Resources and supportive tools for 9EN03 Crafting Language Coursework
Overview:
You will select one genre to research for your assignment. You will produce two pieces of writing in this genre, differentiated by function and/or audience. Examples of genres they might choose include:
● feature articles
● journalist interviews
● speeches
● scripted presentations
● dramatic monologues
● short stories
● travel writing.
Here is an example of this:
Here is further suggestions from Edexcel about your audience and how you could differentiate between your two texts for Travel Writing. This might include differentiation by audience or by purpose:
Here is another getting started example for scripted presentations or speeches differentiating the two texts by either audience or purpose:
Crafting Different Genres: Style Guides
Scripted Speeches:
Scripted Speeches: 10 Modern Presidential Speeches
Scripted Speeches: The Power of Vulnerability
Scripted Speeches: Al Gore on New Thinking on the Climate Crisis
Sports Writing:
Sports Writing: Types, Examples, and Tips for Better Reporting
Opinion Articles:
Opinion Articles: Independent Voices
Opinion Articles: Guardian Modern Tribes
Travel Writing:
Visit the Guardian’s Travel Writing Competition where it is broken up into subcategories for the genre and useful research links
Travel Writing: Survival of the Slowest Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro
Travel Writing: A Guided Tour with a Natural Navigator
Travel Writing: The Last Wild Island
Travel Writing: The Path to Enlightenment in Northern China
Travel Writing: Go Beyond Baklava in Azerbaijan Food Blog
Travel Writing: Ethiopia’s Omo River Valley
Fashion & Beauty Writing:
The Truth about Asian Beauty Standards
Chinese/American Perspective on Beauty
Heritage Month: Asian Beauty is not Monolithic
Narrative Writing:
Narrative Writing: The New Yorker Let it Snow
Review:
Materials:
Commentary:
Language and Structure Ideas* to help you with your Critical Commentary
*this is not an exhaustive list
Please note that you should always consider this in line with the genre/mode that you have chosen and what specifically inspired your language choices (style models, etc.).
Keep your introduction brief – you need to provide information about text type (mode/genre) with consideration of audience, function, field, context, attitudes, etc. This is where you can include a brief discussion of style models that you have used and possible viable publications (where would you intend for these pieces to be published?).
Valid analytical points – refer to the language frameworks (see below). You only have space in your word count (1000 words) for important features, so you must be selective and concise.
Consider – how do these features give your pieces their distinctive effects, and how they are in keeping with your chosen genre/mode and audience(s)/function(s)?
Language frameworks:
• Pragmatics – make clear links to context, audience and/or function.
• Discourse and structure – relationship with reader, tone, formality/register, status, viewpoint, etc. Structure (shape of text, order for coherence, use of hooks/threads/signposts for cohesion/coherence, endophoric and exophoric references, etc.).
• Semantics – shared frames of reference (shared knowledge with the reader), implied connotations, etc.
• Figurative language and rhetorical devices – rhetorical devices (use of questions, parallels, contrasts, antithesis, repeated words/phrases, triadic structure, etc.). Figurative language (similes, metaphors, etc.).
• Syntax – particular sentence types (declaratives, imperatives, etc.), deliberate use of sentence structures (minor, simple, compound, complex, etc.).
• Grammar – deliberate use of word and phrase functions (omission of auxiliary verbs in headlines, creative use of noun phrases, etc.), passive or active voice used for deliberate effect, etc.
Lexis – semantic fields and lexical sets, colloquialisms, slang, jargon, technical terminology, high or low frequency lexis, neologisms, conversions (changing word class, e.g. using a noun as a verb), etc.
• Morphology – puns created by playing with free and bound morphemes, etc.
• Phonology – use of alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, etc.
Exemplars:
Referencing and Bibliographies
It is essential for your commentary that you approach this correctly. Follow the advice I outlined at the beginning of the unit and make sure you record all of your secondary reading including URLs and full titles to make this job much easier later down the line. Follow the link below to another post of mine where I will take you through how to reference effectively; the conventions you need to follow and how to present your Bibliographies at the end.
Remember: You should embed critics and Linguistic theorists into your commentary to add value and justify to your writing choices. You will need to be specific in their role and impact within the context of your two pieces.
Awaken English 