Essay on "English Grammar Grammatical Analysis of UNICEF"

Essay 7 pages (1948 words) Sources: 4 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

English Grammar

Grammatical Analysis of UNICEF - supported soap opera raises awareness about HIV / AIDS in Niger

It is often said that today's generations tend to learn less than the older ones have learned in the past. The children of the contemporaneous society have an increased access to resources and technologies and may easily prefer a computer game instead of a math exercise. This is somehow understandable even more when the educational system has not evolved at the rapid pace of other advancements. Therefore, it fails to attract the pupils by presenting the same lessons it did five decades ago, lessons which are no longer applicable in today's social context.

As a result then, it may be true that today's generations possess less knowledge than the past generations. This is often obvious in the way children speak and in the numerous grammatical mistakes they make. However it may be cool to say "wanna" instead to "want to," it does not reveal a strong education and knowledge of English grammar.

What is even more tragic is that the grammatical errors in both written and spoken communication are becoming more and more common for adults as well. These are more acceptable in spoken communication, as they may occur due to other forces outside ignorance. Verbal communication is more difficult to control as the speaker has less time to organize his thoughts or he may be nervous about displaying his/her ideas. In written communication on the other hand, grammatical mistakes should not occur. Written communication is more formal and the writer has the time to organize his thoughts and even research phrases which may not seem entirely correct.

In order to reveal the truth behind the statements of reduced attention to grammatical correctness, one should conduct a deeper analysis into various contemporaneous texts. However, this is not the purpose of this paper and such an endeavor would be extremely tedious. Still, the analysis of a formal text would consist a good start in this direction. Sandra Bisin's UNICEF - supported soap opera raises awareness about HIV / AIDS in Niger has been chosen to serve this purpose.

2. Grammatical Analysis first point to start the analysis is the actual title of the article. While it is catchy and manages to capture the essence of the work, from a grammatical standpoint, it has wrong format. To better explain, outside the typing of UNICEF, which is an acronym and has to be spelled in capitals, the title is written in low case. The laws on English grammar teach us however that the first letter of the words in the title have to be written in capital letters, or upper case. In a parenthesis, relative to capitalization, it has to be used in the following circumstances: the pronoun I, the first word of a sentence, proper nouns, family relations (Aunt Augusta), names of God and other deities, weekdays, months and holidays, countries, the first letter of a word in a citation, major words in titles, various groups (African-Americans, Anti-Semitic), periods and events, trademarks and brands (the Owl at Purdue, 2008).

Relative to the usage of capital letters in titles, the grammar rules state that, unless this word is in the beginning of the title, uppercase will not be implemented for short prepositions, or the articles "the," "an" or "a." Keeping in mind these specifications then, the title of the discussed article should have had the following form: UNICEF - Supported Soap Opera Raises Awareness about HIV / AIDS in Niger.

Other than the tile, a first reading of the article does not reveal additional grammatical mistakes. The information in the following paragraphs has been retrieved after several readings of the article and does not necessarily contain references to mistakes, but analyses on how the grammar could have been used in another manner. The best way to proceed with the analysis is by looking at the article in light of several grammatical issues. They are presented below.

Inflectional Morphology

Inflectional morphology simply refers to the changes brought to a word in order to generate a new one and this is often achieved by adding suffixes, prefixes, articulations or plurals, such as transforming danger into endangered (Lee). From this standpoint, Bisin's article presents several positive examples, including:

The adjective supported, as a derivation from the verb to support

The adjective conservative built on the root of the verb to conserve

The noun adulthood from the noun adult

The list of such examples is rather long for the given article, and a specification that has to be made is that inflectional morphology can also be generated by joining two separate words to form a new word - the noun forefront from the noun fore and the adjective front, or the verb to overcome from the verb to come and the preposition over.

Also, it has to be stated that the author did not at all times use the concepts of inflectional morphology as best as she could have. The most relevant example in this sense is the usage of the syntax the programme, titled 'Soueba' instead of the more adequate the programme, entitled 'Soueba'. Another instance in which inflectional morphology was poorly used by the author is the usage of an entertainment, instead of simply entertainment.

Verbs

The article on the UNICEF website uses various types of verbs, with different tenses. Some examples of primary verbs in the present tense include is, engages, deals or need. Verbs used in the past tense could refer to overcame, have persisted. Finally, the future tense is represented by verbs such as will become, will reach out or will launch.

Aside primary verbs, Bisin also makes use of auxiliary verbs, such as may encourage, or verbs obtained from a combination of a primary verb and another word, such as is poised or are carried. The addition of may in front of encourage is a means of stating the mood of the verb, otherwise put, the possibility that the action may happen in the future, rather than a certainty of its occurrence. The article also presents some non-tensed verbs, such as leading, or starting.

Another issue that should be discussed in terms of verb usage is the ability of verbs to transform into nouns or adjectives. Sandra Bisin made proper use of this possibility in transforming to conserve into conservative, affect into affected, compel into compelling, betray into betrayal and so on.

An ultimate note relative to verb usage is their combination with prepositions and conjunctions. However most of these words do not impact the tense of the verb to be used, some do. In this instance then, Bisin states that the series recently taped its first episodes, in the situation when recently requires the usage of present perfect. The sentence should then have been the series has recently taped its first episodes.

Word Classes

However in terms of verb usage Sandra Bisin has generally followed the grammatical norms, relative to word classes, some suggestions could be made. These include:

starting in August 2008 could be replaced with starting August 2008 its first ever soap opera about could be replaced with its first soap opera ever about Positive examples of word classes properly used throughout the contents of UNICEF - supported soap opera raises awareness about HIV / AIDS in Niger basically include the incorporation of an explanation between commas, without influencing the message of the sentence. Some relevant examples in this instance include:

In August, in an effort to bring the issue to the forefront, Niger will launch its first ever soap opera joint project of Niger's Broadcasting Corporation (ORTN) and UNICEF, the programme, titled 'Soueba', is a compelling serial drama

Clauses

Ultimately, Sandra Bisin's article is a multitude of clauses. Most of them are simple clauses, containing all or only some of the basic components of a sentence: subject, predicator, object, complement and adjunct. There are four types of clauses - declarative, interrogative, imperative and explanative (Lee). All the sentences in Bisin's UNICEF - supported soap opera raises awareness about HIV / AIDS in Niger are declarative.

Also in terms of clauses, one could look at the article and identify the characteristic of positive or negative, dependent or independent, simple or coordinate, complete or incomplete. One example of each type of clause, as written by Sandra Bisin, is presented below.

Positive clause: Our aim with Soueba is to stop the taboo around HIV / AIDS

Negative clause: Parents turn a blind eye to the problem

Dependent clause: "There is no doubt 'Soueba' will become a hit show in Niger. It engages young people because it deals with issues that affect them on a daily basis," says Ramatou Sabou

Independent clause: A 90-minute film of the soap opera is also in production.

Simple clause: There is no doubt 'Soueba' will become a hit show in Niger

Coordinate clause: The packed house quickly overcame their unease about the subject matter and became enthralled as the stories of the lives of the main characters… READ MORE

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