COMPONENT 1B - Revision Lesson 1 - Texts (IMPORTANT)

Good afternoon, class.


Approximately a quarter of the class just attended the REAL LIFE lesson, so thanks to those who turned up. I cannot stress enough how important it is to take advantage of these extra sessions. Everyone present said they had found it very useful, and I would recommend that you come along for the double, tomorrow where we will be doing far more of this sort of stuff.


So...


What we did today was work through a 1B Language and situation style question. The situation we imagined was a question where you are given an extract of a conversation where situation is important and then asked...


"Using this extract as a starting point, discuss how peoples' roles or situations can affect how language is used."


Obviously, we do not know what the extract is going to be, but we worked through the following wider reading texts which I chose due to their usefulness.


Here are the texts...


WIDER READING 1 - A transcript of an informal interview between a police officer and Jimmy Saville conducted in 2009 (at this point, he had no formal charges brought against him).

WIDER READING 2 - A transcript of a job interview between a British employer and an English as an Additional Language candidate (EAL).

WIDER READING 3 - A transcript of a midwife talking to a mother of a new-born after a complicated birth.

WIDER READING 4 - (from class material) a customer and a pharmacist talking about cough medicine.

What I told the students in class was that it is HUGELY important that you consider how the SITUATION/CONTEXT is affecting what is said. So, who has power? How would you EXPECT them to talk to each other? Do they do what you would expect or go against it?


Theories such as politeness, power, face, convergence etc are relevant here.


So, imagine you have already written two paragraphs based on the unseen extract, here is an example of what you third paragraph (Based on the Savile text) could look like)






Notice how it achieves the following things 1. an opening sentence which fully introduces the text - which is absolutely essential. 2. A COMMAND of the situation which shows surprise and interest when things don't go as expected. 3. Apt and concise quotations which demonstrate how the situation is important but without going on forever and a day. 4. Full and thorough explanations about WHY language is being used this way. 5. Relevant application of theories where significant.


Then here is an example paragraph 4 based on the job interview transcript...