Compare two related text (written )

Assignment task

Comparative Text Analysis: 90% 3800 words Deadline in handbook

Introduction
The main assignment will be a final essay of 3800 words. There is one question but it allows for variation both in the choice of approach you take (what kind of analysis you choose to do) and the kinds of text you choose. This will also allow you to look at texts that come from pedagogic contexts or focus on an area of language use in a particular social context. There is a discussion of the range of such choices later and examples of some previous assignment choices will be available online.

There will be some sample assignments on Moodle. (Note that some of these assignments were specified at 3000 words). There will also be an in-class and online peer workshop which will be designed to enable you to work towards completing the assignment, giving you the opportunity to explore ideas and exchange information about your assignment. Further advice on how to approach the assignment will be given on the moodle site.

We will be working on some comparative text analyses during our classes and for the portfolio after class. For this, students share their responses to the tasks in Brookes Virtual. These are important as they will provide you with some first steps into text analysis. Further suggestions of possible topics for the text analysis and samples of previous assignments will be available on the Moodle site.

Orientation to the assignment
On this module, our main concern is to explore our own understanding of how language is used to do things in the world and how we can describe it ‘in use’. A crucial focus on the module is to describe and understand the link between the description of language structures and our use of language in context and to try to show that these two are not separate areas but two sides of the same coin. The key question is how we use the resources of language to make meanings in specific contexts. To understand this we need to look at language as it is used in the world around us and to understand that there is much variation but that this variation is not random – language is a purposeful and meaningful activity that both reflects the social contexts we use it in, the meanings we wish to make and which in turn helps to construct our social world.

We need as professionals in language teaching to be able to describe and explain the way we use language in our everyday lives to make meaning. The key focus of the assignment is to try to describe this predictable link between language structures and language use in social contexts. It is this predictability that is so useful to teachers.

The assignment is designed to provide as much flexibility as possible to study language in a wide range of contexts by allowing you to choose your own texts to analyse and to allow for a wide range of possible applications of such descriptions.

The Assignment Rubric:

Compare and contrast two related texts (they can be spoken or written) using relevant techniques of description and analysis that we have covered on the module. Identify the key language choices that construe the particular communicative purposes of the texts and the social meanings that they make. How do these choices relate to the context in which the texts are situated and to the broader socio-cultural context? Comment briefly on the implications of your analysis of the texts for a pedagogic related context that you have experience of.