How to Teach Your Students To Analyze Figurative Language (Or Any Other Literary Element)

How do you teach students to actually understand how figurative language or other literary elements function to create meaning in a text?

In my experience, the higher the level of thinking you require from your students, the more they’ll benefit by a breaking down of the steps to get there.  Sure, every once in a while you’ll come across a kid who can just naturally and effortlessly analyze a literary text, but honestly that’s like one in a thousand.  

What I have also found, however, is that the kind of analysis that is generally thought to be only accessible to the most gifted students is really possible for all kinds of students, given enough structure, support, and scaffolding.

This is the process that I follow to get students to better understand how a writer’s choices create meaning in a text. 

1. Start with a creative writing warm-up focused on a specific literary element.  If I want students to notice the setting, then I have them complete my mystery setting description exercise.  If I want them to focus on figurative language, then I have them write five metaphors or similes of their own.  It doesn’t really matter how good their writing is—getting them to focus on a specific literary element from the inside out is a great way to get them thinking about how writers use devices to create meaning and effect in literature. 
2. Choose an especially rich passage or excerpt from a text.  This isn’t something that needs a ton of thought.  Generally, it’s a passage that has a lot going on, both in terms of the plot and the literary elements.  Scenes when the reader is introduced to a character or when a character realizes something or changes or has a resolution of some sort are all good choices here.   Students too can generally choose the most important passage from a longer text without much stress.
3. Give students a physical copy of the passage that they can mark up.  There’s something about having a physical copy and really going to town that encourages students to slow down and notice.  If they are choosing their own passage, have them copy it or, even better, write it out themselves.  
4. Ask students to notice whatever they can.  They might annotate the text or just circle or underline or take notes in any way they want.  The important thing is for them to see what pops out as being essential or interestingly written before they are even thinking about why these pieces are important.  If it seems like a “special” part of the text for any reason, then it’s a good choice.  An easy notation system that I often use is to mark important passages with a star, interesting passages with a check, and confusing or challenging passages with a question mark.  In my experience, students almost always do a great job finding the most important literary elements when they just go with what jumps out at them.
5. Get them thinking about how those special words or phrases affect the reader.  This is not an easy step for students to complete, and it’s really not enough to just ask them to analyze the effect.  Instead, they need to answer a few different questions—likely some or all of them are relevant to the passages they’ve chosen.  What associations do they have with the chosen words?  What images are created by the vivid descriptions?  What emotions are evoked by the circled or underlined sentences?  How do the author’s choices make them feel?  What do they think of when they read these pieces to which their attention has been drawn?  Keep asking questions until they can come up with some responses.
6. Come back to the main ideas of the passage.  Students are usually very practiced in this, though sometimes it takes a little pushing to get them to find the whole idea of a text.  They will have a main idea when they can answer this question:  What point is the author making about people or the world in general?  
7. Bring it all together.  The emotions that they felt and those associations that were created helped them to understand the meaning of the text.  In other words, the reason why the author chose such a unique word for the second line of the first stanza or such a vivid metaphor to describe the way he felt in the third line of the first stanza was to convey his idea to the reader.   So maybe if the main point is that kids who are abused by their parents often make excuses for the abuser, then the paradoxical feelings of sadness and happiness created by the image of dancing in the first stanza help create that meaning.  Or if the main idea is that love is sweeter and more intense when it won’t last long, then the image at the end of the poem of the warm dying fire helps the reader feel the way that the speaker does.
8. Get them to write down whatever they can.  Putting all this into words on the page is not an easy task, so I usually just have students do a brain dump at the end of all this work. They’ll be surprised at how much they have to say after all that work and analysis, and yet they’ll likely not get down everything in their heads.  In any case, having them write it out is great practice for when they will have to do more formal writing on literary analysis.
9. Expect to repeat this process often.  Like any complicated skill, learning how to read and analyze a text is not something that can be taught in one go. Plan to repeat and practice many times.  And encourage students to repeat this same process any time they have to do any kind of writing on a literary text.

Whether they are working though these steps in order to write an essay on a state assessment test or in order to improve their skills in analysis and critical thinking or to prepare for the AP Literature test, I have found this process to be quiet effective.  

Of course, like anything else, students need lots of practice in order to gain the skills as well as the confidence they’ll need to complete this kind of work.

Looking for ready-to-go resources to teach your students how to analyze literary figurative language? Read on below for details on some of my favorite figurative-language focused units.

“How it Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston is a classic essay in which the author works through different metaphors in a search to explain how it feels to be her.  In my unit on this short, accessible, and masterfully written piece, students will work through a chart to compare the different metaphors and similes in the essay, write some quick reactions to interesting and evocative quotes, and then discuss the bigger themes of the essay as a class.

“Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou is another great choice for teaching figurative language.  The speaker in the poem works through various metaphors and similes, finally landing on the statement that she is “the dream and the hope of the slave.”  In this lesson, students will work through the similes and metaphors the speaker uses to define herself by drawing the imagery created using the ready-to-go handout (trust me, this is a great exercise for examining poetry!). Then, using the questions included, they’ll discuss as a class how the poetic elements of the poem help the poet to further the themes. Finally, after completing some focused pre-writing, they’ll write their own imitation of the poem by using the included handout for support and structure. Plan on lots of time for students to share their work!

“Coming into Language” by Jimmy Santiago Baca is a powerful essay for exploring why literature matters. Telling the story of how Baca first found his love for reading and writing, this essay is also a great choice for discussing themes around identity, self expression, metaphor, and the American prison system.  In this lesson, students will start off by freewriting on engaging bellringer prompts and trying their hand at writing figurative language of their own. After reading the essay, they’ll unpack the figurative language with a ready-to-go handout, and discuss the essay as a whole with your guidance. Following that, you’ll have the option for three different optional extension activities including a graded discussion and/or in-class essay synthesizing engaging linked sources on education in prison and the civil rights implications of the cash bail system.

“Barn Burning” by William Faulkneris the story of a young boy who makes the agonizingly difficult decision to betray his father.  A masterful piece of writing, this classic short story deals with themes of loyalty, family, class, resistance, and power.  It’s also a great choice for teaching point of view, diction, imagery, figurative language, setting, characterization, symbol, and close reading of a literary passage.  From the difficult vocabulary to the stream-of-consciousness style of writing, there is a lot to challenge students in this text, but the structured and scaffolded handouts included in this unit will help students to work through the text and comprehend and appreciate Faulkner’s masterful writing.

Thematic Unit on Love Metaphors. This unique and innovative unit is one of my personal favorites—it focuses on one main question: How do we talk about love? It’s a question that has been asked for centuries, and it is one that has never been fully answered, even by the greatest poets of all time. And yet, it is an important question to ask, especially for teenagers who are still struggling to define their world.  As they work through different answers to that question, students will analyze Shakepeare’s Sonnet 18 “[Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?]”, Sonnet 130 ”[My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;]”, and Sonnet 73 “[That time of year thou mayst in me behold].” Pairing those classic texts with contemporary TED Talks and pop culture, plus non-fiction primary source documents from the period will give your students a unique perspective on an age-old question.

Ultimately, when you teach your students to discuss and write about how literary elements create meaning in a text, you are teaching them to think for themselves.  And what could be more important or better use of class time than that?