Death Sentence

Introductory activities

Introduction to the multi-genre research paper: Rich assessment task 1

Throughout the unit students develop and build on a multi-genre research paper focusing on a person, idea, trend, time period, event, movement, viewpoint, thing or place that connects to a specific aspect of public language arising from their study of Death Sentence. This type of research paper combines imagination, analysis and experience and the activities in the lessons are designed to build the required skills and understandings.

Tom Romano, a proponent of this model, states in his book Fearless Writing that a multi-genre research project is ‘not an uninterrupted, expository monologue nor a seamless narrative. A multi-genre paper is composed of many genres and sub-genres, each piece self-contained, making a point of its own, yet connected to other pieces by theme and content and sometimes by repeated language, images and genres. A multi-genre paper may also contain many voices, not just the author’s. The craft then – the challenge for the writer – is to make such a paper hang together as one unified whole.’ (page 8)

A multi-genre paper has characteristics that resonate with a study of language and in particular Watson’s Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language, including:

• combinations of texts
• a persistent argument
• examples drawn from historical and more recent contexts
• the inquiry process
• the intersection of personal experience and research
• a call to action

Activity 1: Why does language matter?

This and all the following activities provide a link into the multi-genre research paper (rich assessment task 1). This first one introduces some possible areas for exploration that students may wish to pursue in their research project. The statements in the half-sentence activity that follows could provide directions for research and possible unifying threads for their discussions.

In this activity students explore why language matters and should matter. Remind students that while not everyone studies language in a formal way, we all have views and perspectives about language. Language is central to human existence and daily life and we need to think carefully and precisely about language. Norman Fairclough argues that a ‘critical awareness of language . . . arises within the normal ways people reflect on their lives as part of their lives’. He states that the ability to understand how language functions, to think about it in different ways, is crucial to understanding society and other people. Understanding language is not about being accomplished, intelligent and doing well in school; there is much more at stake. Fairclough argues that to understand power, persuasion and how people live together, a conscious engagement with language is necessary. That is, critical thinking about language can assist in resisting oppression, protecting the powerless and building a good society (The Language, Society and Power Reader, p. 54). Both the quotation from de Saussure and the statements below could be research starters for the student research paper.

Step 1:
Display the discussion provocation below and invite students to brainstorm their responses in small groups. The techniques listed below could be explained and modelled to the class; students could choose an approach or two that they would like to try, or the teacher could allocate techniques to different groups.

‘In the lives of individuals and societies, speech is more important than anything else.’
(Ferdinand de Saussure)
What do you think?

Brainstorming techniques

• Substitution: where students substitute other aspects of living they think are more important than anything else.
• Combination: where students combine two aspects from the statement that they see as synergistic.
• Adaptation: where students select an aspect of the statement and adapt it. Recent technological developments in social media might be interesting here.
• Modification or distortion: where students select an aspect of the statement for exaggeration and explore its effects.
• Putting an aspect of the statement to other purposes: where students consider which aspects of the statement could be used in a different situation.
• Elimination: where students eliminate an aspect of the statement and reflect on the changes that result.
• Reverse or rearrange: where students re-order the statement and look at the effects.

After exploring the statement in groups, invite students to select three different findings they have discovered in this process and record these for later sharing.

Step 2:
Explain to students that they are going to explore some other statements about language using a sentence matching activity (PDF, 120KB). A number of statements about language, some referenced in Death Sentence and others drawn from a variety of texts, are given to students. These statements are divided in half and distributed to students who then proceed to find their match. This activity actively develops students’ speaking and listening skills.

After matching the sentence halves correctly, students:

• decide whether and why the halves match
• discuss what aspects of language the statements value.

Students return to their seats and, as a whole class, discuss the implications of the statements and how they link to de Saussure’s. Display these observations for students, in the classroom or on a blog or wiki.

Link this discussion to the notion of language and purpose and ask students to explain how their statements link to purpose. David Crystal in How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning and Languages Live or Die, identifies the following range of purposes that could be used as starting points:

• expressing emotion
• expressing rapport
• expressing sounds
• playing
• controlling reality
• recording facts
• expressing thought processes
• expressing identity
• meeting technological demands
  (ACELA1565)   (ACELY1749)   (ACELY1752)   (ACELY1754)   (EN5-7D)   (EN5-8D)   (EN5-2A)

Activity 2: Why does public language matter?

