What a critical text is, and what this standard asks
The two kinds of text in this standard
- The primary source is the thing you are investigating — the poem, the novel, the film, the speech, the advertising campaign, the broadcast.
- A critical text is a text about that kind of thing. It argues, explains, theorises or analyses.
- The difference is function, not format. A poem is a primary source when you are interpreting it, and a critical text when a poet uses it to argue about how poems work.
- You need both. An investigation with no critical texts does not meet this standard at all.
What counts as a critical text
- Literary or linguistic theory — a framework of ideas about how texts or language work in general: feminist criticism, postcolonial reading, structuralism, reader-response theory, Marxist criticism, ecocriticism. Theory is not about your text; it gives you questions to ask of any text.
- Criticism — an argued interpretation of a particular text, making a claim that could be disputed. A critical introduction, an academic chapter or a journal article all count, and so does a review that argues — though one that awards three stars and recaps the plot does not.
- Analysis — a close examination of how something works, such as a discourse analysis of an industry's language.
- Critical texts may be oral or visual — a recorded lecture, a documentary, a video essay that argues rather than summarises.
What does not count
- Plot summaries and study notes, which report what happens; biography with no argument about the text; quotation banks, which are collections rather than arguments; and your own earlier essay, since the standard requires texts by others that you found and judged.
- The test is simple: can you disagree with it? If the source makes no claim you could argue against, it is information, not criticism.
Student selected, and what that requires of you
- The standard says critical texts are student selected, so choosing them is part of what is assessed. A class reading pack used unchanged is a weak submission even if it is a good pack, though a source someone recommended is still yours if you read it, judged it, and decided it belonged.
- Two or three well-used critical texts beat six mentioned once. The standard assesses use, and a source named but not argued with has not been used. Write one sentence per source saying what it lets you do that the others do not; if you cannot write it, drop the source.
What informed means, and the grade ladder
- The process is fixed: develop a hypothesis or theory, select critical texts, evaluate their reliability and usefulness, then synthesise. The order is the instruction — sources found before a hypothesis exists bend the question toward whatever they discuss.
- The Explanatory Notes define an informed understanding as a coherent reading, critique, and interpretation which includes judgements, commentary, and details and/or examples. Reading is what you think the text is doing; critique is your judgement of it and of the critics; interpretation is the reasoning from details to reading.
- Informed does not mean well-read. It means your reading was changed by what you found. If your conclusion is what you thought before reading anything, nothing informed it.
- Achieved — a coherent reading, built with critical texts you chose, with examples and judgements of your own.
- Merit is convincing, which the standard glosses as discerning — chosen well. Discernment is visible in selection: which critical texts, which parts of them, which details, and what was left out.
- Excellence is perceptive, which the standard glosses as sophisticated and insightful and/or original. Sophisticated describes handling — proportion, concession, knowing where the claim stops. Original means yours rather than assembled from your sources.
- These words are not redefined later. Each page names the grade and shows the move for that skill.
Worked Example
Worked Example
A student is investigating how the language of tourism advertising describes places as empty. They have five candidate sources.
| Source | |
|---|---|
| 1 | A tourism operator's campaign, four lines of copy |
| 2 | A textbook chapter on the principles of postcolonial reading, with no mention of advertising |
| 3 | A magazine article describing three campaigns and calling them clever |
| 4 | An academic article analysing the grammar of place descriptions in travel writing |
| 5 | A study-guide page listing persuasive techniques with definitions |
Sort these into primary source, critical text, and neither.
Answer:
Step 1 — find the primary source. Source 1 is the language being investigated. Primary source, and there is only one.
Step 2 — apply the disagreement test.
Source 2 claims that texts construct places in particular ways and that those constructions serve interests. Disputable. Critical text, and the standard names theory explicitly.
Source 3 calls three campaigns clever and gives no reason. Nothing to argue with except taste. Not a critical text, though useful for finding further examples.
Source 4 claims a grammatical pattern produces an effect. Disputable. Critical text, and the strongest here, because it analyses the same kind of language.
Step 3 — the trap. Source 5 looks academic and is not. Recording that a rhetorical question exists is a definition, not a claim. Not a critical text.
Step 4 — check the pair works. Source 2 supplies questions for any text; Source 4 a method for this kind. Two is enough.