...

...

Sunday, December 09, 2012

L3 britain since 1945 text commentary on Thatcher's speech



Text commentary by Hyann on Thatcher’s speech before she was Prime minister. die

Your text commentary began well, your pronunciation is good and your English is fairly fluent. However, the second part of your text commentary was purely paraphrase and you did not really show you knew what her ideas were in detail, or how she was trying to get them across in her rhetoric.

You quoted too often from the document, often without showing that you understood what you were quoting. For example, when she denounces « others, under the shelter of our education system » she is talking about (in her view) dangerous left-wing teachers. You do not show you understand this.
You do not give examples of the nationalizations she denounces or of the debate which surrounded them.
At some points you made some excessively naive statements like « We can see she is completely against communism » (everybody knows this). Or you said « She thinks it is important to remain free ». This last sentence is extremely problematic. First of all, who are the politicans, or indeed anyone else, who would say in public « it is important not to remain free ». Now, when everyone declares attachment to a value such as freedom, we learn nothing specific about Thatcher by hearing that she claims attachment to freedom. You need to explain : what did she mean by freedom ? What did her opponents mean by freedom ? Freedom for whom, and to do what ?
A little later you said « Her main aim is to create wealth and better services for those in need ». Well this is certainly what she says is her main aim. But if every political leader clearly stated, in an objective fashion, their main aim, we wouldn’t need political debate or historians !

Language problems.
Confusion between « what is important » and « which is important ».
You do not always pronounc ethe « s » at the end of a word.
The structure « she is not agree » does not exist.

No comments: