Alfie's English Journal

Comment:

This is a confident and interesting essay, that pays close attention to the question and develops a thoughtful, and at times sophisticated, response. The strengths of this piece are the attempts that were made to explore subtle ideas about language, such as the level of spontaneity or the involuntary nature of some features of speech, which are then re-interpreted in a deliberate way in text communication. You have covered a range of ideas and your conclusion where you speculate about where language may develop from here is mature and shows evidence of genuine personal engagement in the topic.

To develop your work from here you may wish to:

• Pay careful attention to some reoccurring spelling errors: conversation, derived…
• Increase the frequency and detail of your examples. When analysing language like this, you must quote specific examples every time you make a point, and then take time to show how this example supports the point. Where you did this in the above essay, your work was the strongest. Some opportunities to drive home a very thoughtful idea – like the one about the automatic nature of some spoken language – were missed due to the lack of detailed examples.
• Avoid phrases like “I think…” or “I’m going to…” as these tend to weaken your point. It’s an analytical essay, so it is already implied that it’s your ideas, now your job is to express them with the greatest confidence possible
• Your introduction would have been more effective if it had more clearly stated what the essay as a whole was going to explore
• Your choice of ordering the ideas had you presenting one of the more subtle ideas first. As a general rule, it is usually better to warm up by dealing with the clearer, simpler ideas first.

As part of their GCSE Spoken Language study, these boys recorded samples of everyday conversation. From this they will generate transcripts which they will analyse for features unique to spoken language.

Levi: what lesson do you have next?