Language Analysis: Sentence /paragraph guide
Sentences 1 – 4: (Author’s point of view and big picture)
- Dogmatically, (tone word), the author endorses/challenges/condemns … . (author’s point of view)
- The author relies on her/his personal/professional background (scientific? evidence) to suggest that … (on what grounds)
- Most importantly, by prioritising values such as (what appeals?) the author encourages concerned members of the audience to …. (impact)
OR
- Most importantly, by depicting the scientists or anti-vaxxers as …. the author encourages concerned members of the audience to question …
to reflect on … or instils a sense of fear/ arouses sympathy/arouses anger or shames those who fail to see the consequences of…
Sentences 5-7: (specific words and phrases)
Metaphoric/ alliterative /emotive phrases such as …. (…) imply or highlight/ or reinforce her view that …
(Purpose) Readers are likely to appreciate the urgency of the situation because …
See Exercise 5, Orange Book, p 40 (for an example of this model.) (See bottom of page.)
Extra examples:
Cars are for driving
USING a mobile phone while driving is illegal. But what of all the other activities people get up to behind the wheel? Have there been any studies into the sort of things I see from my tram window? Eating. It now seems de rigueur that you consume your breakfast while driving to work. Just last week I saw a woman trying to hold a bowl of cereal and the wheel with one hand while she spooned food into her mouth with the other.
Then there’s make up. Some women seem unable to do their hair or apply their make-up at home. At every stop and light, I see a woman poking around her eyes with applicators of all shapes. And of course the biggest smoking. How many accidents on our roads have been caused by smokers? They must first find the cigarette packet, extract a cigarette, find a lighter, hold the cigarette in their mouths and andn concentrate on the end of it to light it. Then there’s the dropped cigarette .. Why not make the only thing legal to do behind the wheel is drive. Tom Robb
1. Be specific re main point: Whilst Mr Robb decries mobile texting while driving, he also condemns ……….
2. What is the evidence/impetus/purpose? Relying on personal anecdotal experiences, the author sarcastically …………………….. Accordingly ……………….
3. Give a specific example of tone and words: He provocatively asks, “what of all the other ….” to challenge us to think about road safety and the ways that it is being compromised … …. Adopting a witty tone, he depicts a range of scenarios that ……………………………………..
4. give an example of words and descriptions and purpose …………………………
Letter to the editor: Shameful example
I AM 14 years old and have a disability. People think that the most challenging thing about having a disability is how it affects the things you do. Well, for me, the biggest challenge is actually dealing with bullying. I am only a young kid and I have been bullied too many times to count. The most common thing is teasing or being called names – ”retard” or ”not normal” is what people say the most.
When I hear people such as Kyle Sandilands make fun of kids with disability on the radio I feel mad, humiliated and deeply offended. It makes me think – will it ever stop? Now the kids at school will hear him, and because he is so popular and famous, it will be seen as OK or cool to make jokes about kids with disability. I just think it is awful, publicly or privately, to make fun of kids like me because we have a disability. Danny Dickson, Collingwood
Adopting a …………………. tone, Mr D (censures /condemns/believes) ………………………………… (Most critical technique(s)/big picture): Relying on first-hand experience (personal anecdotal experiences), the author sensitively ……………………… draws attention to …………………………
Accordingly, (position system) …………………. the author encourages concerned members of the audience to … …. (Micro-level: which words support the “big picture”: phrase and purpose/ tone)
Emotive words / phrases / labels such as ……………….. capture the extent of his pain and encourage readers to ……………………….
By presenting himself as some one who ……….. he shows that he deserves the reader’s sympathy ..
He provocatively asks “what of all the other ….” ; he …………………….. insinuates that ; he challenges us to think about …………………………
In order to focus our anger on the perpetrators, he depicts Mr S as a person who …………………… Words such as …………. suggest that he is …………………………………
This encourages readers to recognise that ……………………………….
The benefit of science
Margaret Smith (Letters, 18/4), as a mother, and a scientist, I was comfortable with the idea of getting my first child immunised with the triple-antigen vaccine. I based my decision, not on intuition, but on my understanding of immunology and epidemiology as well as the current scientific consensus. My eight-week-old baby had regularly had days where he screamed seemingly endlessly. I have no recollection whether the day on which he was given a vaccination was any better or worse than any other. Certainly I would never have presumed to know the cause of any such bad day. Was it the vaccination he’d had? Or the curry I’d eaten the night before? Or the alignment of the planets?
Certainly I would have expected he may have felt grizzly and unwell post-immunisation. That’s the feeling of our immune systems doing their job, and to relieve those symptoms I may well have given an anti-inflammatory medication. What I do know for certain is that he, and his sister, are fully immunised, healthy and contributing to our society’s herd immunity and wellbeing. Shelley McColl, Seddon The Age letters
Return to Turn to exercises: Orange Work Book
Please keep going over the people stories and practice writing comparative analysis. Example: people grow through conflict.
ALSO: Please summarise the various people stories so that we can relate them to a variety of prompts such as: We grow through conflict.
We will practise rewriting the paragraph with more sophisticated expressions.