During those weeks, reflect and collect information about different forms of writing you engage in.
What is the first written language activity you are engaged in? Writing a note for a friend? Sending a text message? Posting a reply on someone’s social media post? Writing a social media post? Commenting on news or products online? Writing notes to yourself about things to remember to do during the day? Making notes while reading for your classes?
Do you engage in other kinds of writing activities, or is there more of the same? Are you writing a draft version of a paper for university? Writing fiction, blog posts, or consumer reviews?
Collect examples of the different kinds of written activity you engage in during the week. (You do not need to collect and analyze everything you write, but try to find at least 5 representative examples (=texts*) of different kinds of activities).
*Text is a term “used in linguistics to refer to any passage- spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole.”
“A text is a unit of language in use.”
Halliday, M.A.K. and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman, pp. 1–2
- ACCOUNT FOR THE NATURE OF THESE ACTIVITIES USING THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:
Addressee(s) and relations between author and addressee(s)
Are you writing for yourself (no addressee) / one other person / several other people? Are there on-lookers?
What are the relations between you and the person/people you write for/to? Is the writing interactive? Are there differences in social status and power? Do you have personal relationships as friends, colleagues/course mates or are you strangers to each other? Do you belong to the same language communities, i.e. speak the same languages?
Medium and situation
What writing tool do you use? Pen and paper, computer, tablet, mobile phone? Is your writing online or offline? Does it take place on a particular social media site, or other specific situation or setting?
Production circumstance
Is your writing more or less planned? Do you revise and edit writing? Or is it produced quickly with minimal editing?
Communicative purpose
What is the purpose of your writing? Complete course work for the university? Support your own learning? Do you want to inform or report about something? Entertain? Explain? Persuade? Socialize with friends? Reveal something about yourself?
Domain and topic
Is your writing taking place in different domains of your life: family, social circle, education, workplace, social networks, government, sports? In your everyday life? In your student life? In any work life? Does it feature a specific topic, e.g. religion, sports, politics, music, clothes, food, etc.?
You can do this by entering your activities into a table, see the example below where one activity (a text message to a friend) is filled in.
Type of activity = Text
Addressee(s) and relations
Medium and situation
Production circumstance
Communicative purpose
Domain and topic
Text message to friend about meeting for wine
Addressed to one person who is a friend
Mobile phone using Messages
Relatively un-planned and not heavily edited
Check availability and make a plan (social)
Everyday life, topic: social meeting/drink
If you prefer you can simply write a short paragraph for each text instead of presenting the information as a table.
- REFLECT ON LINGUISTIC CHOICES AND FEATURES
Use the account above and reflect on language choices in your different texts. Do they differ with respect to languages used (e.g. English, German, Farsi, etc.)? What determines the choice of language? Do you use different registers in your writing? What influences choices about informality and politeness? Where are non-standard forms and devices such as emoticons used?
Overall work plan:
- For the lecture: Read the instructions carefully and come prepared with questions to Lectures about Standard English, Language Use, and Register Variations in Portfolio/ Production sub-module. Also, prepare by thinking about what writing activities you do in a day.
- For the seminar: Collect and account for five written activities (texts) you have engaged in during one day. (Try to choose activities (texts) that are not too similar. ) Use the questions in the portfolio assignment to guide your account.
- Use the discussion and feedback from the seminar to write the final reflection part of the assignment. Submission Friday, December 10, 23.59.
A note on the structure of your submission:
Start with a very brief introduction where you say something about the task and about how you selected the five texts.
Then include your account of the texts either as a table or as short paragraphs explaining the nature of the text with examples by using the situational characteristics (Addressee and relations; Medium and situation; Production circumstance; Communicative purpose; Domain and topic).
Finally, write five short reflective paragraphs; one for each text. Here you need to reflect on one or two significant features in each text and explain how the choice of each feature relates to situational characteristics of the text.