How to analyses an unseen prose text?

First, you need to relax and stay calm which might seem difficult in an exam situation but remember when the author this piece it is unlikely they wrote it for student sitting in an exam hall. Then simply read over the passage and try to understand what is happening, don’t worry if understand a word phrase you can go back to it. Once you have read it all through then you pick up your pen and annotate things that stand out that you think you can write about. Make sure you are aware of the big issue, think what is the writer trying to say to me? Is it political? Is it about social injustices? Then identify the key themes and the devices that the author has used such as metaphors, similes, structure, characterisation. Once you have annotated the text select the three most important points that you can make. Although you might have more than three remember you are under timed conditions and you want to go in as much detail as possible. At this stage, you should know what the writer is trying to convey in the passage and what techniques they use. When you get to this stage make sure you realise that you are in good position, be confident as you write your answer because you know what is being said and it is being said. Then it is simple you write an introduction mentioning the issues of the passage, your three points and a conclusion to sum it all up. An unseen prose text may seem very scary at first but once you actually find out the two things you need then they aren’t really that scary at all.