Answering Question 4

You've had lots of practice at this people. All you're doing is finding LANGUAGE FEATURES which the two texts do SIMILARLY or DIFFERENTLY and then comparing them and talking about which has a better effect on the target audience.

Here is a STEP BY STEP guide to writing your answer.

FIRSTLY - IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND MAKE THIS CLEAR. You can identify your target audience by looking at what sort of text it is, what sort of language it uses, whats sort of colours and pictures it uses etc. Explain who the TA is for each text and why you came to this conclusion.

Then, use your highlighter to look out for language features such as:

FORMALITY
TONE
IMAGERY (SIMILES, METAPHORS)
FACTS, FIGURES, STATISTICS, QUOTES, SURVEYS
REPETITION
VARIED SENTENCE TYPES AND LENGTHS
ALLITERATION
DESCRIPTIVE LANGUAGE
RHETORICAL QUESTIONS

ETC

Once you've found your language features to comment on, all you have to do is to tell me:

WHAT YOU FOUND
WHERE DID YOU FIND IT
DOES THE SECOND TEXT DO THE SAME THING, OR DO IT DO SOMETHING TOTALLY DIFFERENT?
WHERE DID YOU SEE THAT?
WHICH IS BETTER, AND WHAT EFFECT MIGHT THESE LANGUAGE FEATURES HAVE ON THEIR TARGET AUDIENCE?

For Example:

One language feature that the author of text 1 does to make the text more effective is the use of exaggeration. Exaggeration is a really useful feature as it can make an article stand out from the rest of the feature in a newspaper or magazine by making it seem more exciting. Text one uses exaggeration when talking about the trip when it says, 'masses of gear' and 'an army of river guides'. This makes the piece of writing sound more interesting as if there is a great adventure to read about. As this is taken from THE GUARDIAN ONLINE, the piece of writing will be aimed at older people, and the rest of the articles may be a little more factual and boring. Exaggeration will make this sound more like an adventure and make it stand out more. In a similar way, the second text uses exaggeration too when it says 'FEARSOME t-rex', or when it describes the animal as a 'beast.' This article too seems to be quite scientific, but uses a bit more humour so it may be aimed at younger people, Exaggeration will help to hold their interest because it will make the topic sound more fun, and people are used to dinosaurs cropping up in fun settings such as movies and games. I think the second text does this better because the article is actually quite scientific but makes a potentially boring subject sound more fun.


And that's all you have to do. Find about 6 ways to compare the articles and write a paragraph where you say:

WHAT HAS EACH TEXT DONE
IS IT SIMILAR OR DIFFERENT?
HOW WILL EACH APPEAL TO ITS AUDIENCE
WHICH IS BETTER