Media Text – Synthesising Skills

A guide to teach your toddler to speak- NHS resource pack

The ability to talk is a crucial skill in order to learn, socialise and develop in the world. You have the crucial role of helping your child understand the world around it before they can participate within it themselves.

There are several things you can do to encourage your child to start talking:

• Firstly, it’s important to understand that just because your baby may have uttered its first word, this does not constitute as the ability to have acquired language. Although it is progress, there are still vital developmental stages your child has to go through until they become confident with speaking.

•  Talking to your baby as if they can already understand you is a good way to help your child become aware of speech and how it works as before they can learn it, they must understand it.

•    Between the ages of one and two, your child, even though they cannot reply, will start to understand simple commands such as “put that down”. It is important to continue with these simple sentences with your baby as they are still developing their understanding and awareness of language. 

• Don't expect perfection straight away! It will be a long time down their developmental road before their pronunciation becomes clear, so there's no reason to worry if you feel that your child is struggling to talk at this stage.

• It's important to motivate your child at any given opportunity to encourage them to continue to talk. This is critical as your child will not only learn by imitation but by the feedback they receive from you as well.

Media text idea

Media text idea

Are you becoming victim of yours or other people’s language?

Do you want to stop people walking all over you?

Is the way people phrase things making you self-consciously do things you would otherwise not?

Are you being manipulated into doing things with the way people use language, do you want to get out of it?

Looking at the way deontic modal verbs and imperatives are used to try and get people to do something you want them to.

The breakdown of my analysis

1) Under theorists

2) Under particular groupings

3) Under frameworks

Things to consider

Under theorists

·         Is the imposition of instrumental power lessened depending on the power gap between the sender and receiver based on Fairclough’s ideas on power?

·          Based on Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies, what is the different context in which it is appropriate to use either positive or negative politeness?

Under particular groupings

·         How many times are either epistemic or deontic modal verbs used in the letter and what is the reasoning behind the particular grammatical choice?

·         What is the frequency of imperative commands and do they successfully do their desired action to the reader?

Under frameworks

·         What pragmatics can we infer from the letter that suggests there is a power difference between the sender and receiver?

The actual breakdown

Under theorists: politeness strategies; positive politeness; negative politeness; off the record/bald commands; instrumental power; power gaps

Under particular groupings: imperatives; modal auxiliary verbs; quantified findings

Under frameworks: pragmatics; grammar choices