BiG cRoWdS sCaRe Me
Text A consists of two extracts from The Cities Book, which is an illustrated reference guide to
different cities of the world. The extracts are taken from the introduction to the book.
Text B is an extract from a short story called City of Dreams. The story is set in London, England,
and is narrated from the perspective of a homeless person.
Compare the language and style of Text A and Text B.
2
Text A and Text B, while both focusing on the topic of cities, are wildly different in their approach, language, and style.
Text A is best described as an informative piece that aims to tell the reader in the most positive way possible about the need for cities and the great things that cities and their culture have created. This is done using descriptive lists, adjectives, and an imaginative tone that keeps the reader interested. A good example of this is when the author writes, "Like a human being, a city is a mass of genes, chosen at random by forces beyond our control, fused together in a secret furnace, acted on by nature, reared through infinite probabilities of nurture before finally growing up and trying to make its own way in the world." At first glance, the sentence is a little difficult to comprehend, but the author succeeds in their aim to interest the reader here, because simply writing something along the lines of "cities are great and enormous" would leave the reader uninterested and consider the piece a waste of time. In addition to this, the passage is written without any mention or notion of who the author is, not in the first person but rather as an educational excerpt.
All of these aspects of Text A sharply contrast to the language and style seen in Text B: a first-person, poetic account of the bleak city life. The author here feels abandoned by society - possibly a mentally-ill loner (shown by their depressive, self-deprecating remarks) who feels little connection with other humans despite being surrounded by them in a bustling city. There are hardly any positive adjectives used to describe the actions of a "feverish" city. While most of Text B focuses on the life of the city, which is where it and Text A relate, the author also takes you into their mind, saying things such as "The world will carry on without me. I have nothing to give it anyway." The author intends to give the reader a better idea of how city life is negative by showing a first-person account of how it has affected them. The author's tone is pessimistic, and almost jealous and envious of the people around him described so intricately. The whole organization of the text, in contrast to Text A, is poetic in a way, and intended to be left up to interpretation by the reader, whereas Text A wants the audience to know specific facts.
Although both texts differ greatly as presented, they share similarities in their focus and poetic language. Clearly, both Text A and Text B are written with a common focus on city life and what it has offered the world. Both texts do this in a poetic fashion - although one text may feel more heavily poetic than the other - in order to grab the reader’s attention and get the point across in the most efficient way possible. In addition to this poetic language, both texts agree on the fact that cities can be overwhelming and confusing at times. Text B does this in a dreary manner, commenting on the “aimless and haphazard” nature that people follow while living in a big city, while Text A looks at the silver lining of a bustling confusion and what it can bring to the culture.
Overall, the texts seem to differ a great amount more in their perspective of city life as well as being written in 2 different person-perspectives, yet share a few similarities when it comes to the topic being covered and the view they hold on the chaos cities attract.
Julian,
ReplyDeleteTo start, I really liked your interpretations of the texts, I felt that you were able to accurately depict the language and style used by both texts. I also liked how you were able to accurately describe their purposes while relaying the fact that they are two vastly different texts talking about the same thing.
A few things I would like to see would be first off some better structure. You talked about all of the right things and are able to discuss the correct strategies used, but it is difficult to understand when you talk about everything from one text in one paragraph, and everything from the other text in an other paragraph. I think it could be more effective if you are able to talk about a specific topic, like purpose, in one paragraph, and show the differences between the two texts on that specific topic for that paragraph. Lastly, I would say that you should add just a little bit more to the introduction. I like the approach of getting right into your topics, but I think the intro needs at least a few introductory sentences.
Like I said, I think your content is great. You nailed the a level topics and are able to accurately describe it. I would give you a 17 point band three based off of structure, but you definitely had “informed comparative appreciation of forms and conventions,” which would be a band 2, so make a small change to structure and you will get a band 2 easily.
Good afternoon Julian,
ReplyDeleteThis prompt is not very different from part b of the last blog, so you must have improved on a lot of pieces of your analysis. However, there is rarely nothing to fix, as good as this blog may be.
One of the biggest things that you may need to work on in the future is proper diction while discussing things like tone. It might seem very pedantic, but claiming that text A has an imaginative tone, is not an accurate description. Imaginative covers that are simply imagination, like a fantasy novel. Perhaps you meant to reference the author's attempts to make a reader imagine a city in their head. In which case, that still does not directly apply tone, and more so figurative language. Just make sure you use the right words to describe, and back up your uses of those words with evidence from the text.
Your first paragraph is 190 words, 50 of which came from one quote. A sizable aspect of a grader's analysis about your structure will always include how much of a paragraph is quotes, and how efficiently are those quotes used. I am not saying to omit all quotes, just properly use ellipses to get the most important bits. If you are ever going to choose the entirety of a long complicated sentence like that, then the rest of the paragraph should be heavily elaborating on what this quote brings to the table.
While it is not technically wrong, you could benefit from making your blog a bit longer and separating paragraphs between specific topics. If you are dead-set on sticking to the current structure, then I would recommend avoiding all discussion about similarities or differences until that last paragraph to point them all out, because if you include in the two preceding ones, then the the third on is just unnecessary.
I would also suggest talking a bit more about purpose, because you mention what the text tries to do, but not really why. Just a couple more sentences and explanations could do it. Easy fix.
Despite having its issues, this was a great blog that I believe would most likely have gotten a band 3 of 14 marks.
Julian,
ReplyDeleteAfter having read your blog I feel that you like most of us understand what is being asked when writing the blog on comparing the two pieces of text but don't exactly know how you make it your own. Because when reading your blog compared to the rest of them it is a little bit confusing because it seems almost as if you wrote only one paragraph on each for text A, and text B where you described all the things that were used and what was talked about but not fully explaining how they are directly different from the other text. Then in a third paragraph you jump right in to talking about how they are different. Also you have generally relevant and mainly comparative awareness of forms and conventions of texts. You have little to no grammatical or spelling mistakes so for that I would give your blog a band 4 because of the structure because its hard to read but other than that good job.
Hey Julian,
ReplyDeleteTo start off I like how you explained your thinking on the similarities and differences in both pieces. I liked the structure of your blog, I thought it was very easy to read especially because you separated text A and B. You did a good job, in the beginning, explaining the purpose of each article and setting them apart from each other right away. One thing that I liked was the way you looked at text B and described the dark poetic tone. It caught me off guard at first because, text B for me was described as being more of a happy tone as he relives, his memories in the street as people carry on around him. The new view on the tone was explained very nicely and included plenty of backup with quotes from the text to support your thinking. For example, you describe the tone as being pessimistic along with this quote from the text ” The world will carry on without me. I have nothing to give it anyway." to back up your thinking. Overall, I would give your blog a high band 3. You did a very good job staying relevant and steady while comparing both pieces without getting off topic. You had a general understanding of the purpose and context of text A and B. Good Job!