(Link to the multi-genre research paper: This activity introduces the idea of power and language. Students also respond to different texts and textual forms that they could include in their projects.)

Through a workstation learning activity, students will develop an understanding of what public language in written, spoken and visual forms actually is, and what it says about individuals and society.

In the introduction to Death Sentence: the Decay of Public Language Watson writes: ‘Public language is the language of public life: the language of political and business leaders and civil servants – official, formal, sometimes elevated language. It is the language of leaders more than the led, the managers rather than the managed. It takes very different forms: from shapely rhetoric to shapeless, enervating sludge; but in every case; but in every case it is the language of power and influence. What our duties are, for whom we should vote, which mobile phone plan we should take up. In all these places the public language rules. As power and influence are pervasive so is the language: we hear and read it at the highest levels and the lowest. And while it begins with the powerful, the weak are often obliged to speak it, imitate it.’ (page 1) These activities orient students to the ways language shapes all our lives.

Step 1:
Provide students with a range of different textual examples of public language at work in the world by arranging computer workstations around the classroom. Each workstation has displayed:

• a different type of text such as a comment, article, sports interview, speech radio, interview, protest speech, declaration of war, poem, announcement, advertisement, website and image. Suggested weblinks are listed below
• these focus questions (PDF, 108KB) displayed on the computer
• a place for collaborative comment such as a mini-whiteboard, blog or notepad. This should have written on it the question: Shapely rhetoric or shapeless sludge?

Workstation texts:
While some of these would need regular updating to ensure currency, the prompts could be adapted to different texts.

• Comment: Rosalie Kunoth-Monks
• Article: Richard Flanagan
• Sports interview: Nick Cummins
• Speech: Australian Chief of Army, Lieutenant General David Morrison AO
• Radio transcript: Alan Jones and Malcolm Turnbull
• Protest speech: High school student 1970
• Declaration of war: R.G. Menzies 1939
• Poem: Mutant Proverbs
• Image: Young, Lazy and Driving us Crazy
• Website: Sea Shepherd
• Advertisement: The Australian: Mining Boom
• Announcement: The War on Terror

Step 2:
Choose one of the texts above and preview it with students using these prompts for class discussion:

• What is the text about?
• What is notable about its use of language?
• Do you consider the language to be official, formal or informal?
• In what ways does the language used exert influence or power?
• Do you think this language is imitated in society?
• Do you consider the language used to be shapely rhetoric or shapeless sludge? Why?

Step 3:
Direct students to visit three or four different workstations instructing them:

• to read and view the text and record their responses to the questions
• record an opinion about the use of public language in the text on the mini-whiteboard, blog or notepad.

Step 4:
As a class, classify whether the texts might relate to:

• language and identity
• language and politics
• language and the media
• language and vision
• language and management/marketing

Step 5:
Working in pairs or small groups, invite students to synthesise the comments on the texts to evaluate whether the readers saw the texts as illustrating either shapely rhetoric or shapeless sludge and present these findings to the class.

Step 6: 
Display for students Watson’s statement ‘Public language is the language of public life.’ Ask them to write down what this means in their own words.
(ACELA1564)   (ACELA1565)   (ACELT1639)   (ACELT1641)   (ACELT1812)   (ACELY1752)   (ACELY1754)   (EN5-5C)   (EN5-7D)   (EN5-8D)   (EN5-3B)   (EN5-2A)

Close Reading

The close reading activities that follow are structured around a series of DARTS (direct activities, related to texts) reading strategies. These encourage students to read a text carefully, to go beyond literal comprehension and to think about what they read. These practical and collaborative activities could be used in a number of ways including:

• a sequence of lessons focusing on Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language
• a series of mini-lessons interwoven with the development of the multi-genre research task
• learning activities for class groups
• teaching strategies that can be adopted to different texts.

Activity 5: Polemics and plain speaking

(Link to the multi-genre research paper: Students need to make specific reference to this text in their research paper. They can use Watson’s text or they can refer to some of the other texts he used in Death Sentence as examples of polemic.)

Through this activity students will become familiar with the introductory premise of Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language and with aspects of Watson’s style. By re-presenting the opening paragraphs to students, sentence by sentence, students can reflect on the initial framing of public language as a concept and the voice in Watson’s polemic.

