Text Types English Language and Literature A

Paper 1 Prep

1) Advertisements
Tend to be persuasive
Key features:
➢ Problem and benefit: the success of any advert depends upon appealing to the desires of its
readers
➢ Image: tells a visual narrative, tactic such as shock value or sex sells
➢ Slogan and copy: Slogans are short, catchy, memorable and have a relationship with the
image this is called anchoring. Typographical features: bold fonts, underlined words.
➢ Association: ads sell products but also values. Abstract concepts. Symbolism: objects,
settings, people.
➢ Testimonial: satisfied quotations of customers. Eg. Celebrity testimonials.
➢ Advertising claims: weasel words, scientific claims, vague language, or bandwagon claims.
Keep an eye out for jargon that sounds impressive but doesn’t communicate meaning.
➢ Persuasion: Ethos, Pathos and logos. Ethos = trustworthiness of the speaker. Pathos: appeals
to emotions, logos appeals to sense of logic.
■ Charity appeals sub type
● Persuasive: take action PATHOS, ETHOS, LOGOS
● Pathos: appeal to emotions such as: anger, pity, guilt, sympathy so
you are more likely to respond.
● Shock tactics to persuade the reader.
● Facts and statistics to create a trustworthy persona
● Metonymy: social problems like hunger and poverty → introduce
you to a single individual who represents where the donations are
going to
● Direct address: strong connection, eye contact is visual direct
address.
2) Recruitment Campaigns
➢ Persuasive: direct address and imperatives
➢ Visuals: muti-modal
➢ Slogans: catchy. Pay attention to typography, fonts and emphasised words.
➢ Pathos: core of campaign is often emotional to elicit feelings: patriotism, duty or guilt if not
signing up.
➢ Card stacking: not showing the downsides of joining up.
➢ Simplification: reduce complex issues to simple solutions. Invoke stereotypes.
➢ Symbolism: metonymy where an individual stands for a whole.

3) Speeches
➢ Ethos: speaker establishes credibility and alludes to moral, social or spiritual leader with
whom the audience can’t disagree.
➢ Logos: clear, reasonable arguments, facts and statistics and quoting experts in the field to
establish a logical appeal.
➢ Pathos: emotive language, imagery to help audience empathise with often vulnerable
people.
➢ Persuasive: take action
➢ Direct address: attempts to compliment the listener.
➢ Modality: modal verbs such as “must”, “need”, “should”, “might”, reveal the speaker’s degree
of certainty.
➢ Rhetorical devices: rhythmical, structural, auditory and linguistic tricks.
➢ Logical fallacies: glittering generalisations, simplification and slippery slope.

4) Opinion Columns
➢ Controversial topic
➢ OP-ED
➢ Perspective: personal viewpoint, the first person is most commonly adopted.
➢ Solid arguments: facts, statistics and information to convince you of the writer’s viewpoint.
Opinions backed up by studies, research or evidence of some kind. Assertion where writer
presents opinion as fact.
➢ Anecdotes: thoughtful approach to the topic at hand. Hook into the main article.
➢ Structure: Opinion and then develop opinion with evidence and end is strong and certain
reiterating the writer’s position.
➢ Register and tone: often formal, but writer can adopt an irreverent tone, be passionate,
conversational, friendly, challenging, even sarcastic.
➢ Concession: acknowledgement that the writer’s opinion is flawed in some way.

5) Comic Strips
➢ Purpose: to entertain, but also to inform by making a serious point about a local or global
issue.
➢ Structure: comics and cartoons are drawn in panels, arranged in sequence and read in a
linear fashion. White space between the panels is a gutter.
➢ Exposition: story is presented as captions
➢ Speech And thought bubbles: internal and external dialogue
➢ Mechanics: spatial mechanics, temporal mechanics.
➢ Artistic style: Are the pictures crisp, heavy, weighty, light, cartoony, realistic, bright, dark?
Words that describe the mood and tone useful when analysing graphic weight (shading and
contrast) and saturation (brightness).
➢ Emanata: dots, lines, exclamation marks, onomatopoeia
➢ Cartoonification: Realism: photorealistic or lifelike to simplified
➢ Punchline: the main idea is revealed in the last panel.

6) Satirical cartoons
★ Purpose: to ridicule, lampoon or criticise a specific target.
★ Irony: contradict one’s words.
★ Caricature: people are simplified, exaggerated or distorted for effects. Synecdoche whereby a
part of something is made to stand for the whole.
★ Symbolism: objects, icons, colours.
★ Allusion: historical or political references to events outside the text.
★ Tone: scathing, carcastic, pointed, or critical.

