EL1102: Group Task — Spoken and Written
Presentation
Analysing and Interpreting a Text
Click
here for some examples of completed tasks, together with my comments
1. Outline and aims of the activity
Simply put, your job for this task
is as follows:
(a) choose a spoken or written text to discuss;
and
(b) say something worthwhile about the language used in that
text, relating what you say to some of the things we have been discussing on
this module.
The aims of the task
are:
(a) to encourage students to contribute
actively to this module and to become more closely engaged with material
introduced in the module;
(b) to give practice in analysing and interpreting spoken or
written text;
(c) to provide an experience of planning and carrying out a small
piece of work, in collaboration with others.
2. Organisation and timing of
the activity
Week 7 (beginning 12 February 2001): Initial planning and organisation; starting work. Form working groups (4 to 6 students per group,
according to tutorial numbers: there should always be two groups per tutorial).
Arrange a regular out-of-class meeting time. You will have 4 weeks altogether
(plus recess week) to carry out the following:
(i) Select a text to work with.
Suggestions on this will be provided (both below and separately), but each
group is free to make its own text choice and is responsible for this. Your
chosen text must not exceed 600 words. It may of course be extracted from a
longer text.
(ii) Explore the text and work out what you have to say about
it. For example, in what ways is the text typical or untypical of
other texts of the same type (or genre)? How does it differ from other types of
text? This stage will require some analysis, which involves looking
carefully at what is there or what is not there in the actual text, and some
comparison with one or more other texts (perhaps with a ‘rewrite’ that you
produce yourselves). You might want to draw on the focus given in the lectures.
(iii) Plan how to present your spoken account of the text.
Make this as lively and interesting as possible. There could be room for
dramatised reading or acting, or a panel discussion, or many other modes of
presentation. (If you need special equipment, eg tape recorder, video
recorder, Powerpoint presentation, please notify your tutor at least a
fortnight ahead. We can’t always guarantee that these will be available.) The
only constraints are that the total presentation must not exceed 20 minutes,
that each group member should take part, and that the presentation
actually tells us something worthwhile about the text and about the text
type (genre) of which it forms an example. (Please provide a printed copy of
the text to all tutorial group members.)
(iv) Complete your written account of the text. This
account must not exceed 1,500 words, not counting the text itself. Please
word-process or type the account. Use double-spacing on A4 paper and leave at
least 1-inch (2˝-cm) margins all around. Please do not write in ‘point form’,
but use continuous prose. Each group’s account should:
• briefly introduce the text, saying why it is
of interest and what you intend to show us about it;
• present an analysis of the text, saying what features are of
interest and taking care to show us that these features actually arise in the
text;
• comment as needed on the work you have done, any difficulties
that arose, and any recommendations you have for further small studies
in the same area. (These recommendations could either be about the content of
such studies or about working procedures that could usefully be followed.) The
account must indicate the contributions of each group member; and
• include a short section on each person’s contribution to the
task (whose idea was it, who looked up the texts, who did the analysis, who
went to the library and looked up the references, who wrote the account?)
The written account should be
submitted on the day of your oral presentation. Please note that
although you should devote much energy to make the oral presentation lively and
interesting, the grade that you will receive will be based largely on the written
account. Please ensure that this is fairly polished, and not in point
form. The written account need not exactly replicate the oral presentation, but
should be closely related to it. This will account for 10 per cent of
your final mark for EL1102.
Week 9 (beginning 3 March 2001): Progress report. Submit a half- to one-A4-page report about what you plan to do. If
necessary, your tutor might arrange to meet you. You must have chosen your text
and started work on your analysis by this stage. The tutor can perhaps help you
clarify your thinking about the text analysis and the spoken and written
presentations, but will not do your planning and presentation work for you. It
is up to you to come prepared, and to make good use of the opportunity to
discuss your plans.
Please include the following in your
progress report:
- Name of group members and tutorial group number.
(Please include your surnames; do NOT use your Mandarin pinyinised
names unless these are official.)
- Title of your task (eg Language used in
the parable of the prodigal son: comparing the Contemporary English
Version with the Authorised Version of the Bible; or The language
used in official government sites: The Ministry of Education)
- Statement of aim. About one paragraph will be
sufficient.
- Rough run-down of contents (eg We will
analyse the lexis using the core-periphery distinction with the help of
the Shorter Oxford Dictionary . . .)
- Your text(s). Please attach the text(s) that you
will analyse to your progress report.
Week 11 (beginning 19 March 2001): Presentation of work done. Present your spoken account in the tutorial. You will
also be asked on this occasion to complete written assessments of the spoken
presentation by the other group of students in your tutorial. Assessment
sheets will be provided nearer the time for this purpose. (These will be
confidential.) Also, submit your written accounts to the tutor.
3. Suggestions
The following suggestions are
intended to help you make sensible choices of text and of what you might want
to explore as you analyse and interpret the text. Notice that you are not
limited to the suggestions made here — you are encouraged to come up with your
own ideas and approaches. This activity offers you an opportunity to contribute
to this course and to develop your own ideas and interests about how to study
English in its diverse social, historical and geographical contexts.
- Possible choices of spoken or written text. These include: informal conversations
(you could record yourselves or friends talking — with permission);
newspaper articles from Australia, Britain, India, Singapore, Sri Lanka,
the USA; passages written in Old English or Middle English; recorded
broadcasts; and many other possibilities. Look for texts and topics that
interest you, and do not be afraid to go beyond any examples that we may
suggest.
