Below is an example of a recast text and recast commentary based on the question for the article Everybody Wins and All Must Have Prizes by
Recast task
Good evening friends.
We have watched our children over the years grow and play and learn together. And we have fed each other's children, we have protected them, we have loved them like they were our own children. Our own sons and daughters. But today these children are facing the greatest danger to their - young and innocent lives.
That danger comes from our own government. Our children's futures are being put at risk by people who should be nurturing and protecting them. But instead they are being diminished and condemned.
It is clear to me that current education policy is destroying our education system. And I am calling upon you all to make a stand and take immediate action to heal and restore this country's education system to its former glory.
Firstly the government has adopted the rigid, narrow minded and ridiculous idea that academic achievement is the single most valuable way of measuring intelligence. By stating this, the government ignores and rejects any other forms of intelligence or alternative ways of measuring it.
For example the government has rejected the apprenticeship programme and other vocational training courses.
Secondly the ultimate aim of current education policy is to have 50% of the population educated to degree level. To reach this absurd target it aims to admit many more working class students into higher education. This may sound heroic, noble and socially just but in reality it is destroying fundamental principles of education and does not truly serve anybody.
The government is going to achieve this goal in a number of ways.
Firstly it will confine the concept of failure to the dustbin of failed educational theory. And in doing this it will also destroy the concept of excellence and high achievement. The exam system will be designed to create a dull, grey, featureless soulless stodgy body of teenagers.
It will achieve this by lowering admissions grades for working class students in failing schools.
In making failure extinct this government is devaluing the education system in this country. It is making achievement meaningless.It is attacking one of the most fundamental pillars on which our civilization has been built over thousands of years. An education system that was once the envy of the world.
Therefore I call upon you all today to write to your local member of parliament and urge them to do everything in their power to safeguard the future for our children and our country.
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Commentary
I used a number of techniques in this passionate speech to address this concerned audience of parents of children that have grown up together, since the children were babies. I urge them to help change damaging government educational policy.
The use of first and second person pronouns such as 'I', 'their', 'you' and the possessive personal pronoun 'our' are all used to address and engage the listening audience. Their use helps create a sense of unity and conveys authority and power for the cause. The second person pronoun 'you' is also a direct address and again is used to engage specifically a listening group. Listening audiences respond intuitively to this kind of direct appeal.
My purpose in the speech was to inform and persuade the listeners to take immediate action to change educational policy. Facts are communicated through short, simple declaratives with added premodifiers to add detail and authority. For example, 'the government has adopted the rigid, narrow minded and ridiculous idea...' Here the list of three - a rhetorical device - is used to persuade the audience of the justice of this position. Lists of three are also powerful ways of communicating to a listening audience rather than a reading one.I also used emotive lexis as a way of communicating this position. Abstract nouns such as,'failure', 'excellence' and 'achievement' are used to create a positive and powerful emotional response from the audience.
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