Analysis of Level 10- First Draft

Analysis of Language in Level 10

This text is a past tense narrative from the first person; however, the dialogue is in the 1^st person present tense. As this story is a very fictitious and abstract mythical tale from a specific culture, it requires the reader to engage more fully and use their imaginations more. Previously, the stories have had a focus on events and situations that are relatable to children, for example, walking a dog or dressing up for a party. As this text is not based on reality, it requires the child to create their own images using the adjectives and verbs to paint the pictures in their minds. There is an extensive use of personification in this text as the animals are being portrayed to do human actions like ‘read’ and ‘mutter’.

There is an average of 13.9 words per sentence in this text, with 8 words being 3 or more syllables. There are also certain words like ‘burnous’ and ‘frolic’ that are only two syllables but are still unfamiliar vocabulary and therefore may increase the difficulty of this text. Despite this, the Gunning Fog Index produced a fairly accurate estimate that the average child would need 7.144 years of school education to be able to read and understand this text fully.

Jerome Bruner (1957) believes it aids and encourages children learning to speak, read and write to have visual aids and pictures, which he called ‘Iconic aid’. This stage is usually for children aged between 1-6 years old and after the age of 7 the images are simply to reinforce and help the children gain a better and more detailed understanding. By this level however, there are very few pictures, with this page having no illustrations, only text. This encourages them to use their own imaginations to interpret the text and make the story come alive in their own minds. In order to do this they require an understanding of the different adjectives and verbs being used. Also, by this age, they will likely have their own style of writing or be learning how to join their handwriting and will find it easier to understand serif fonts than they would have in previous years.