Directed Writing tasks examples

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/modern-tribes


http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/mar/05/modern-tribes-clean-eating-blogger
The individual is explaining old eating habits using nouns such as 'toxins' emphaising the lack of care of her health. It states that clean eating is really the way to live a happy lifestyle, by simply knowing what is right for you body and how you feel comfortable within yourself. Possible sarcasm/humor is used to engage readers.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/feb/20/modern-tribes-digital-new-dad-catherine-bennett
Shows how having all this new modern day technology is enabling the father to capture all these important moments in his child's life. But exaggeration may be put on how technology is such a big factor in today society and if we don't capture it on camera it didn't even happen.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/dec/05/modern-tribe-social-media-grandmother
This article demonstrates humor by it going against the stereotypical grandparent who is unable to use social media. But the writer states she finds it 'fun' and as a way to 'gossip. Which represents social media in a positive way from the older generation,

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/14/vegan-warrior-modern-tribe-bacon-cancer-link
It would most likely enrage meat eaters as it mocks them by stating they should 'listened to us a bit more, instead of going on about how skinny and angry we all are'

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/22/teenagers-social-skills-not-social-networks-work-ncs - Social intelligence is “the set of abilities and skills we use to understand social situations”. These are the skills you need to work out when it’s your turn to buy a pint. These are the skills you need to work out how to please your boss. And these, according to the report, are the skills you are going to need to have any chance of getting a job. In which is more of a priority in employers then IQ or exam results. But this could be a problem for the younger generation as if today’s young people are locked in their bedrooms, gazing at their smartphones, this, at least according to the report, isn’t actually making things worse. The young people who spent more time online said they had more fulfilling and stable friendships than the ones who spent less. This, says the report, could be because it helped them to practice their social skills before trying them out in “real life”. 

http://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2016/mar/07/new-exclamation-mark-rules-proof-the-government-wants-to-penalise-enthusiasm - New guidelines from the Department for Education suggest that primary school children should only use ‘!’ in sentences starting with ‘what’ or ‘how’. How strange!

The Englihs language is changing too fast

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3063455/English-language-changing-fast-words-majority-not-understand.html

Comparison of Two texts -Topic of holidays

   

 Text A – Twitter forum

Lexis

•     Modal Verb – ‘should’ - Raises the question on topic matter, which initiates debate for individuals to address their opinion.
•         Premodifying verb – ‘little holiday’ its purpose is to try and downsized the issue of taking children out of term time.
•          Adverb – ‘definitely not’ showing certainty and strong opinions.
• ·         Adverb – ‘still’ showing that by taking a holiday in term time will not affect the outcome of grades ‘I still achieved 2As and 9Bs in GCSES’.

Grammar

•       At the beginning of the forum a interrogative syntax is used to question the viewers on their opinions ‘have your say’ builds relationship with readers.
•         Most comments hold no coherent structure with mainly simple syntaxes, either declarative or exclamative.
•        Punctuation – expressing their opinions using ‘!’ possibly highlighting their frustration

Discourse markers

•         Names of the different twitter accounts- showing their different opinions – most likely are mothers/parents who are looking to go on holiday.
•           ‘ITV’ – Showing the thread of the media platform – suggesting controversial debate?

 Graphology

·         Layout of the forum (Twitter) makes it a lot more accessible and easier to express opinion, it also allows people to comments back to one another: which again creates more of a debate.

·         The form of the text shows informality as all able to express opinions in which individuals aren’t bothered about academic register.

·         The use of hash tags ‘#’ show a possible trend of the topic matter showing it’s a highly discussed subject – highlighting real peoples frustration and confusion.

Pragmatics

•         The feature of being able to like the comments made or ‘retweet’ them may show support from other individuals – more likes = a more relevant point?
•          We can gather from some of the comments that taking time off in term time will not affect the final grades.
•          The individuals making comments will most likely be parents ‘they never had teacher trading days when I was a kid’ the conjunction ‘when’ highlights the past therefore her most likely now having kids of her own.

                                                                               

Text B – Article on prices increasin

    

•   Predeterminer – ‘double’ which is the first lexis used in the text which is placed in capital letter – emphasises the difference of prices in term time and non-term time.
•         High frequency lexis- ‘cheaper’ and ‘costs’ throughout article discussing prices which would be expecting on this certain topic matter.
•         Adverb – ‘soaring’ possible collocation as it could be paired with the lexis ‘flying’. Or simply emphasising the dramatic increase of prices on holidays.

