THREE WAY COMPARISON
SOME GENERAL ISSUES
Some positive observations
- Most of you used the recommended structure for the commentary and this was used well, generally
- Most students used a sound core of language and literary features. The best scripts were using between 15 - 20 different features.
- Students generally drew from language, literary and spoken language frameworks with degrees of confidence
- Comparing texts for the most was an absolutely embedded feature of your commentaries
- Commentaries were generally well written with accurate expression and confident use of terminology
- Most scripts addressed audience, purpose(s), genre, attitude(s) to main topic and identified at least one sub-topic
- Most scripts commented in detail on the effects of language features on readers / audience
Some negative observations
- Analysis of texts was mostly sound but rarely insightful and sensitive. For example students did not pick up on Jane's nervousness or anxiety in text A or pick up on the cynical, anger and bitterness of Ben in text C.
- Only a relatively small number of students made comments about semantic fields. This seemed such an obvious area to explore and all three texts use subject specific lexical choices. Associated with a semantic field of medical conditions is low-frequency lexis and formal register.
- Very few scripts commented on the headmaster in text C or identified the dialogue at the start or the imagined dialogue at the end of the extract
- Referring to contexts was almost completely ignored by most students
- Identifying audiences is not a formulaic tick box exercise especially for novels. You must be thorough and engaged. For example, 'The audience for the novel may include people interested in discrimination and human rights. Or people interested in injustice or disability.
Some general observations to consider
- Really pack every line with concise, detailed and relevant points. You can do this by using quotations that have two or three language features that you can confidently comment on in some detail. And then refer to the effects.
- The most effective quotations are short. A word or a phrase works best.
- Perhaps we should avoid including - repeating the basic information about texts in the introduction. For example for text A we could write,'Text A is an interactional, private, spontaneous, informal series of adjacency pairs between two work colleagues, discussing the medical condition of one of the speakers.'
- The examiners expected students to identify gender as a topic to discuss. Text A male and female, text B's lack of gender and text C's male to male gender.
- Examiners expected students to identify speech in text's A and C; direct address in text B.
- Examiners expected students to refer to lexical issues including low and high frequency lexis as well as formal and informal registers
- use detailed language frameworks
- Text A some observations include: The extract is a series of adjacency pairs, Malcolm sets the agenda, uses back-channelling features to show he understands Jane's explanations, non-fluency features may be an indication of informality or expressions of discomfort and awkwardness about talking about such a sensitive subject. Both speakers use non-fluency features.This may be indicated by the fact the dialogue is set at work and are primarily colleagues - not necessarily close friends.
- Text B some observations include:
- Text C some observations include: What struck me about this extract is the attitude of the narrator / main character to his medical condition and the world generally. He is angry and bitter. This has led to a cynical view of the things. This is expressed through sarcasm and irony. These are examples of dark or black humour. It's entertaining but it's also quite painful.
- FOLLOW UP TASKS
SOME GENERAL POINTS - RECAST TEXT
- There are 28 recasting questions on this blog. If you practice 3 or 4 of these a week under timed conditions between now and the exam, you will improve your writing and commentary skills. The more you do, the better you will become at writing these two exam tasks. You have the skills and the opportunity to get 40 / 40 for this exam. I will mark any work that you submit to me. It is your responsibility. Act now to transform a D grade into a B grade! It's as simple as that!
- Include references from the beginning, middle and end sections of the source text
- Try and include at least two minor or apparently insignificant details from the source text.
- Over 90% of your recast task must be directly and specifically drawn from the source text. Less than 10% of your recast text should be used to adapt this material to your recast genre.
- Remember what you are being assessed on. You are being assessed on your ability to 'demonstrate expertise and creativity in using language appropriately for a variety of purposes and audiences, drawing on insights from language and literary studies.' This is a description of the assessment criteria for the recast text.
- Make sure as you write your recast text include relevant and obvious language / literary features that you can use in your commentary. At first when you practice recasting texts this is awkward and artificial but the more you practice the more natural and easier it will become.
- Avoid using the same words and phrases as the source article. This is really important. Use synonyms and alternative phrases. Approach the actual language / expression of the recast text creatively and imaginatively.
- Add a title and sub heading to your text. You can use this to refer to genre and audience.
