match each term to its definition.
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Three terms the exam keeps separate — so keep them separate in your writing.
Finding the narrator in a poem
- Poems rarely name their speaker, so read for the pronouns and what they claim to know.
- I who knows only their own mind is a different speaker from I who reports another's thoughts.
- An unnamed speaker still has a background, and the poem is where you read it.
Select all the steps of the identification pass.
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The two knowledge facts do more analytical work than any label.
An identification pass
- Name the narrator or speaker. State their grammatical person.
- State one thing they know and one thing they cannot know.
- Those two facts do more analytical work than any label.
A poem's I says the sea forgets nothing. The speaker believes that; whether the poet does is unknowable and irrelevant. Analysis of the speaker's perspective is checkable; analysis of the poet's beliefs is not.
Narrators and speakers relate accounts and establish a relationship with the reader. Perspective = how they see their circumstances; point of view = the position they relate events from. A speaker or narrator is not necessarily the author — name the speaker, never the author.