Purpose

Post-Module Learnings

Content

Quotes in Text Response

1. Creative Writing in Australia, when doing dialogue - you need to use single quote marks.

2. Statements (where words mean something different from their actual meaning), e.g. This is a ‘really good’ soup (it’s terrible). Emphasise the word.

Embedding Quotes

1. Embedding a quote means incorporating the quote in a sentence such that if you removed the quote marks around the quote, it will be difficult to tell that it was a quote from the text.
1. Let me give you an example: Indeed, Doerr tenets that the moral boundaries between pure and evil are blurred during war time, as human lives are being “traded in a bazaar”, depicted as a mere “commodity” used in exchange for power and control.
2. You will see in the sentence above, the quote “traded in a bazaar” flows naturally in the sentence. Typically speaking, try and avoid having the last phrase in your sentence be the quote. Quotes sit better in the middle / early middle / late middle of your sentence. AVOID HAVING QUOTES AS THE FIRST WORDS OF A SENTENCE, OR THE LAST WORDS OF A SENTENCE.
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Avoid ending your sentence with a quote and DEFINITELY avoid beginning your sentence with a quote.
3. You will also see we used the one word quote “commodity”, which is appropriate as it is not a word typically used in day-to-day life.

2. An embedded quote needs to be between 2 to 6 words long. (note it is okay to have quotes longer than 6 words, but it is not generally advised).
1. Note that one word quotes are okay, AS LONG AS the word is not used in day-to-day (everyday) life. For example, the word “people” would not be appropriate as a one word quote, as it is commonly used. The word “obscure” or “phantom” would be acceptable as it is not a commonly used word. Typically, if you’re not sure whether you can use it or not, don’t use it. Most teachers don’t like one word quotes though, be mindful of that.
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Note that if you really want to use a simple word like “people” as a one-word quote, then just make it a two-word quote, simply put it in as “the people” or “other people”, or use the word that comes before or after it in the actual Text. I would not recommend that many.
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What about proper nouns, names, towns, streets, can we quote those? NO do not quote anything that is just capital letter by itself. If you’re just quoting the name of the character, that’s wrong. It’s considered lazy because a lot of teachers think that you just don’t know any other quotes.
2. No more than 1/4 of your quotes per BP should be one word quotes though.
3. If your quotes are longer than 6 words, there’s a really easy solution, simply split the quote into two sections and treat it as two separate quotes in two separate sentences.
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“They drank for a few more minutes and then went their separate ways in the storm.” - Station Eleven.
4. If your quote is more than half your sentence long, it is immediately wrong. You’re basically plagiarising.
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In this situation, you have two options, shorten the quote, or extend the sentence. Ideally though, a sentence is normally between 30 to 45 words, so if it’s already 30 to 45 words, consider cutting down the quote.
5. I would say most quotes students use are actually between 2 - 3 words long.

3. Embedding a quote does mean you can change certain grammatical elements of the quote itself, to make sure it fits the sentence more fluidly.
The types of changes you can make are
1. to turn ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘he’, ‘she’ in a quote from the text into the name of the character, e.g. “he committed the murder” to “[Jeff] committed the murder”
2. or to change a past tense word to present tense, or change tenses in general, like ‘gave’ to ‘giv[ing]’,
3. or to add context to a word e.g. “this country is so dry” to “[Australia] is so dry”,
4. or use an ellipsis which is ‘…’ in order to skip forward in the quote. An example of ellipsis … : Depicting Zollverein as a harsh “steel country … full of holes” which threaten to consume the vulnerable in the mine’s “permanent darkness”, Doerr highlights the decrepit state of Germany post World War One.
It is important that you use square brackets [ ] to indicate the change that you have made. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CHANGE A YES TO A NO, OR CHANGE THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF THE QUOTE.
For example: Étienne “shoving the [French] flags [in his house]” into the fire is symbolic of his resignation to the Germans and signifies his retreat to a world of ‘cobwebber wonders’, a haven of solace for him amidst all the political turmoil.
5. You will see here, we have changed the original quote “shoving the flags within” to fit the context of the sentence better.
6. They did so in order to raise the ‘French’ vs ‘German’ element, and also to give context to how he’s afraid even in his “own house”.
7. Technically, the original quote was less than 6 words long, so it’s okay to go over.
Additional rules:
8. You are unable to alter more than half the words in a quote, e.g. 4 word quote, 2 words max.
9. You only square bracket the specific words that have been altered/added. Don’t square bracket the entire quote, just the words that are modified/created.

