很多香港學生移民到海外，覺得讀英文難的原因之一，是因在香港，中四開始只有選擇English literature的學生，才需要分析小說和詩，但在外國，大部分公開試都要求所有考英文的學生看懂小說和詩。如果你是一個喜歡數學理科的男生，這麼多年從不看小說，突然要分析classic works of literature，苦惱程度可以想像。

其實不要說分析文學作品，單是分析作品時summarize小說情節，也不那麼容易。沒經驗的學生，經常把不必要的細節也包括在裏面，讓essay給人「廢話多」的印象。

我經常建議學生多參考Netflix如何精煉地summarize劇集，通常Netflix只花一兩句的功夫，就能表達劇集的重點：

 

Squid Game

Join the game. Play by the rules. Get rich beyond your wildest dreams. But be aware: One wrong move could cost you your life.

 

Downton Abbey

This drama series follows the upper-crust Crawley family and their servants, exposing the snobbery, scheming and backbiting of a vanishing class system.

 

The Queen’s Gambit

In a 1950s orphanage, a young girl reveals an astonishing talent for chess and begins an unlikely journey to stardom while grappling with addiction.

 

下面兩個文學分析文章的introductions，第一個廢話多，第二個字數雖然少三分一，但內容卻豐富得多，以Netflix風格summarize小說後，立馬講述作者的用意和修辭技巧。

 

Student (117 words)

Appearance and reality can be very different. There are situations where nothing is what it seems. We should therefore not take appearance as reality. In “The Pearl”, Steinbeck makes use of the contrast between appearance and reality to draw readers’ attention to the importance of not taking appearance as reality. In the novel, Kino is the father of Coyotito and the husband of Juana. He becomes convinced that a pearl he has accidentally discovered while fishing at sea one day will give him the life he has always dreamed of. However, his neighbours become jealous of him and he becomes the target of thieves. Reality turns out to be completely different from what he has imagined.

 

My rewrite  (81 words)

Just as we should not judge a book by its cover, do not judge a pearl by its size.

The above is John Steinbeck’s message in “The Pearl,” a story on a series of misfortunes that befalls Kino, a poor fisherman, after he discovers a large pearl and becomes convinced his life will turn for the better because of it. Through the use of literary devices such as symbolism and irony, Steinbeck brings to the fore the destructive power of greed.