7)Magazine Articles
➔ Headline: bold text that act as a hook
➔ Images: photographs mostly posed
➔ Layout: box outs, bullet points, ears
➔ Entertainment: Information may be displayed in an appealing way using pull quotes and
subheadings.
➔ Buzzwords: up-to-date, relevant and current means popular jargon at time of publication.
➔ Interactive features: Embedded videos, hyperlinks, and tabs.
➔ Embedded Interviews: quotations of expers.

8) Interviews
● Question- Answer: quotations (direct speech)
● Register: spoken conversation; colloquialisms, idioms, contradictions, and even jokes.
● Topics: leading questions
● Perspective: one-sided view → highly subjective, assertive statements

9) Blogs
Viewpoint: first person
Purpose: individual interests or concerns so purpose is flexible. Seek to inform or Entertain?
Diction: specialist vocabulary or use of technical terms
Visuals: texts with cartoons, images, or photographs

10) Information texts

➢ Neutral language: formal or semiformal with a neutral tone
➢ Diction: specialist language, jargon, technical terms
➢ Layout: box outs, lists, bullet points, page dividers
➢ Facts and statistics: percentages, graphs, charts, numbers
➢ Typography: fonts, capitalisations, bold or italicised words, underlined words
➢ Images: diagrams

11) Infographics
★ Audience: designed as widespread audiences
★ Simplification: simplify complex knowledge or data through summaries, bullet points,
images, or captions.
★ Illustrations: Icons that symbolise ideas
★ Copy: headlines, labels and snippets (brief chucks of text)
★ Structure: visual narratives, sequence of events.
★ Design: eye -catching so colour, typography, font, design features.
12) Scientific articles
❖ Informative: facts and statistics and clear explanations.
❖ Diction: specialist vocabulary
❖ Comparisons: similes and comparisons
❖ Visuals: photographs, diagrams, charts, graphs
❖ Credibility: research, authoritative sources, quotes by experts.
❖ Structure: linear and non-linear structure.

13) News Reports

Masthead: name of newspaper, date of publication and price.
Headline: tone and angle of story: slammer; pun; alliteration; elliptical headlines
Visuals: create bias
Copy: Sensationalism, vague language, emotive language, euphemism
Embedded Interviews: witness recounts, expert opinions and statements from authority
figures.
Bias: selection bias, name calling to use of certain facts and statistics.
Figurative language: metaphor, simile, hyperbole, sensationalism, exaggeration, distorting
reality

14) Descriptive Passages

➔ Diction: concrete language and precise language
➔ Imagery: visual sense, sensory images, auditory, tactile, kinaesthetic and even olfactory.
➔ Figurative Comparisons: similes, metaphors and personifications
➔ Modifiers: adjectives and adverbs
➔ Perspective: outsider perspective, insider perspective

15) Diaries
a) Viewpoint: first person
b) Perspective: Confessional tone
c) Structure: chronological, flashbacks,
d) Register and tone: informal or semi formal
e) Colloquialism: figures of speech
16) Letters
a) Name and address: sender and receiver's address
b) Purpose: to seek advice, complain, or to connect with loved one
c) Register: formal or informal. Tone can be formal or intimate
d) Salutation: “Dear…” or “To whom this may concern”
e) Sign off: “Sincerely”
17) Travel writing
a) Viewpoint: personal experiences, first person
b) Perspective: an outsider’s perspective, insider’s perspective
c) Structure: chronological, linear, past-present
d) Information: facts, figures, names and dates, historical or architectural or
geographical
 e) Description: destination tantalising: visual imagery, vivid description or figurative
comparisons
f) Visuals: photographs, maps, floor plans
18) Advisory Texts
a) Tone: authoritative, reasonable, commanding or trustworthy.
b) Tense: the imperative tense can be recognised by verb.
c) Modality: “must”, will, should, ought, transmit strength of feelings
d) Credibility: expert sources, research, scientific evidence
e) Register: formal and persuasive.
f) Structure: cause and effect, step-by-step guides or linear structures.
19) Texts for children
a) Allegory: symbolism
b) Diction: easy synonyms and rhymes
c) Visuals: colourful
d) Fable: anthropomorphised animals who stand in for human characters.
e) Didactic: teach a lesson or moral