Free English Language Dissertations - It Is This ‘organisation Of Structural Patterns’ That The Student Writer
It is this ‘organisation of structural patterns’ that the student writer needs to improve upon.
A cursory look at the student’s writing sample indicates that the she has a somewhat sound but rudimentary sense of the language. As discussed above, she seems to have placed a ‘title’ at the top to indicate the subject. The subject is rather straightforward: this is to be a description of someone named ‘Julia’ by a person named ‘Carol’. Though one may want to assume that Carol and the writer are one and the same, this is not made clear by the title or by the text below it.
As stated earlier, this passage does serve to bring us information; a message is conveyed. This message is a description of Julia, as seen by Carol. Although some of the description is questionable, unclear, and on occasion incomplete, the reader does get basic information. The first thing we get is a physical description. We learn that Julia is tall and brown-eyed and that she has ‘big’, ‘size 8’ feet. We do not learn her hair colour, although it is described as ‘different’. Hairstyle, too, is unclear.
Beyond a physical description, we learn that she is a hard-working mother of three children who are by her own description ‘little devils’. The writer also states that Julia is on occasion (‘sometime’) upset when the children give her trouble. This part of the description suggests that Carol (whether or not she is the writer) has a positive view of Julia. In addition, the statement ‘I don’t know how she cope with them some of the time’ may suggest that she seems to empathise with her as well.
Although punctuation appears infrequently, when included, it is for the most part accurately used. However, the fact that the writer separates her thoughts by placing them on separate lines suggests a basic grasp of syntax. The most glaring problem seems to be with verb use. There are several instances of subject-verb disagreement: ‘she have’ appears five times, as well as ‘she work’, ‘she cope’, ‘she get’. On occasion the verb is not present at all: ‘She tall’, ‘So she a big woman’.
There are many varieties of English, as has been noted, and within those varieties are several subgroups. Written English is often very different from spoken English. For example, written English tends to be more formal and precise than oral English. The language used when writing also tends to be different: we choose our words more carefully, generally avoiding colloquialisms and slang. In addition, we tend to write out thoughts in complete, well-considered sentences, as opposed to the shorter, fragmented sentences we use in verbal communication.
Written English has an additional set of subgroups in itself. Different professions often employ different vocabularies, using the words which are standard within the given profession and which may not be understood by those outside it.
Dissertations - Free English Language Dissertations
