Autobiographical recount Purpose
Typical language features
• To retell an event or series of events of someone’s life, as told by that person and usually in chronological order
• Written in the first person
• To entertain and or give insight into human motivation
Audience • Someone who wants to know what happened and/or has a specific interest in the subject • The audience is often defined by age, e.g. writing for peers, teacher or general public
• Active verbs describe what happened • A variety of sentence structures creates different effects, such as a sequence of multi-clause sentences followed by a short sentence • Discourse markers related to time – e.g. later, meanwhile, twenty years on • Cause – e.g. because, since; contrast – e.g. although, however, nevertheless
Forms
• Sophisticated use of punctuation for effect – e.g. colons, semi-colons, dashes, brackets
• Autobiography (continuous prose) - this could be in the form of newspaper articles or diary entries
• Answers questions: When? Where? Who? What? Why? How?
Typical structure • Scene setting to establish context • Paragraphs used for effect and to mark change of focus/time/place relating to the events • Sequence/chronology words provide order • Starts at the beginning and finishes at the end of the event(s). Sometimes the chronology is reorganised to emphasise key events
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• Generally written in past tense
IPEELL Stage 1: Text Type Examples
• Uses specific dates/times/names of people and places • Vocabulary choices express feelings through emotive adjectives/adverbs/ verbs • Use of imagery/similes/metaphors for descriptive effect
