e-tivity 5: summary

Some of you did very thorough analyses of your two websites while others did more superficial ones but all in all you more or less came to similar conclusions. Reading all of your blog posts on the genre of websites I was able to find some common characteristics which should help us develop a definition of the genre of websites. For example, some characteristics on home pages are:

- overall syntactic compression and minimalism

- links in the form of simple noun phrases, post-modified noun phrases, imperative verb forms and gerunds

- (large numbers of) hyperlinks (characterized as above) in lists

- simple sentences using above all the present simple (giving a sort of timelessness)

- images to support the links and overall navigation

- color coding

Then, most of you found that once you clicked on the links, the language found in the other pages of the websites was more descriptive and complex. Many of you noted that the intended audience changes the register of the language used. For example, the more ‘institutional’ websites like the BBC with an expected global audience tended more towards formal language while other sites aimed more towards a specifically younger audience used more informal language.

Does this sound more or less like a summary of your analyses? If I missed anything, please provide feedback in the form of a comment.

It was also interesting that many of you chose the same websites. I presume this means you have similar needs and are interested in similar aspects of your English language learning at this point.

Regarding language, this time I’ve done the opposite of what I’ve done in the past, i.e. rather than highlight mistakes and have you make corrections, I’ve made corrections and would like you to analyze them. Please download and print this pdf file and consider the corrections made not only on your post but on the other ones as well since we always have something to learn not only from our own mistakes but from others’ mistakes too. Try and understand what the mistakes were and why I corrected them in a given way. If there is anything you are uncertain of or do not understand, please write a comment-question back to this post. You are then, of course, welcome to go correct your posts accordingly.

I hope you found this e-tivity useful and found that it helped you better understand the two websites you chose. I personally feel that this e-tivity is a good example that we really do have things to learn from each other!

Sarah