Step 1:
Introduce the term polemic to students. Display for students two possibilities offered in the Macquarie Dictionary:

• a controversial argument; argumentation against some opinion, doctrine etc.
• someone who argues in opposition to another; a controversialist

As a class, make a list of people who might qualify as polemicists. Students could draw on some of the texts they have already encountered in their study, other speeches, essays, bloggers, social commentators. Polemics also occur in social institutions such as schools – perhaps the principal’s address could be a fruitful site for polemics. Discuss with the class how these examples of polemic align with the definitions.

Invite students to research some quotes from these polemicists and analyse:

• the nature of the controversy
• the attitudes held on both sides of the controversy
• how these attitudes are evidenced in the tone of the quote

Step 2:
Read to students the opening paragraphs of the introduction of Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language.

• Display for students the extract from the insurance company newsletter from the first page of the handout and ask them to read it in pairs. They could read it aloud to each other
• Students discuss what they think the newsletter is saying and rewrite it more simply
• As a whole class, make a list of the words that they think are unnecessary

Step 3:
Display for students the remainder of the opening paragraphs sentence by sentence. Ask students to write down anything they notice that they think frames the viewpoint. Class discussion might include aspects such as:

• the essential point students see in each sentence
• direct address to the reader
• formal and informal diction
• the use of italics
• word play
• syntax
• the overall argument

Step 4:
Invite students to read and discuss in pairs, and subsequently as a whole class, the remainder of the chapter, which discusses the relationship between public language and marketing, managerialism, politics and war. This would be another place where an episode of Unspeak could be shown.

Step 5:
As a concluding activity ask students to write a description of the controversy about public language that Watson poses and the attitudes evidenced in the tone of the writing.
(ACELA1570)   (ACELT1641)   (ACELT1643)   (ACELY1752)   (ACELY1754)   (EN5-3B)   (EN5-8D)   (EN5-2A)

Activity 6: Weasel words

(Link to the multi-genre research paper: This activity enables further close study of Death Sentence and examples of some different genres such as media, website, announcements, mission and vision statements.)

This DARTS activity provides opportunity for students to consider how the language of management is used in representing our society and what they think about that. Eva Cox, human rights activist, has made the point repeatedly in recent years that as a country we need to consider ourselves as a society, not an economy. How we see ourselves and others is demonstrated in the language we use to describe our shared human experience. Watson worries about how corporate-speak leads to obfuscation or a loss of meaning. The discourse around disability provides examples for you to use as an introduction to this aspect of Watson’s discussion.

Step 1:
Present students with an overview of some of the key points Watson raises on the use of corporate language including:

• the fact that it is seeping into private conversation
• its inappropriate use
• its limited capacity for complex or uncertain meanings
• its mechanistic quality limits the need to think
• how marketing shapes our language.

Display for students this list of words and ask them to suggest contexts for the story in which they might be contained.

Step 2:
Invite students to read this article, Viewpoint: 10 jargon phrases used for my autistic son, and consider these questions:

• What is the author’s intention?
• Does the author appeal to our logic or emotions, or both?
• Does the author address any opposition to his views?
• What is the sub-text to the article?
• How is language used in this article? Consider tone, voice, diction.

Step 3:
Divide the class into groups of four and ask them to choose two extracts from pages 8-44 listed below. Taking one of the two chosen extracts, students work in pairs to devise questions for the other students to answer.

• From Parrots, when they are separated from their flocks . . . to liability for the language to be limited. (pp. 9-10)
• From There have been signs of decay in the language of politics . . . to like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse. (pp.13-15)
• From This blurring of the corporate . . . to And it probably is, at the end of the day. p. 17)
• From If in your professional life you want to understand your fellow human beings . . .to customer shall not perish from the earth. (pp. 35-26)
• From Corporate leaders sometimes have good reason to twist their language into knots . . . to enhance sustainable growth for the benefit of all the stakeholders. (pp. 35-36)
• From At Optus we are paving the way for better . . . to This language really works!(pp.38-40)
• From The buzz word is the corporate equivalent . . . to are we much enlightened by it.(pp. 43-44)

Each group reports orally to the whole class explaining the extract in their own words and drawing links to the overview offered initially by the teacher.

