Writing week nine
Transitivity
Who did what to whom?
Embedded Files
Preparation work for live session
Preparation work for live session
In today's class we're going to look at ways in which different grammatical structures can change the meaning of our words. We're going to learn about the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, and how we can draw attention to or away from who did a particular action.
Before you start the preparation activities, watch the clip from the 2002 classic 28 Days Later.
Examples of concordance lines based on the verb produce.
Live session discussion - task review
Live session discussion - task review
Look back at your notes from pages 4 and 5 of the preparation materials. How did the two different newspapers use grammar to report the same events differently? Why do you think they did this?
Share your notes from the tasks on page 13 where you used the Sketch Engine to explore how academic verbs behave.
Task 1: from the list of most common verbs, which ones would you say are 'academic'? As a reminder, think back to our lesson from last term on Prestige Lexis. The academic, Latin words 'feel' a bit different: they're usually more than one syllable and have softer endings. The everyday Saxon words are blunter and heavier.
Task 2: Which of the tools (Word Sketch, Concordancer and Thesaurus) did you explore? Did they reveal any useful information about how the verbs work in academic writing?
Task 3: What examples did you find of academic verbs being used transitively and intransitively?
Live session - critical discussion
Live session - critical discussion
We've looked at techniques that writers can use to make it more or less clear about who did what to whom. This can be useful when we want to focus less on 'people doing things' and more about abstract concepts and ideas. It also helps us with critical reading: we can identify where language is vague and where we could ask further questions.
What's happening in the world at the moment that might be reported differently by different countries' news outlets? Can you find any examples?
Below are examples of different types of academic writing you might encounter at university. Discuss how you think the language you'd use to write each one might differ:
A methodology section where you report how you collected some data
An essay discussing the effects of different economic policies
A reflective journal where you discuss what you've learnt
Live session discussion - peer review
Live session discussion - peer review
Choose a piece of writing you have done recently. This could be the draft of your argumentative essay, the results and discussion exercise from last week's writing class, or any of the practice writing exercises that you've uploaded to Eduflow. Working in pairs, review the writing and think about:
Is agency always clear in your writing (do you use transitive verbs that always state who did what to whom)?
Could you make your writing more concise by using any of the techniques we've looked at today (selecting an intransitive verb, using the passive voice, or using non-human agents as subjects)?
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