Sara Perisic English A2 Alison Standley January 16th, 2010.

Commentary on two Texts

The text taken from a short story The Test written by Njabuo Ndebele and the text taken from a sport feature article in the New York Times are different in many ways. They are written about different events and different would read these works. It is easy to interpret that the first text is a literally work from a short story; it has a form of a novel while the second text is the newspaper article which informs the public about the future event. If the readers focus more on the stylistic differences of these two texts, they can recognize big differences between the newspaper article and the short story. Njabulo Ndebele and the journalist write in two different styles which the readers can realize through different audience which they are address, different language that they use and their different types of writing. These differences appear because the writers of these two texts have different effects which they want to achieve. The writer of the short story and the article are approaching different audiences. The article taken from the newspaper magazine is giving facts, information about football matches to the readers and the writer is using football terms in his writing which brings to a conclusion that the audience of this text would be people who fallow football matches, are interest in football a lot and are huge football fans. They would read this text to find out more about football matches, get information about football which people who are not keen on football would not be interested in. On the other hand, the writer of the short story describes football as a hobby of poor boys which means that he is not focusing on football as a sport, in fact he is focusing more on the boys childhood, emotions and concerns. From the text the readers can interpret that the people that the writer is approaching to are people who read literature works, appreciate art, are interested in different ways of living, . In the text through the childrens play is described as something that makes them happy, what they do because they arent many things to do which brings the conclusion that football is not presented as professional as in the article which means the audience of the short story are not specifically people who fallow football matches and are big football fans.

The short story is for people who want to enjoy reading about emotions, life of people, to enjoy the story, the events and the descriptions that the writer wanted to present. The possible audience of the story The Test is curious, educated, and familiar with literature which wants to find more about the

structure of the work, the time of the work, the place where the event is happening. People who find themselves in the story, played football when they were young or find a connection with their life and the story could be the audience who would find what they need in this work as well as the people who want to learn from the message of the story.

The writers of the texts want to create a different effect on the audience which makes their language become different as well. The journalist purpose of writing this text is to inform the audience about the sport, the games and to discuss which the best football team is. This article is useful for the football fans because through it they found out results about specific teams. This forms the writers language. Journalists language is formal and professional because the audience is not asking about players emotions, hes life, in fact they are asking for the strength of the teams, predictions about the teams and the results of the games. The writers language is made up of facts and football terms because he is approaching the audience that is familiar with these terms. The tone of the article is joyful, funny because of the writers team spirit in order to entertain the audience. There a certain extent of irony showed in the article to also entertain the football fans. On the other hand, the writer of the short story wants to show events, people and their lives through literature techniques. The readers can feel how the people in his story live and feel. To describe the emotions and events through his story the writers language is poetic, he uses many literary devices to get the effect of the audience focusing on the text to understand it and feel like they are inside of the story. Through the text, the readers are interpreting the information about the boy, his feelings, concerns, the time and the place where the event takes place. The way how the writer showed the boys part of life was through the sensory details which made the readers understand better how the boy felt during the football game. The story is very tense because of its tone, it makes the readers be insecure, worry about the boy, ask what is going to happen next and what is going to happen to the boy.

All in all, the texts from the short story The Test written by Njabuo Ndebele and the newspaper article from the New York Times have different audience, their writers use different language and they have different writing style. Despite both of the stories are about football, their writers found the way to give the readers different kinds of information that they need. The writer of the short story and the journalist use a different language and they have different writing style because they are trying to make a different effect on the audience.