AC's - been given conflicting advice

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Hi guys,

I was talking to some friends from other school's who have been told a few bits of information quite different to what my teacher's said, so I just wanted to clarify a few things:

1) Contextual factors - apparently one of my friend's has been told that unless she puts in cultural factors - namely the values held by the writer and the writer/speaker's opinions/values/beliefs, she won't be hitting one of the main facts needed in context

2) Function. This is quite varied - with some of my friends being told NOT to include function in an AC AT ALL, and others have been told to do a paragraph on it. Has anyone heard about this, or have some advice for me?

Thank you so much!!

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1)

Hi guys,

I was talking to some friends from other school's who have been told a few bits of information quite different to what my teacher's said, so I just wanted to clarify a few things:

1) Contextual factors - apparently one of my friend's has been told that unless she puts in cultural factors - namely the values held by the writer and the writer/speaker's opinions/values/beliefs, she won't be hitting one of the main facts needed in context

2) Function. This is quite varied - with some of my friends being told NOT to include function in an AC AT ALL, and others have been told to do a paragraph on it. Has anyone heard about this, or have some advice for me?

Thank you so much!!

1) Introduce cultural factors if it's appropriate. If it's a national speech and the speaker has to design their talk in a particular way to appeal to the listener's opinions, values and beliefs, then I don't see why cultural factors is not appropriate. HOWEVER, if the AC is, for example, a legal document, then cultural factors won't play a role in the making of the legal document so omitting discussion of cultural factors in your intro is fine.

2) It depends on whether you are writing your AC with the subsystem approach (writing a paragraph on lexis, morphology etc.) or the 'holistic' approach where you dedicate a paragraph to certain 'topics' such as function/formality/discourse features etc. Writing a paragraph on function is fine, but so is not writing a paragraph on function - it depends on whether you use the paragraph effectively and appropriately!

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1) Introduce cultural factors if it's appropriate. If it's a national speech and the speaker has to design their talk in a particular way to appeal to the listener's opinions, values and beliefs, then I don't see why cultural factors is not appropriate. HOWEVER, if the AC is, for example, a legal document, then cultural factors won't play a role in the making of the legal document so omitting discussion of cultural factors in your intro is fine.

2) It depends on whether you are writing your AC with the subsystem approach (writing a paragraph on lexis, morphology etc.) or the 'holistic' approach where you dedicate a paragraph to certain 'topics' such as function/formality/discourse features etc. Writing a paragraph on function is fine, but so is not writing a paragraph on function - it depends on whether you use the paragraph effectively and appropriately!

Ahh thank you so much for your response!

For contextual factors in general, if I did not speak about the views/values held by the author/speaker, what other contextual factors (other than the obvious function, domain... could I speak about or include?) Also, would you suggest having a paragraph dedicated to contextual factors, or including that within the rest of your AC?

Also what kind of text would you include/not include a function paragraph for?

As an additional question, I've noticed that my teacher has often commented that my AC's read a little mechanical, and I was wondering how it is best interacted with the text (ie, make the AC have the most relevant linguistic features...)

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Ahh thank you so much for your response!

For contextual factors in general, if I did not speak about the views/values held by the author/speaker, what other contextual factors (other than the obvious function, domain... could I speak about or include?) Also, would you suggest having a paragraph dedicated to contextual factors, or including that within the rest of your AC?

Also what kind of text would you include/not include a function paragraph for?

As an additional question, I've noticed that my teacher has often commented that my AC's read a little mechanical, and I was wondering how it is best interacted with the text (ie, make the AC have the most relevant linguistic features...)

First question - it depends on the text. Think about who is on the receiving end of the text - who will be reading/listening. I can't answer this without knowing what text you're talking about!

I personally did not base my ACs on subsystems, however people who have gotten 50s have. Because of my approach, I had a function paragraph in every AC. Looked something like this : Spoken texts : function, formality, discourse features. Written texts: function, formality, cohesion/coherence.

Making your essays less mechanical is certainly tough.  Think about the most important features of the text - what features are unique to the text - which features are purposely put into the text to help it achieve a certain purpose. Certain text types employ certain features to help it achieve its purpose. A speech will most likely have persuasive techniques such as emphasis/stress, rising intonation, pauses. So you want to talk about these instead of features such as 'contractions' (most obvious example), which are employed in a much wider scope of texts and less likely to be purposely employed by the author/speaker to help them achieve their purpose.