A grade AS English Language Commentary example

Commentary on my Speech: The importance being healthy and knowing what health is.

I wrote a speech directed at college students persuading them to think about the importance of being healthy. I was inspired by the use of rhetorical questions used in Tim Ryan’s ‘Draft’. For example in the first paragraph I say ‘so is that all? Is that the definition of health? This causes the listener to think about what I’m saying which links to my target audience as young people can often lose interest during long spoken dialogue. By doing this I am keeping their attention.
I used a large amount of pronouns similar to Barack Obama’s 2012 Victory Speech. Examples of this are ‘our, ‘we’ve and ‘ourselves’. The possessive personal plural pronouns create the impression that I am in the same situation and share points the view of the listener. This is effective because young people don’t like to be segregated or talked down to. By including myself in the points made I make the speech more relatable.
Syntactic parallelism is a feature in Tim Ryans ‘Draft’ that I have taken inspiration from. This is shown in my speech in the opening paragraph, ‘This is not a lecture. This is not a five point analysis with acronyms and flashy PowerPoints...’ .By repeating the words ‘this is not’ at the start of each sentence, rules out negative possibilities based on their previous experiences.
Similar to in Alexander Stephens ‘Succession is Height of Madness’ imagery is used in my speech. For example, ‘… anorexic teenagers but have we not been fed piles and piles of information…’ the adjective ‘anorexic’ contrasts with the verb phrase ‘been fed’ and the metaphorical use of ‘fed piles of information’ which link back to the concept of health. This relates to my target audience as they like to use their imagination to make things more interesting and engaging.
I have used pragmatics in my speech to gain support in my argument. For example, I used ‘ping’, BB’ and the phrase ‘Google it’ a noun which has been changed by young people into a verb. This is effective in emphasising that my speech relates to my target audience.
Phonologically, I put stress on the modal auxiliary ‘will’ to add dynamic to the tone and create a sense of urgency to persuade my target audience that it is a problem that needs to be solved.
Repetition, a dominant feature in persuasive speeches, appears in all my style models including Franklin Roosevelt’s Inaugural Speech. I repeated the abstract noun ‘health’. For example, ‘our health’ and ‘definition of health’ allow me to address that health is the central topic in my speech. Repetition is effective in my speech as it’s a popular way of learning and creating habits.
I changed some words during the editing process of my speech because feedback from my teacher showed that some of my lexis was inappropriate like ‘obtuse’ which I change to ‘unattainable’ and ‘mankind’ which changed to ‘people’. This is better for college students as it’s lexis that is used and understood by them.

Word Count: 500 words