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Text Complexity Analysis
Grade 7, Unit 3, Activity 3.17
Text: Excerpt from Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela
Text Description: Published in 1995, Long Walk to Freedom is Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. In this excerpt, Mandela recounts his early recognition of the need for freedom from the harsh conditions resulting from apartheid, describes his views, and acknowledges that more work is required.
Context
In Activity 3.17, students first read a short biography of Nelson Mandela written when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Students then read the excerpt from Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. Students’ work in this activity scaffolds to Embedded Assessment 2: Creating a Biographical Presentation by asking them to identify and interpret key information about Mandela, compare how two different genres present information about Mandela’s life, and identify potential sources for additional information about Mandela.
Quantitative/Complexity Measures
Genre: Autobiography Overall: Complex Quantitative: 1250L Qualitative: Moderate Task Demands: Accessible
The Lexile for the complete book Long Walk to Freedom is 1120L, which places it in the Grades 6-8 band. While this excerpt is slightly above the full text measure, it is balanced by the text’s story-like structure.
Qualitative Considerations
Purpose/Levels of Meaning: The autobiographical genre signals the sharing of significant personal experiences and insight. In this passage, Mandela uses description and imagery to acquaint the reader with his understanding of freedom as a child and how that understanding changed as he grew older and began observing the conditions of freedom within his country. The ideas Mandela presents are straightforward and easily understood with an obvious message.
Structure: This text is written in first-person point of view and in chronological order, conforming to the expectations of the genre. Mandela connects ideas clearly, and his reflective commentary is easily identified. The text contains no graphics or ancillary text features.
Language: While mostly conversational, the text does contain figurative language. Examples include “A man who takes away another man’s freedom is ... locked behind the bars of prejudice” and the quest for freedom described metaphorically as a long walk with “many more hills to climb.” Vocabulary is likely to be easily understood, but a few challenging words are defined in footnotes.
Knowledge Demands: A deep understanding of this text requires some familiarity with South Africa, apartheid, the life events of Nelson Mandela, and the characteristics of the autobiographical genre.
Task and Reader Considerations
Students acquire knowledge about a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, create and respond to research questions, and compare the features of biography and autobiography. Students demonstrate understanding of this text by identifying key sentences, summarizing main ideas, and citing textual evidence when answering text-dependent questions.
Considerations regarding the motivation and experience of the reader should be made at the classroom level.
Placement Considerations
The quantitative measure supports inclusion of this text, which is at the high end of the 6-8 Lexile band. Qualitative considerations support an overall complex rating because of knowledge demands and the pairing of this text with the short biography for purposes of comparison.
This text supports student achievement of standards such as RI.7.1 (cite textual evidence), RI.7.6 (determine an author’s point of view), and RI.7.9 (how two authors shape their presentations of key information).
Visual support may be provided by showing a brief film clip about Nelson Mandela to address RI.7.7. Many such clips are readily available online from sites such as history.com and biography.com.