If you decide to record and
transcribe a conversation, or some other spoken text, this could give you an
idea how the transcription process actually works. You should know that it
usually takes about 10 minutes or more to transcribe 1 minute of talk.
- Things to look for. You have heard quite a lot (and will hear quite
a lot more) about how conversational English differs from academic
writing, or how Old English word order differs from that of Present-Day
English, or about the features that distinguish American English from
British English, and so on. Most of these comments, though, are
generalisations about tendencies, not universal laws. We can use
particular analyses of texts as a way of putting these general comments to
the test. What does the textual evidence show us, for example, about the
amount of hypotaxis and parataxis, or about the use of core or peripheral
(or in-between) vocabulary, or about the occurrence of non-standard
grammatical features in a conversation?
As appropriate, you can choose to
deal only with grammar or lexis or pronunciation, although it will be in order
to do all. Bear in mind that this module has not introduced you to the more
formal aspects of pronunciation, and it might therefore not be wise to deal only
with that. If you choose to focus on grammar, then remember the structures and
labels introduced and try to use them (SVO word order, parataxis, hypotaxis,
passivisation, nominalisation, tense, aspect). If you choose to focus on
lexis, you can not only discuss the core-periphery distinction but also look up
the sources of the lexical items in a good dictionary (consult your tutor if
you don’t know how to) or discuss the ‘reverberations’ to each item. You
can also talk about more general levels of organisation (eg General 
Specific,
Evidence Conclusion, etc.). Finally, you need to make
reference to the context, because the analysis needs to be related to
what is actually going on.
Notice that this is already a form
of research: it does not matter so much what answer we find as whether we have
correctly presented and interpreted the textual evidence in order to arrive at
the answer we believe to be right. Care over textual evidence is part of what
distinguishes a text analysis from general speculation.
- Making sure that comments are worthwhile. Ask yourselves the ‘so what?’ question.
What do you have to say that is worth our while thinking about and
discussing? Will this message come through clearly in your spoken and written
presentations — if not, how can you revise these to make them more
effective?
4. Web sites
There is a variety of information
and therefore texts available in the WWW. Here are some sites that contain
useful texts, or have links to useful texts. Many different kinds of texts are
available. However, if you are interested in conversational data, you will need
to look elsewhere. (Please note that sites can change their addresses, and it
may be that they will not be available. If this happens, try using Altavista, Yahoo,
Excite, Infoseek or any of the other search
engines to look for web sites. If you do use a Web site for your text,
you should include its URL in a footnote or in the bibliography. By the way, a
URL is a Uniform Resource Locator; it is the ‘address’ of a particular
WWW site.)
|
Name |
URL address
and description |
|
The Age |
http://www.theage.com.au/ |
|
The
Archbishop of Canterbury pages |
http://www.cofe.anglican.org/arch/ |
|
Best of
British |
http://www.vnu.co.uk/vnu/pcw/bob.html |
|
Bibliomania
Classic Fiction |
http://www.bibliomania.com/Fiction/ |
|
Books Online |
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/books.html |
|
Catherine
Ball’s Old English pages |
http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/cball.html |
|
Complete
Works of William Shakespeare |
http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/ |
|
The Daily
Nation |
http://www.africaonline.co.ke/AfricaOnline/nation.html |
|
English 401
Home Page |
http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/engl401/ |
|
The Guardian |
http://www.guardian.co.uk |
|
Hansard |
http://www.legis.gov.bc.ca |
|
Hansard |
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm/cmhansrd.htm |
|
The Hindu |
http://www.webpage.com/hindu/today/index.html |
|
The Indian
Express |
http://www.expressindia.com/ |
|
The Island |
http://www.upali.lk/island/ |
|
Labyrinth
Library |
http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/library/me/me.html |
|
The Mail and
Guardian |
http://www.mg.co.za/mg/ |
|
MTV |
http://www.mtv.com/ |
|
Music Lyrics |
http://www.nerdworld.com/users/dstein/nw228.html |
|
On-line Songs
and Poetry for Children |
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/storsong.html |
|
Pope John
Paul II |
http://listserv.american.edu/catholic/church/papal/jp.ii/jp.ii.html |
|
Sanctum
library |
http://www.tigerden.com/~lilith/History/Library/mideng.html |
|
The Scotsman |
http://www.scotsman.com/index.html |
|
The Star |
http://www.jaring.my/~star/ |
|
The Sunday
Times |
http://thesunday-times.co.uk |
|
Sydney
Morning Herald |
http://www.smh.com.au/ |
|
The Sunday
Times of Sri Lanka |
http://www.lacnet.org/suntimes/ |
|
The Times |
http://the-times.co.uk |
|
Wall Street
Journal |
http://www.wsj.com |
|
Washington
Post |
http://www.washingtonpost.com |
|
Works of the
Bard |
http://www.gh.cs.usyd.edu.au/~matty/Shakespeare/ |
|
The Zambia
Daily Mail |
http://www.zamnet.zm/zamnet/zadama/zadamand.html |
|
The Zimbabwe
Independent |
http://www.samara.co.zw/zimin/ |
Click here
for some examples of completed tasks, together with my comments
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