Optional steps: 
Supplementary learning activities that could be undertaken with a class or as additional research include:

• Rewriting bureaucratic speak in a more truthful way. (The website Weasel Words provides recent examples.)
• ‘Rescue a word’: as a class, determine a word or expression from contemporary usage that is being used and abused and is, therefore, in need of rescue.
• Reading the mission and vision statement of the school and assessing its accuracy and relevance and suggesting any possible changes.
• A survey of mission and vision statements developed by schools, and published online, to test how the language of marketing and business-speak have seeped into our language. This could be followed by a rewriting.
  (ACELA1564)   (ACELA1565)   (ACELY1749)   (ACELY1750)   (ACELY1751)   (ACELY1752)   (ACELY1754)   (EN5-5C)   (EN5-7D)   (EN5-8D)   (EN5-1A)   (EN5-2A)

Activity 7: Language and representation (how to avoid sludge) 

(Link to the multi-genre research paper: Students need to make specific reference to George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’ in their research paper. This activity also promotes analysis of language techniques and possibilities for unifying elements.)

Throughout Death Sentence: the Decay of Public Language Watson offers advice on various aspects of language. In this jigsaw activity students examine some of Watson’s and Orwell’s remarks about the qualities of clear writing and, after discussion, devise and agree upon a set of writing rules for the class.

Step 1: 

• Ask students to comment on what Watson sees as sludge and whether they agree.
• Elicit from students the possible meaning of the word barbarous and ask them to consider and explain how writing could be barbarous.
• Display for students Orwell’s rules for writing as shown below and ask them to apply these to one of the examples of sludge cited by Watson (for examples see pages 65, 83, 86). Students write a paragraph analysing how their selected examples violate the rule they have chosen from Orwell’s rules.

But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in these five specimens at the beginning of this article. I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.

From Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

Step 2:
Allocate students to work in ‘home’ groups of four–five students. Each student in the group is given one of the aspects of language listed below as a prompt for investigation.

Students are reformed into ‘expert’ groups. Once in the expert groups students research their chosen aspects of language. They should:

• establish a definition for the language concept
• find examples cited in Death Sentence: the Decay of Public Language
• find specific quotes that represent the advice Watson suggests. (This could be drawn from either his direct comment or the other texts cited as examples or advice.)
• find examples from contemporary Australian usage. (Rich fields for exploration would include the media, sport, social institutions like schools, churches and community organisations.)

Students return to their home group and teach the group their chosen aspects of language.

Aspects of language:

Clichés
A French word, ‘cliché’ originally referred to a metal block used by printers to make multiple copies of engravings. Terry Pratchett said that ‘The reason clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication’. We often let them do the work for us, like machines. In fact, you could say that a cliché is an expression that does your thinking for you.

Euphemisms
‘It’s amazing – my parents call everything a discussion. If I were standing across the street, firing a bazooka at my mother, while my father was launching mortar back at me, and Jeffery was charging down the driveway with a grenade in his teeth, my parents would say we should stop having this public “discussion”.’ (Jordan Sonnenblick, Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie)

Catchphrases
Stop the boats is a catchphrase. A catchphrase is a saying that catches on in public language and memory. Often they reduce complex ideas to facile statements.

Platitudes 
A platitude is defined in the Macquarie Dictionary as ‘a flat, dull or trite remark, especially one uttered as if it were fresh and profound’. Somerset Maugham offers this example in A Writer’s Notebook: ‘She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.’ The internet is a rich source of platitudes, although it can be ephemeral.

Grammar
In The Elements of Style Strunk and White write: ‘Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.’

Step 3: 
As a group students devise a set of rules to propose as a guide to clear writing. Each group displays its rules and the class, through discussion, adapts and/or adopts the rules as principles for clear writing (or how to avoid sludge) to be used in that class.

Discuss with the class possible unifying elements for the research paper suggested by this investigation.
(ACELA1569)   (ACELA1570)   (ACELA1571)   (ACELT1642)   (ACELT1643)   (ACELY1757)   (EN5-3B)   (EN5-2A)

Ways of reading the text

The language of social institutions shapes both national and individual identity. David Buckingham in his introduction to Youth, Identity, and Digital Media notes the essential ambiguity inherent in the word identity. Its derivation is from the Latin root idem meaningthe same. However, the notion of identity suggests similarity and difference. We think we possess, as individuals, identity – we are different one from another – and that this is in some ways a consistent phenomenon. However, when we consider concepts such as national identity we imply that our identity is shared with other people. Public language – the language of national identity, cultural identity, gender identity – descends on each of us as individuals and shapes how we see ourselves. In the activities which follow students analyse examples of texts, drawn from the wider world, that relate to public language and its influences.

