The content of my work was the most challenging part for me as I was either writing unneeded information or the information was over the word limit as it becomes obvious if you compare my first draft to my final piece. I knew what I wanted to include but I knew I couldn’t so I had trouble cutting words and sentences out and trying to reword them.
Structure of the leaflet was based according to the pregnancy duration. My beginning started with “have you had unprotected sex?” and the ending prepared the reader for labour. But after a few drafts I realised that I didn’t need all the information so narrowed it down to key facts.
The graphological features that I used in my text were basic short paragraphs with pictures to complement what the text was about so that the readers won’t lose interest by reading an ongoing paragraph, my font was a size 12 and key points were in bold to outline what the sections were about. The bright colours and images made the text more appealing and attention grabbing. I used soft pastel colours to relate to the “girly” stereotype.
The lexis I used in my piece is “everyday” lexis and a small amount of Medical lexis because my piece was about everyday life and about pregnancy which you need to use some medical terms “folic acid”. I didn’t use too much technical lexis as I was afraid that an audience of 13 would loose interst quickly and may not understand the text completely. I tried to keep it as simple as possible and used one or two slang words “Drugs, booze, fags” so that I made the audience feel as if I was having a converstion with them. The formality level was common as I didn’t want it to be too formal but then again I did want to stress the importance of having a baby at the same time. The repetition of “Bigger love handles, bigger boobs, bigger appetite, basically bigger everything” lets the audience know what to accept as well as it’s written in a humorous way not to get them too worried.
Every draft I did my register and graphological feature were different, that was mainly due to the word count. Most of the information came from the internet and baby books, but the hard part was trying to find sections to put in as there was a huge amount of information.I asked teenage mums how it was like for them and what advice they would give to young girls in their situation.
To conclude I think my leaflet overall is beneficial and at a good standard. I would say I used the right semantics, lexis, and pragmatics for my aimed audience. The text I think is well written but improvements can always be made. If I redone the coursework again I would defenetly keep the same topic as it’s a very common situation in our society and especially in the area we are growing up in, I would perphaps change the form of the text and expand my audience and maybe write a book instead.
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