AS lesson Friday 28th Feb

Wonderfulls! read all the instructions before you start, as always!

0.5) Please log in to Moodle and upload a single file with your pieces, commentaries and bibliographies into the Turnitin assignment 'Halla's class final submissions'. If you can't do that today, could you please do that by next Tuesday.

0.75)  Please fill in the questionnaire (an evaluation of your coursework module) in the top box on our Moodle page. This link might work:
http://moodle.stbrn.ac.uk/mod/feedback/view.php?id=12194

1) Please finish the highlighting of the sample A-grade essay and then highlight your own.

2) Look at the balance of power concepts, terminology/quotes and context comments and see how equal it was in your essay - which area(s) do you need to develop?

3) Set yourself a target and set yourself a task to help you achieve that target. Post the explanation of what you are going to do and why on your blog. Do this for homework and then post the results and a self-evaluation as a comment - either the text you wrote or a description of what you did and how effective it was in improving your work. Do this by next Friday.

4) Pick two of your grouping texts that you have brought in that you can see a link between. The link could be A/P/F or technique or mode (spoken or written or a combination) or anything you can notice that is significant or interesting in both texts. And investigate how the connecting factor is different because of the different contexts/contents/styles or any other reasons you can come up with.

e.g. a comic strip of Garfield published in the Daily Mail newspaper and a script of a short scene in the TV programe Supernatural are linked through the mode of speech (both are imaginary texts as an example - I would include quotes in the notes if they weren't!). The following notes explore the differences between speech aspects in each text and how the speech features give insight into key aspects of the texts (including APF).

• the comic strip includes Jon talking in a one-sided dialogue to Garfield and uses speech bubbles to convey the represented speech which is meant to be humorous to readers of the popular newspaper (or to a wider audience through reprints e.g. on day-by-day calendars or collections books for fans) - the humour probably emerging because of the obvious answer to Jon's interrogative, given the graphological representation of what has happened; it is meant to be briefly enjoyed and maybe discussed or shared in a 'did you see the Garfield strip today...' context to create a social moment and also functions as a feature to sell the paper because it is famous/popular - although the graphology is the key element, it is possible catchphrases might enter the pragmatic awareness of regular readers or that they may come to know how Jon typically speaks and Garfield thinks (speaks to the audience)
• the script is also direct speech and also to entertain through represented speech, though not primarily through humour in this scene (although humour could be derived from the cruelty of the nouns used in referring to one another); the dialogue is scripted and it is a dualogue instead of being one-sided like the Garfield text and, because it is a vital constituent of drama, conflict is created through the 'snarky' jibes that the characters challenge each other with, trading accusatory declaratives using dynamic verbs to indicate actions taken in haste, without due consideration, that resulted in negative consequences - knowing the show, the metaphor may be close to literal when Dean says "everything's gone to Hell"; the connotations of the proper noun for anyone watching even one episode would be the fire and brimstone typical of this drama.

5) Write a long, detailed PEE paragraph about the connection and contrasts and post to your blog. Remember to use terminology, quotes and APF/context. I will be available to answer any questions you have. The notes above are close to what you are trying to achieve, but the explanation needs to be clearer through the use of quotes. Please note the tentative language in the modal verbs "may" and "could" in my notes - try and take this further by offering more than one possible reason for why a technique could have been used or more than one possible affect it might have considering different primary/secondary audiences.


Extension: find another text that links to those in the same way. See if there are more similarities to one or to the other and/or how the aspect you have connected them through is different in other ways.

e.g. a natural speech transcript might be more similar to the script because it is a dualogue, although it is natural speech with natural, casual non-fluency features despite the close relationship echoing that of the brothers in Supernatural (which is fluent because it is represented speech and the pace and sharply cutting insults are key to the success of the scene as entertainment, while the purpose of the first speaker in the transcript seems to be a request for vital information and then informing the other participant of their reaction). The transcript might also share a technique in common with the Garfield strip in the opening utterance being an interrogative, the answer to which is significant to the speaker.

6) This will probably be in your independent study time but you may get to it... Read other blogs to appreciate other people's work and leave an encouraging comment about what seems perceptive or well-expressed. If you have any suggestions, add them tactfully. I expect to see comments from everyone somewhere on my travels around your blogs by next Friday.