EngLang 3/4 Question Thread.

[Reus]

Nah it's not necessary, you can have a sophisticated discussion without necessarily challenging the contention. But a lot of the time essays that just go "oh yeah i agree" are one dimensional and don't really attack the question as well as they could; for example 09's question "Why use standard english all the time?" is a lot more limiting if you only considered the merits of SE and not where it falls short. But assessors will understand its a 45 minute essay and its not going to be *that* detailed and cover every single possible point of discussion. If you address the topic well, it doesn't matter if you don't challenge the topic. You will be marked based on how good your writing is.

Thanks! As it is a 45 minute essay, do you think 3 paragraphs suffices the response?

[AngelWings]

This has come from: English Language essay submission and marking

can someone give me some definitions for these, with possibly an example too?

Phrases:
Clauses:
Phrases:
Sentences:

Phrases: just any old string of words put together that doesn't quite conform to the rules of clauses or sentences. These are usually smaller pieces put together.
Clauses: a string of words that includes a subject (typically a noun) and a predicate (typically a verb), but unlike a sentence, doesn't contain the whole idea.
Sentences: includes a noun and verb, also usually something else (e.g. adjective, adverb, etc.), depending on what type they are. It usually includes a whole idea with some meaning or added information (i.e. old information + new information).

For anyone else reading this, please feel free to correct me.
A better understanding could be achieved if you read these sites (They have examples too.), because I suck at explaining the differences between them. These have been arranged by helpfulness for your benefit, the first site being the most helpful.
Clause vs. Phrase. Sentence
Sentences, Clauses and Phrases
Grammmar 101
Latin - Info on Grammar (Yeah okay, this one's actually for HSC Latin, but it still has helpful definitions and English examples.)
A Google Answers Question

[Reus]

Zues you don't really need to know definitions... however it'll be good if you could identify either when writing an analytical commentary as you specifically analyse the particular line by saying "evidently the clause present in line 44 reiterates Smith's patriotism supporting the speech's function of appealing to an Australian audience..."

[chocolate.cake.1]

Hi,
I've been reading through a few transcripts and noticed that in many unplanned spoken texts, there tend to be a lot of discourse particles (e.g well, so, sort of).

Why is this so?

Thanks 

[AngelWings]

Okay, this is going to be a pretty broad answer.

Your key word is unplanned.
Let's think about it this way...
You're having a conversation to your best friend about your summer holidays (aside from study). Surely, some things here would be implied (thus your "you know"s), some unplanned (thus your false starts), even some not completely thought out ideas (thus your discourse particles, "um"s and "ah"s). You don't really practice it like you would an assessed speech in front of your Eng Lang class, right?

Unplanned texts are thought of simultaneously and sometimes, your mouth is faster than your mind. After all it's doing several things at once - recalling your (hopefully happy) memories of the summer, moving your mouth up and down, etc. (You didn't get a chance to make this stuff up beforehand - it's unplanned.)
To counteract this (and so not to create this awkward silence in a *supposedly* fluent conversation), we use discourse particles to cover up this space and let ourselves think ideas and words through - we just need a little time.

tl;dr: We're human, we all need time to think ideas through while your mouth motors on, so we have discourse particles to keep the conversation flowing.

Please feel free to correct me.

[point]

Hi,
I've been reading through a few transcripts and noticed that in many unplanned spoken texts, there tend to be a lot of discourse particles (e.g well, so, sort of).

Why is this so?

Thanks 

Discourse Particles can serve multiple functions in a text, to be honest you have to read a bit of the text to have a gauge of what they are trying to serve.
In your examples you quoted "sort of"
This is an example of a discourse particle being used as part of a hedging expression in which the impact of a sentence is "softened"
"I sort of went around the other way"

Discourse particles can: provide focus, change topics (terms such as "anyways") or add conversational/discourse functions (such as uh's,well's, you know's, and ah's). [I'm sure there are more examples]

However one thing to note is that Discourse Particles never change the true conditional meaning of a sentence.

Hope this helps!

EDIT: grammar (lol)

[chocolate.cake.1]

Hello I'm back 

I was wondering how clefting contributes to cohesion?
The VCAA study design says clefting is a factor that contributes to cohesion... but why?

Thanks