How I will collect my data

I will collect my data for the coursework in the common room, first I will record a conversation with the girls and then also on a different occassion when the boys are present. This will be to see if girls change the way they talk and if it is boys that interupt more.

So that they are aware they will be being recorded at the start of the week I am going to inform them that at some point in the next week I will be recording a conversation. This will be fairer than recording them the minute I inform them as something called the 'Hawthorne Effect', this means that they could potentially change their behaviour as they know they're being observed. By the time I record them they should have forgot but I would have been given permission earlier in the week.

I will get my findings on an iPhone.

Task 13: A Set of Guidelines on Recording Spoken Language

Recording spoken discourse can prove quite difficult as two things can happen and either way can ruin the whole thing in collecting data. Either you can tell the people you’re recording that they’re being recorded, resulting in what is primarily known as the ‘Hawthorne Effect’ – this is when people start to change either behaviour or the way they speak because they know someone is watching or trying to analyse one of their characteristics. However, you do have the option of not telling the group of people you’re recording that they’re even being recorded, but this can lead on to having some ethical issues.

Make sure when you’re collecting results you make it a fair test, for example, if you plan to record a group of girls and how they speak over one another in a conversation, you must do the same for a group of boys to compare and get more reliable results.

Once both conversations have been recorded, then it’s time to transcribe the two, a piece of transcription looks like this:

The numbers in brackets represent the pauses and how long each one was. If one of the speakers interrupts the word of the new speaker will be directly underneath the previous speakers, last word spoken.

Task 11: Typography

Kayleigh Beard, English Homework

Task 11:  Typography
This text is an extract from children’s book series ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’; the font used is effective because it literally looks like a childs hand writing, also the images used portray the image that a young person has wrote it. The pragmatics of this show that the child couldn’t explain fully in words what they were trying to say and therefore felt the need to include an image as an example. This works well with the mood of the book as it’s a childlike thing to do.

Some words, such as; “SISSY!” have been capitalised, this emphasises the word and shows that the writer aims to get across a message of anger, and maybe the word has been shouted. Also the word ‘PUNCH’ is in capital letters, I think the author intended for this action to be portrayed as quite violent.