Set it up in a minute: Your teacher has read the book. Don't retell the story: set up the extract in about one minute, then comment.
Presenting the extract
1
Place it
Where it comes in the work: "This extract comes from…"
2
Sum up
What happens, in one or two sentences: "In this scene…"
3
Introduce
Characters and setting: "Mira, who is also the narrator, …"
4
Quote briefly
Two to five words, then what they show: "…which suggests…"
Place → Sum up → Introduce → Quote
Use the present tense: Events in the book go in the present: "Mira walks home", not "Mira walked". If you hear "then… then… then…", you are retelling.
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A model opening: An extract from The Winter Kitchen, the invented practice novel, and the first minute of a presentation on it.
The extract (shortened): At school nobody asked where I lived, and I made sure they never needed to. When Jonah said he'd walk me home, I told him I was meeting my mother at the station. I walked the long way round, past the bright new cafés.
The restaurant sign was half-lit: ROS S. Upstairs, the whole flat smelled of onions.
Model opening
"This extract comes from the first part of the novel, a few weeks after Mira moves to the city. In this scene she walks home and hides where she lives. Mira, who is also the narrator, is sixteen and ashamed of her home above her grandmother's restaurant. She passes 'the bright new cafés' before a sign that is only 'half-lit', which suggests the gap between the life she wants and the life she has."