Analysing language choices in reviews

In this lesson, students examine word choice in a pair of published reviews.

Goals

• Identify words with particular effects in a particular genre of English writing, the review.
• Discuss the effects of word choice in real language in use.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will look at two published reviews and analyse the language choices that the writers made.

One type of writing that is useful to analyse in terms of descriptive language is the review. Reviews are designed to offer the writer’s opinions about something, such as a piece of music, a film or an item of technology.

Have a look at the the first slide in the Activity page in the right hand menu, which is from a review of a phone. Students should see if they can identify the language choices that show (a) what the phone is like and (b) how the writer feels about the product.

Now, in Slide 2, we have a report of a football match in which goalkeeping blunders let the away team score three goals in the first thirty minutes.

See if you can identify the key words and phrases here that indicate how the writer views the performance of the goalkeeper who played in the first half compared to the one who came on in the second half.