Tuesday, 10 May 2016

To start with Text A (YouGov webpage) is full of lots of interactive aspects. You are able to take surveys, and most of the parts on the page move along with you, there is a line that follows you down the page which could represent the movement they plan on making with the country we live in- it could mirror their aim to move the society in a positive direction. Without the graphology throughout the website the basis of it would be really dry, due to the nature of politics and other things the information has to be fact based, which makes it less interesting to read, but with all the pictures it displays and the pop up quotes from various politicians and people who are important in the government it gives the website a fun aspect and doesn’t make it look so boring.
The power that the government has over us as a country is portrayed through the use of imperatives throughout the website, some of these being “take part” and “discover our products and services” these quotes suggest that we are customers to their commands, we do what they say and they are selling their points to us, but don’t give the audience much chance to think for themselves. But this is cloaked by the graphology that softens the harsh nature of all the commands. The verb “discover” passes the power over to their audience to seek what they would like to out of the information they give you, the nouns “products and services” come from the lexical field of retail, suggests that they are selling their opinions to us even though they hold no money value, which connotes that their ideas are powerful and costly.
Text B is an online BBC news story on the topic of the latest local election in Bristol, it reveals the results of election “labour has won..” the articles opens with a declarative giving the answer that the audience would want to find straight away which in theory would stop them from reading on, but with an article online the amount of people who open their article is what is counted not how long people stay on their page for so this is where their views are counted. They would only expect


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1 comment:

  1. Some extremely perceptive points.

    Don't fall into the same trap I occasionally do of referring to ourselves as if we are the audience. So often in these texts, we wouldn't be the target, so talk in the third person about the producer and the reciever e.g. 'the audience is able to take surveys' rather than "You are able to take surveys, and most of the parts on the page move along with you".

    Ensure you put in proper paragraph breaks as not doing so can harm your AO1 mark. If you plan several separate but linked points, you can use discourse markers at the start of each topic sentence to lead the examiner through your exploration of the text. There should be a break between "boring" and "The power".

    With text B, remember caps for proper nouns like Labour.

    The headline might indeed be enough for some readers e.g. on the BBC news home page, some people would find out the overview from that headline and not need to click on the link to read more, but those who have will want to read on for specifics - look at how those are delivered in a way that suits the target audience.

    This is very good and the more you practise, the quicker ideas will come and the better you will express them. Choose your own text to compare for extra practice - all you need to do is pick an idea like trains, politics, police (which we've done all of - what else could oyu pick?) and choose two contrasting genres/forms.

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