DIARY ENTRIES

Laura and Beth

HYPOTHESIS

We think that the diary entries will have changed over time.

The modern diary entry will use more slang

We think the modern text will have a range of complex sentences with multiple clauses.

We think the older text will use different spellings compared to the modern text.

DIFFERENCES

We think that modern and old entries will include differences such as:

Lexis choice

The way it is presented

The subject

Grammar

SIMILARITIES

Even though the pieces will be different there will be some similarities these include:

A narrative structure with descriptive language.

Opinions of the writer.

The use of first person.

No non-fluency features

METHODOLOGY

We used the internet to find our resources because we knew there was going to be a wide range to chose from. We also used books from the library; however did not find a suitable resource.

We found that if we searched an explorers name with the words ‘diary entry’ that it would be easy to find an example.

We selected the text by Edmund Hillary to compare with Captain Cook’s because it was similar in the fact that it was both about exploring and adventure and also by a famous explorer.

LEXISCAPTAIN COOK TEXT (1775)

This was created using Concordle. We eliminated the words ‘the, and, is, are, was, had, it, a, with, for. By doing this is just made it more precise.

The words which were used the most were more specialist lexis for example ‘indignation’, ‘natives’ ‘canibals’.

LEXISHILLARY’S

This was also made using Concordle.

The most used words are specialist lexis again; this is a similarity between the two texts.

Some words which were used a lot were ‘ridge’, ‘camp’, ‘summit’. These are specialist lexis.

CAPTAIN COOK

HILLARY’S

DISCOURSE

Similarities

Paragraphing

Purpose

Differences Layout

Graphology

GRAMMAR

Captain Cook might of not had a great understanding of standard grammar in 1775.

Both texts use first person pronoun such as ‘I’ and ‘I've’

Both texts use past tense

GRAMMAR

Cook's Hillary's1.361.371.381.391.4

1.411.42

Number of syllables per word

Number of syl-lables per word

GRAMMAR

Cook's Hillary's05

10152025

Average of words per sentence

Average of words per sentence

SPELLING

Samuel Johnson’s ‘Dictionary of the English Language’ was first published in 1755. Captain Cook’s text was written in 1775, so by this time spelling and vocabulary was pretty much definite. However, there are some examples in which Captain Cook has used spellings in which have changed over time.

‘Scul’ = skull

‘Canibals’ = cannibals

GRAPHOLOGY

Hillary’s uses an image which links to the diary entry. Hillary is enable to use a image because he is using a blog meanwhile Captain Cook is written and he had no way of getting images.

PRAGMATICS

In Cook’s diary he may have used elevated and specialist lexis, such as ‘avidity’ and ‘Natives’

He also assumes that the readers will be familiar with the chosen lexis.

In Hillary’s diary he also uses special lexis, for example ‘summit’

Hillary also include precise times to begin a new paragraph. For example ‘at 4:00am’ and ‘At 6:30am’

CONCLUSION

The findings supported our hypothesis as it showed spelling has changed over the years.

However our hypothesis was incorrect as the findings showed that Cook’s diary included complex sentences as there was an average of 23.65 words per sentence, in comparison of 16.05 in Hillary’s diary.

Hillary’s diary did not include as much slang as what we expected, we think this is because he knew it would be published and wanted it to sound professional.

EVALUATION

We thought that finding the correct comparison text was difficult because there is not many new up to date explorers who write diary’s as they tend to write books.

Once we had found the comparison text we found it easy to see the similarities and differences between the two texts using the quantitative resources.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://mars.nasa.gov/blogs/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowBlogs&BlogsID=283

https://onlinemeuseumneilarmstrong1337.wordpress.com/neil-armstrong-journal-entry/

http://muskaanspsn.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/diary-entry-adventure-camps.html

http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/about-us/blog/2013/hillarys-everest-diary-entry-for-29-may