Topic:Critical Reading
Subject:Linguistics
Volume: 2 pages
Type: Critical thinking
Format: Harvard
Description
Portfolio A: Critical reading
Article:
Lalor, T & Rendle-Short, J 2007, ”That’s so gay’: A contemporary use of gay in Australian English’,
Australian Journal of Linguistics, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 147-173.
The text is available on-line via the course home page or library catalogue.
Assessment criteria:
The response should show:
• that you can select relevant information and exclude less relevant detail to give a focused answer
to the question (Part 1);
• that you can develop a concise summary of the material presented (Part 1);
• that you can identify key arguments in a paper and the information that these are based on (Part
1);
• that you can apply ideas in the text to your own thinking about issues of language and
communication (Part 2).
Task:
Read the article and consider the following questions. Write a brief answer to each. In most cases
the questions cannot be answered just by finding a bit of text in the article. Instead you need to
think about relationships between bits of text and to infer what the writers are arguing.
Part 1 (maximum 300 words)
Write a brief summary of the main points raised by the article in no more than 300 words (marks will
be deducted if the summary exceeds the word limit). The summary should address the following
questions:
1. what is the main issue the author is addressing in this research?
2. how did the author collect the information that he used for his study?;
3. what are the main findings and what evidence does he use to demonstrate each of them?
4. what does he conclude and how can you make sense of this by making connections to your own
experience?
Part 2 (approximately 200 words)
This paper is concerned with the relationship between words and meaning, but the writer does not
explicitly talk about what these mean for him. From your reading of the paper, answer the following
questions:
1. What do you think the relationship is between words and meaning in this paper?