Grammar

•          ‘Family of four – including flights’ the em dash used for cohesion of sentences by adding more relevant information.
•          Article consists of mostly complex sentences with clauses offering declarative statements on the topic.
•          ‘Florida and Malta were cheaper’ article consists of declarative syntax with it containing facts and statistics.

Discourse markers

•          The adjective ‘overall’ shows readers that previous information will be summed up and will offer a summarised conclusion.
•         The images create discourse as it creates an identity of the topic which will relate to holiday makers and possibly parents.
•         The use of authoritative figures create more of an identity for holiday makers, always makes the information more credible.

Graphology

•          The layout of the article adds formality to the piece of text as it holds statistic tables supporting all declaratives syntax.
•          By the lexical choice ‘double’ being put in capital letters may add a sense of emergence to the matter, as it is ridiculous prices increase over non-term time.

Pragmatics

•          On the article holds the number of comments received on the article ‘329 comments’ which could highlight a high level of controversy on the matter, as it clearly frustrates individuals. The high level of comments also shows support of the article as most comments will mostly likely be in agreement. 
•          From the table we understand in non-term time holidays that they are a lot more expensive then term time, which is not acceptable.

BBC radio - Top 20 words in English

Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright guide us through the top 20 words in English. Not the best or most popular (that would include tentacular, ping-pong and sesquipedalian (look it up - it's a cracker). Plus a lot of swearing. No this is the 20 most commonly used. It's actually quite a boring list - full of 'And', 'I', 'of' etc - but look a little closer and it tells you all about the structure of language. The little words you really can't do without that glue all the other ones together.

List of 20 most common words

Top 5

• The
• Be
• To
• Of
• And

(Mostly grammatical words, intrenched in brain and process them faster so don't realise they're being said]

Top 10

• The
• Be
• To
• Off
• And
• A
• In 
• That
• Have
• I

Anglo-saxans(old english) words despite 2 thirds of our language is not old english but from where we were ruled by anglo-normans (french speaking. The language we use everyday is historically english. No 'she'?

A study was carried out to show the difference between the characteristic of male and female speech, with men we get noun and numbers - stuck in facts whereas women use language talking about other folk using 'she'. 

Grammatical words- Connectives and Pronouns are used to keep company to other words

Content words- Have meaning and are able to define them easily.

Top 20

• The
•  Be
•  To
•  Of
•  And
•  A
•  In
•  That
•  Have
•  I
•  It
•  For
•  Not
•  On
•  With
•  He
•  As
•  You
•  Do
•  At

Dominated by grammatical words, the most frequent noun used is time which is due to people basing their live around structuring their life. 

Can we see the influence of other languages creeping in? Number 61 of most common .- 'people' - most romance word, possibly intermingled with northeners. 

List of old english words - 1000 years ago, essentially the same words apart from a couple which alternate but the similarities are striking. 

 

This kind of list comes from a branch of lingustics called Corpus Linguistics. It looks at the frequency and distribution of words in large bodies of text or speech. You can apply it to anything - political debates, lonely hearts columns or pop songs.

Word frequency of later albums- Rolling stone

1960s'-70's

• easy 
• strong 
• mercy
• all right
• cry 

How media have created assocaition between words creating social attitudes. Linguistics before the age of technology, as technology has changed language massively. 

Word of Mouth - Slang

What is slang, where does it come from, and which subjects attract the most slang words? Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright thrash it out with lexicographer of slang and swearing Jonathon Green. Producer Beth O'Dea
Jonathon Green is the author of Slang: A Very Short Introduction.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06wd268#play

• Slang is counter language from the counter culture from the 60's. Changing/reversing the standard English lexis , alternative uses of 'proper language'.
• Slang was associated with 'bad people', rooting from 40-50 years ago.
• Has now changed to inventive and creative and became more acceptable within in modern day society.
• Slang is reusing of standard English
• Described as 'gutter language' and 'jargon'
• Different school stages e.g Primary, Secondary and Universities hold different 'types' of slang- down to different generations? 
• Being fluent in swearing - shows healthy verbal ability?
• Colorful slang isn't a indication of articulacy.
• Slang is a a way of certain groups of people talking about certain items in certain contexts. 

Statistics of slang being used;

• Criminals - 5000 slang words
• Under influence of alcohol- 4500 slang words
• Drugs - 4000 slang words 
• Money rich/poor- 3300 slang words
• Women- 3000 slang words 
• Men- 2100 slang words

Represents us as humans possibly not as the most compassionate or caring but slang is linguistic safety valve. 

http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.co.uk/