Activity 12: Talkin’ ’bout my generation 

(Link to the multi-genre research paper: Students need to include examples of personal experience in their research papers. These texts provide models for genres that could be included.)

Mark McCrindle and Emily Wolfinger write in Word Up that ‘we are all a product of our times, and heavily influenced by the culture, technology and social markers that were merging during our formative years’ (page 10). Public language reflects this in its representation of young people as Judith Bessant points out in her article Talkin’ ’bout a generation: understanding youth and change. Bessant warns of the dangerous use of cliché and catchphrases to depict individuals and society.

Step 1:
Invite students to make a list of words and phrases used to categorise their generation such as Zeds, Gen X, Gen Y and make a list of words commonly used in public discourse to portray them. Others that Bessant suggests: Millennials, DotNets, Gen Next, Lost Generation, Me Generation, Narcissistic Generation, Digital Natives.

Step 2:
As a class, discuss what this language suggests about them and why this may have come into being. Prompts might include:

• How is time referenced in these labels?
• What attributes of young people are suggested in these labels?
• What role does technology play? Is this justified?
• Does this language empower or disempower young people?
• What social identity does it create?
• Compare the different labels used to describe different generations and explore how the language positions different generations in the public discourse (adapted from Wordup (Pages 9-10).

Step 3:
Working in pairs, have students survey and read some newspaper articles that discuss Generation Z and compare the observations they offer. A simple internet search of terms such as news articles Generation Z will provide an interesting analysis even on the results page:

• Display a results page and have students list all the words that they see as positioning Generation Z.
• Ask students to classify these words according to their intent, for example critical, supportive, relating to technology, relationship characteristics.

Have students choose one article and analyse the assumptions that underpin its use of language:

• Whose message is represented in this article? Why?
• Who is the audience? What words or images or sounds suggest its age, ethnicity, class, profession, interests, etc.?
• What is the text of the message? What is the subtext of the message? How does this relate to public language about Generation Z?
• What assumptions underpin the lifestyle it presents?
• What groups of people does this message empower?
• Are there any gaps or silences in the article?

As a class discuss the social identity the article represents and whether students feel that they identify with this.
(ACELA1564)   (ACELA1565)   (ACELA1571)   (ACELY1749)   (ACELY1750)   (ACELY1751)   (ACELY1752)   (ACELY1754)   (ACELY1813)   (EN5-5C)   (EN5-7D)   (EN5-3B)   (EN5-8D)   (EN5-1A)   (EN5-2A)

Activity 13: Public language and politics

(Link to multi-genre research paper: Students synthesise their investigations through critical analysis. This will support skill development for reporting investigations and identifying unifying elements.)

In this activity students analyse how specific rhetorical effects shape all forms of public language from slogans through to parliamentary debate and formal addresses. Students reflect on the the standard of public language used and whether they feel it is appropriate.

Step 1:
Slogans, most commonly a feature of advertising, have increasingly infiltrated the language of politics. Display for students a list of political slogans used in election campaigns and ask them to explore patterns in the language such as:

• the use of the pejorative
• specific areas of word choice such as the language of fear, of belonging, with fear
• their syntax, whether they are commands, whether they have a finite verb
• representations of national identity such as a fair go for all
• the extent to which the slogans are genuine.

Slogans are commonly used to distill complex ideas and debates into one-dimensional propositions. Discuss with students some slogans used in current parliamentary debates such as:

• whether someone is a battler or a bludger
• whether someone is a refugee or a queue jumper or an illegal
• whether someone is a lifter or a leaner
• three word slogans such as stop the boats
• alliteration such as toxic tax
• wordplay such as real change for a change.

Ask students to choose one of the slogans they have observed and to write down what complex ideas have been distilled into this slogan. Students could:

• list the groups in society that are empowered and disempowered by the language used
• list reasons for or against the ideology behind the slogan
• explain how the ideology in the statement can be resisted
• create a debating statement for use in class, for example that the media controls the image of battlers.

Step 2:
Conduct a vote with your feet game.

1. Ask the students to stand.
2. Allocate opposite sides of the room to for and against.
3. Display for students the debating statements they have created.
4. Students vote with their feet according to their views.
5. Ask one or two people from either side to explain why they voted that way.
6. Give students the opportunity to change sides if they wish and ask what prompted the change.

