Critical Literacy is a course that involves a person to examine a text given, search the purpose and writer's motive, understand the text, questioning the ways in which the text has been constructed, analysing the languages that is used, emphasis multiple readings of texts, take a stance of the issue and comment the issue using the 10 elements.
In critical literacy, I need to relate the subject with the article that has been given. In the reading 1.1 ' Convicted Killer Back at Work ', the first thing that I can comment about the topic is that the writer knows how to attract reader's to read his view about the issue. He uses visual of a woman in her nurse uniform and catchy headlines as the beginning of his article so that readers can easily give a brief comment or their own opinion on the topic before reading the whole article. Clearly i can say that, the article focuses on a person or to be more precise, an ex-prisoner that had convicted a murder and is now working back as a nurse.
The content of the article is quite easy for me as it only focus on the whole article that is being written. It is like a brief summary where we need to find the keywords, arrange it and easily form or re-write the text using our own understanding of the whole article. We focus on what had happen, who were the participant, where did it happen, when did it happen and what led up to the event.
The source are the easiest that among all the 10 elements. Usually, we will stated where can we usually find the text given, which section (medical, education, etc) ,date, place, the writer names (if given) and etc. In this reading, the source is from a daily newspaper. It is usually found in the front page that happen in Saudi Arabia.
As for the audience, here we should state who the article is meant for. The writer did not stated specifically to whom is he trying to convey the message to. I can say that the writer is writing the article to all the non specialist audience.
For the rhetorical function, we need to identify what the writer is trying to do. Is he informing the readers or advising or others? After we had identified the rhetorical function, the next step is to identify the purpose of the writer writing this article. That means we need to relate the purpose with the rhetorical function, audience and topic. In this article, the writer is trying to persuade readers by informing readers that Deborah Parry (an ex-killer) is allowed to work as a nurse in England.
Perspective is the opinion based on the writer article. It tells about how the writer feels about the issue. I had some trouble doing this part as I nearly did not understand what it wants. In the 'convicted killer back at work' the writer clearly disagree with the decision to reinstate a nurse with a criminal record. He condemn the idea of a nurse that had been convicted as a killer to work back as a nurse. Positioning follows logically from perspective.
Positioning shows the characteristic of the participant involve in the text. Here, the writer portray Parry's characteristic as 'convicted of an awful murder'. There i need to explain more on the characteristic and give the evidence to support my answer.
Impact is where we stated how effective the writer's article to persuade readers to read and believe his/her article and visual literacy is how well does the writer convey the meaning and his position towards the issue. I would say that both of the elements is easier to answer rather than perspective. I can say that i struggle a lot on that element. I do understand that we just need to characterise the participant that involves in the article. But, it seems that i could not narrate it using my understanding.
Although the lecturer said that this is a very easy subject, i have to disagree on that. Yes, it is easy to criticize one's work. But by using the 10 elements, i really need to understand the whole article in order to give an excellent criticism.
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