- SOME GENERAL POINTS - COMMENTARY
- Like the three way comparison use the structure and most of the features in the following list in your recast commentary. Address audience, purpose(s), genre, attitude(s) to topic; then quote relevantly, concisely a quotation from your own recast text, packed with language / literary features, and identify between 10 - 15 language / literary features and comment on the intended effect on readers.
- Unlike the three way comparison question, this is not a comparison exercise. Just answer the question that's asked, carefully.
- Refer to between ten and twenty language and literary terms in your commentary
- Write detailed and concise commentaries.
- Write a minimum of 150 words. If you have time write more than 250 concise, detailed, language and literary filled words and effects on audiences.
- Remember what you are being assessed for in the recast commentary question. You are being assessed on your ability to, 'select and apply relevant concepts and approaches from integrated language and literary study, using appropriate terminology and accurate, coherent written expression.'
A MODEL ANSWER
Recast text
'An Unnatural Silence'
A first hand account of life in a Turkish refugee camp in the Uludere Mountains
Recast text
'An Unnatural Silence'
A first hand account of life in a Turkish refugee camp in the Uludere Mountains
It was the most awful experience of my life. That first night out in the open with my wife and children was absolutely tortuous.
The rain pounded on us all night. I can barely bring myself to think about such horror.
We only had one dirty and smelly blanket for the seven of us, my wife, her mother and aunt, and our three children. We kept the children in the middle of us to stop the rain from falling on them. The blanket just covered us all. But my wife's and my back were saturated by the morning. We tried to sing the children to sleep. We tried to tell them stories. We tried to remind them about our last holiday we had by the sea. But they were so cold and hungry after our three day journey to this barren mountainside.
What a place! It felt as if we'd been abandoned by God. There was nothing there we could use. There was no natural shelter. There were a few scattered stunted trees but they had been stripped of anything useful when we were there. There was no clean water. There was a small muddy and polluted stream close by and muddy puddles. The place was an open sewer. It got everywhere. It was mixed into the mud
The mud got everywhere! It was in our hair, in our eyes, our clothes and the little food we had.
In the morning when I got up I saw Turkish soldiers laughing and smoking cigarettes. They had automatic weapons slung over their shoulders and whips in their hands. I saw one turn to a young couple. He was shouting at them and raised his whip. The soldiers are so cruel and unhelpful.
In that grey light of the morning I tried to dig a hole to use as a toilet. But I was pushed away by a family that had settled close by. Beside the ground was to stony and exposed.
But what I remember most about that first morning was the unnatural silence. There were the occasional screams of children. But when those died away there was a strange hush. It was the silence of a defeated, helpless and despairing people that had nowhere to go.
Commentary
I wrote this first hand autobiographical account of life in a Turkish refuge camp to inform the readers of a book chronicling the horrors of the Saddam Hussain regime. I used a direct quotation from the article as the title to give an impression of the content of the article to follow. And the more detailed declarative sub-heading is used to give the reader a context and brief explanation to the article.I imagine my readers would be victims and survivors of his brutal government. And perhaps people sympathetic to the Kurdish campaign for an independent state. It's written also to raise awareness of the plight of the Kurdish people.
I used pre-modifying adjectives to help give vivid detail for example, 'dirty and smelly'. This sensuous language is used to create a realistic and gritty impression of the situation.
I used syntactic parallelisms as a way of generating a strong emotional response from the readers and to emphasise the desperate situation. The repetition of the phrase, 'There was no....' also reinforces the helplessness. The phrase, 'we tried to...' is used to help readers contrast the lives these people lived before they came to the mountainside. It's also used to highlight the vulnerability of the children.
I used short simple declaratives and exclamatives such as, 'What a place!' and 'There was no shelter! to shock readers and draw their attention.
FOLLOW UP TASKS
- Practice under timed conditions some of the recast question posted elsewhere on this blog
- Read carefully the recasting guide posted elsewhere on this blog
- Develop the range of language and literary frameworks and terms to use in your commentary
- Read over some of the articles we've discussed in class, develop recasting questions of your own and practice writing them under timed conditions.
- Click here for a link to a post about approaches to the recast task
- Select 300 - 400 words from a variety of articles we've looked at over the year and write a 250 - 350 word commentary on it. Write it imagining you wrote the source text.
- And remember - introduction - summary of audience, purpose, genre, attitude to the subject. Then write 3 or 4 paragraphs selecting topics listed above. Make a point, support it with a quotation, identify language features and comment on the effects on an audience. And finally write 2 paragraphs on the topics engaged with in the source text