How to NOT embed quotes

If you ever use one of these words in a Text Response when describing a quote or introducing it, you are probably NOT embedding the quote correctly.
10. The character says “it is not acceptable”
11. The author uses “a blinding light”
12. The text states “everything was not okay”
13. A quote of this is “nothing is fine”
14. The words “it is not okay”
15. The phrase “this is alright”
16. An example is “this is fine”
If you need to use one of these phrases, or similar, you are probably NOT embedding the quote correctly. This is because it sounds like you’re just chucking a quote in lazily, normally, embedding quotes requires a little bit more thinking and understanding of a sentence structure.
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A lot of students who don’t embed quotes have really simple, boring essays, for Text Response, e.g. ‘The character said this “….”. This means this… . The author said this “…”. This means this … .
An example of not embedding quotes.
• Euripides conveys Astyanax’s youth through the words “timid face” in the folds of his mother, Andromache, who is stated to be “a bird creeping under his mother’s wing”.

A sample of a fully embedded quote paragraph

It is best read through this paragraph below to better understand how top students embed quotes in an entire paragraph. I believe they have used 8 quotes in this paragraph.
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Note: This is important as well, some teachers will say to you, YOU MUST MAKE SURE TO ANALYSE THE QUOTE, don’t just put quotes in for the sake of it. This is partially true, but some teachers are too ‘extreme’ in their interpretation of this, they believe it’s only good to have three quotes in a BP because that’s the amount you can only analyse in a 200 word paragraph. We’ll discuss this more in the
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Introduction to TEEL Body Paragraph Structure, but you will need to vary your approach based on the teacher.

Examples of Embedded Quotes in Sentences

The below contains quotes that are all embedded inside sentences, if you want some inspiration, I would recommend reading the below for ideas on how to embed quotes.
• In addition, “his lawyer” being the first person called following his death emphasises how money bought the people in his life, elucidating how he only saw them for their surface value, unable to form the deeper connections he greatly lacked. As such, Mandel reveals the downsides to fame, suggesting that being known does not equate to emotional relationships. From here, it is clear through the “fifteen minutes” remaining for his conversation with his son that he prioritised his own career over his family, going as far as “forg[etting] about [Tyler’s birthday]”, further pulling him away from the important people in his life.
• Similarly Clark’s retrospective understanding that the “corporate world’s full of ghosts” highlights the dullness of society, forcing individuals into its expectations, trading their dreams for acceptance. As such, it is the ”horror show” of “iPhone zombies” that haunt pre-flu society that reveal a connected world can still be devoid of life, where individuals prefer an edited self image over genuine face to face interaction. Thus, in his realisation that he too was a “sleepwalking… target”, Mandel displays Clark’s realisation that they have been “trapped” by society, reinforcing the hollowness of the world.
• Perpetuating Jeff's voyeuristic gaze, he also appears to find pleasure in watching Miss Lonelyheart's depressing episodes. Unfolding in the style of a silent film, Hitchcock crafts a poignant melodrama depicting Miss Lonelyheart's private yearning for company where Judith Evenlyn’s gestures towards an implied dinner guest. The tightly choreographed sequence is synchronised to the crooning lyric “to see you is to love you”. While the consequent visual irony is both uncomfortable to observe and compelling, Jeff can't help but make a spectacle of her loneliness, even raising his wineglass to "cheers" with her as if he's currently watching a festive occasion.
• Detective Doyle, representing the conservative voice of 1950's views and values, strictly obeys the rule of law as he "disputes [Jeff's] idea of murder". His morality is reinforced by his professional outfit and the lingering pauses as he logically comments on the fact that "people do a lot of things in private that they couldn't' explain".