SAC+tips+-+Outcome+3

Here are some tips for the written language analysis essay on Wednesday:

Introduction
Many of the introductions I have read through thus far have been brief and formulaic. While it is very important to have the basic structure as outlined on the support documents under control, once these are in your 'memory bank' it is time to really examine how your introductory paragraph sounds. You need to engage the audience as well as state the necessary information. From a practical perspective, this means:
 * Open with a more detailed or interesting sentence/group of sentences that really says something about the issue and shows that you are aware of how the issue has been played out/represented in the media, rather than the stock standard 'The issue of alcohol and adolescents has been widely reported on in the media' etc.
 * Try to vary your sentence openings and use linking words and phrases to create fluency and flow between the three articles.
 * At the end of your introduction, include a linking sentence to the first paragraph.
 * If your introduction sounds like a long, repetitive list of information such as author, title, paper etc, try leaving out one or two pieces of this information that you can include later on in the body paragraph. Things like audience, tone, date etc can perhaps be added in in the body paragraphs, making your introduction more fluent.

Body Paragraphs
The vast majority of you seem to have chosen the 'block' method of structuring your analysis piece. This seems to be working well for you as the body paragraphs are clearly structured and you are not becoming confused about which article you are writing about. The biggest worry however, is that consistently, in every practice piece I have seen, the final paragraph/s are nowhere near detailed enough. I am talking about the part of the essay where you have finished discussing each article and move on to comparing and contrasting the pieces and making judgments on their effectiveness. It is crucial that you do not 'lose steam' and think that you have completed the task simply by analysing each article separately. Your effectiveness paragraph could compare: Think of it this way: How effective was the author at proving the CONTENTION > depending on how strong and well structured the ARGUMENTS were > and how the PERSUASIVE TECHNIQUES within were matched with the > AUDIENCE.
 * How the writer's viewpoints on the issue are shared/different and how the contentions reflect this
 * The audiences at which these pieces are aimed at persuading
 * How the arguments of the authors are supported by the persuasive techniques and whether or not these are well matched with the audience

Within your analyses of the articles, you also need to keep the following in mind so that you don't lose focus: Know what the author is arguing and how they have structured each argument in sequence. If you know what the argument is, you can then discuss a number of persuasive techniques used by the author to build the argument and be specific about what the effect would be on the reader - this will be linked to the argument. For example, when the audience is parents/adults, if the author argues that 'our teens are being swept away in a sea of alcohol' they are using imagery/metaphor and an appeal to fear as persuasive devices - the specific effect of this is that parents will associate a teen drinking alcohol with the dangers of drowning, that teens are helpless victims of the 'tidal wave' that is alcohol abuse. A parental instinct is to protect children from the dangers of drowning and death, and so this instinct is targeted towards the dangers of alcohol.

When this is followed with a 'what's to blame' argument it forms a logical progression of 'there is a problem, be worried' > 'here's where the problem comes from' > 'here's what we should do'. This is a common structure but is not always used, it will be your job to make sure that you understand the article's contention and that you are able to see where the arguments are leading the reader.