Research for Teachers

One of the most difficult transitions for many students in IB English is moving from comprehension to analysis.

I saw this clearly with my Grade 11 students during DP Language and Literature Paper 1 preparation, especially when we began working with infographics, advertisements, and other multimodal texts. At first, students could often identify surface-level features. They could point to colours, slogans, charts, or images. But when asked to explain how those choices shaped meaning or influenced the audience, many stalled. Their annotations were sparse, overly descriptive, or disconnected from analytical terminology.

Initially, I assumed the issue was analytical thinking itself.

Over time, I realised the problem began earlier.

Students were struggling to externalise their thinking while reading.

The breakthrough was not telling students what to notice. It was helping them mark, map, and name what they were beginning to see.

As a result, I began designing learning experiences where annotation itself became the primary goal. Rather than rushing students toward thesis statements or full essays, we slowed down and practised the intermediate thinking processes that strong analysis depends on. Sometimes students only annotated. Sometimes they colour-coded persuasive appeals, mapped visual hierarchies, labelled design techniques, or tracked shifts in audience positioning. Other times, we focused exclusively on integrating disciplinary vocabulary into annotations so students could connect observation to interpretation more precisely.

This shift changed the quality of classroom thinking substantially.

Annotation is often treated as a minor reading strategy or a pre-writing activity. In practice, it functions as a visible bridge between comprehension and analysis. When students annotate effectively, they begin transforming passive noticing into active interpretation. They organise attention, identify relationships, prioritise information, and rehearse analytical language simultaneously.

This became especially important when working with multimodal texts.

Unlike traditional literary passages, infographics require students to interpret meaning across multiple modes at once: visual design, spatial organisation, typography, colour, statistics, and written language. Students are not simply “reading words.” They are navigating layered systems of communication. Without structured support, cognitive overload can quickly occur.

Research supports the importance of scaffolding these processes. Annemarie ter Beek and colleagues (2019) found that scaffolded reading environments improved adolescent students’ comprehension and self-regulation when working with complex informational texts. Their findings suggest that structured supports help students manage cognitive demands while gradually developing independent reading strategies. This aligns closely with what I observed in practice. Students did not become stronger analytical readers because I explained texts better. They improved because the scaffolds helped them regulate and structure their own thinking processes.

One particularly effective strategy involved modelling annotations live under timed conditions.

Previously, I often demonstrated “perfect” annotations that looked polished and complete. The problem was that students never saw the uncertainty involved in the thinking process itself. Once I began annotating texts in real time alongside students — verbalising confusion, revising interpretations, questioning patterns, and selecting evidence — students became more willing to engage imperfectly themselves. Annotation shifted from being viewed as an answer-producing task to a thinking process.

Vocabulary instruction also became increasingly important.

Students frequently noticed meaningful textual features but lacked the disciplinary language to articulate their observations clearly. Terms such as salience, juxtaposition, vector, framing, anchorage, and modality gave students greater analytical precision. Front-loading key terminology before reading reduced cognitive load during annotation because students no longer had to simultaneously invent language and analyse meaning. Research on disciplinary literacy consistently demonstrates that academic vocabulary supports comprehension and analytical reasoning across subject areas (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008).

Gradual release also mattered.

Early annotations were heavily scaffolded. I provided prompts, categories, colour-coding systems, and guided questions. Over time, these supports were intentionally removed as students demonstrated greater independence. Eventually, students developed personalised annotation systems adapted to their own thinking styles. Some used symbols extensively. Others organised notes spatially around visual elements. Some prioritised analytical terminology while others focused on audience effects first.

What mattered was not uniformity.

What mattered was that students learned to make their thinking visible.

This experience reshaped how I think about analytical instruction more broadly. Strong literary or rhetorical analysis does not emerge automatically from reading complex texts. Students often require explicit support in how to process information, organise attention, and externalise interpretation before they can produce sophisticated written analysis independently.

Too often, we assess analytical writing without explicitly teaching the invisible cognitive work that precedes it.

Annotation makes that invisible work visible.

And once students can see their thinking, they are far more capable of refining it.

References

Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40–59. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.78.1.v62444321p602101

ter Beek, M., Opdenakker, M.-C., Spijkerboer, A. W., & Brummer, L. (2019). Scaffolding expository history text reading: Effects on adolescents’ comprehension, self-regulation, and motivation. Learning and Individual Differences, 74, 101753. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2019.101753