Step 3:
Show students an extract from parliamentary question time and instruct students to note down any examples of colourful public language that strike them as being effective. This summary of former Prime Minister Keating’s contributions could be useful. Invite students to analyse and evaluate Keating’s use of public language as typified in:

• the points he made
• his invective
• use of figurative language
• reliance on idiom.

Step 4:
Using this resource from the Parliamentary education office in Canberra, conduct a parliamentary style debate.

As a concluding lesson, brief students regarding the context of the Redfern Address and invite students to watch it. Discussion prompts could include:

• the ways in which the speech calls our concern to indigenous rights
• how it uses structure and argument to keep thinking and feeling together
• the connotations of words and images
• the ways in which the speech uses story to deliver its message.

Step 5:
Display for students Auden’s remark (mentioned in Death Sentence) that: ‘Even politicians speak / truths of value to the weak’ and pose this question: Based on your encounters with Australian political language in this learning activity, to what extent does Auden’s remark reflect your experience? 
(ACELA1564)   (ACELA1565)   (ACELA1569)   (ACELA1571)   (ACELT1639)   (ACELT1640)
(ACELT1641)   (ACELT1812)   (ACELT1642)   (ACELT1643)   (ACELT1814)   (ACELT1815)
(ACELY1749)   (ACELY1750)   (ACELY1754)   (ACELY1757)   (EN5-2A)   (EN5-5C)   (EN5-7D)   (EN5-3B)   (EN5-8D)   (EN5-1A)

Presentation

The concluding sequence focuses on the final submission of the multi-genre research paper. There are three components: a presentation, a reflection activity and the final submission as a display. This assessment rubric (PDF, 116KB) could be used for both the presentations and the written paper, covering both receptive and productive modes.

Activity 15: Presentations 

In this activity students present an aspect of their multi-genre research paper at a class conference called Unspeakable: Public Language? This simulation offers a number of forums for students to share an aspect of their work. Suggestions are listed below.

Prior to the class conference, determine which kinds of presentations students will use and group students accordingly. Allocate a group leader who will manage the group – for example sequencing presentations, keeping time limits, coordinating peer evaluations (PDF, 101KB) of the presentations.

Presentation suggestions:

• a debate using a topic such as the quality of public language determines how a society views itself 
• readings of their own created texts to small groups
• a speech to the small group emulating a style they have observed
• parody of an aspect of public language
• presentation and explanation of a digital scrapbook
• interview or expert query
• sharing an anecdote
• slam poetry presentation
• presentations of visual texts or artefacts
• a partner presentation where two people co-present
• a panel discussion
• presentation of a multimodal task.
  (ACELA1564)   (ACELA1565)   (ACELA1569)   (ACELA1571)   (ACELT1640)   (ACELT1642)   (ACELT1643)  (ACELT1814)   (ACELT1815)   (ACELT1644)   (ACELT1749)   (ACELY1750)   (ACELY1751)   (ACELY1752)  (ACELY1754)   (ACELY1757)   (ACELY1813)   (EN5-5C)   (EN5-7D)   (EN5-3B)   (EN5-2A)   (EN5-6C)   (EN5-8D)   (EN5-1A)

Activity 16: Reflection activity – creating endnotes 

Prior to the final submission, invite students to reflect on the decisions they have made throughout the research process. Questions could include:

• Why did you choose your topic?
• What interesting facts have you learned about your topic?
• Why did you choose these genres?
• What was the most difficult thing about the research?
• What was the most difficult thing about working on the genres?
• What do you feel you have learned about public language?
  (ACELA1570)   (ACELA1571)   (ACELT1814)   (ACELT1815)   (ACELT1644)   (ACELY1757)   (EN5-3B)   (EN5-5C)   (EN5-6C)   (EN5-2A)

Activity 17: Final submission 

Publication of the research papers could take a number of forms:

• a gallery walk where students display their research paper complete with:
  • project title
  • project Idea (summary of main issue/task/purpose)
  • content (summary of key standards/topics)
  • genres
• Students move around visiting the projects and asking questions about their development.

Other possibilities:

• a showcase to other classes, parents, schools
• creating an archive of the research papers in the classroom
  (ACELT1644)   (ACELT1814)   (EN5-6C)   (EN5-5C)