[0:00]Hi everyone. Welcome to Miss Adams Teaches English Language and Literature A-level. In this video, I'm going to be taking you through the Jessica Reed experience, I Survived an Earthquake while Scuba Diving, from the Edexcel English Language and Literature Voices in Speech and Writing Anthology. I'm going to take you through a little bit of context, some details on genre, audience, and purpose, before we take a look at some key moments from the piece of reportage, focusing on literary and linguistic concepts as we go. So let's get started.
[0:33]Okay, so this particular piece of reportage is a first-person personal account of Jessica Reed's experience going scuba diving in October 2013, and while she was scuba diving in Bohol in the Philippines, there was a massive earthquake. Um, I just popped a couple of maps up there for you just so you can see where we're looking at. So this here is the island of Bohol, so you can see it's slap bang in the middle of the Philippine Islands, and that's where the vast majority of the damage was and she is scuba diving. I'm not sure which direction but somewhere off this island. Um, if you're not sure where the Philippines are, you can see the bigger map here, so here's Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand up here, is China, um, and this is where, um, obviously the Philippines are, so just to kind of give you that context of where about it is. So the, um, earthquake was a mega one, it was major, so 7.2 on the Richter scale, um, and it resulted in over 200 people dying, and 350,000 people being displaced and so losing their homes. So it, it, it had a considerable scale to it, so what she experienced underwater would have been really, really frightening. Um, okay, so thinking about genre, audience and purpose, this is a piece of reportage. Now, if you're not sure what reportage is, uh, it's a form of news reporting, so it is focused on a particular kind of event, a newsworthy event, but it gives a first-person perspective of it. Um, so you're going to expect to see features of literary non-fiction, so you're going to find, for example, things like metaphors and similes, in this writing because it, it's not just about the bare facts that you would get in a news report. It allows for that kind of sense of the personal. So in terms of the audience, this was a piece of reportage, was in the Guardian, um, in the weekend, um, section, or the weekend version of the Guardian, which is a slightly more relaxed, slightly more informal version. So you're going to have those readers, Guardian readers (weekend), um, educated, adult, uh, readership, and you're going to have people that are interested in Reed particularly, um, certainly in current affairs, issues to do with the environment, perhaps scuba diving or any kind of like sporting activities. And the purpose is obviously to inform, that's the part, the report part of reportage, but the kind of literary side of it, that's where you get your entertainment. And of course, you know, we're they're trying to sell copies, aren't they, of the, the Guardian? So it's going to be entertaining. And it's also going to be quite reflective, because like I said, with reportage, it's very much a personal account. Okay, so what you're going to see with the voice, um, there's lots of attempts to kind of sound credible and authoritative, and that's going to really, really shine through. So sense of experience, uh, in the voice. But you're also going to get this sort of reflective, uh, recounts. Uh, you're going to see some quite descriptive elements of voice as well. So, as always, I'll pop a couple of descriptors up on the slides as I go. Start with the opening, why not? Good place to start. So, I've been scuba diving for 15 years. I love the calmness of being submerged, the hypnotic sound of my breath, and the quiet clicks of fish eating coral. Lovely start. Okay, so first off, let's have a little look at the tense. I have been scuba diving. So what we're looking at here is present perfect continuous, and we've got an adverb of time here for 15 years. So the opening simple declarative statement literally says, "I am experienced." Yes, so the use of the tense demonstrates that this is an ongoing hobby of hers that she's been doing for a long time and is still doing now. Um, so she's, she's very, very quick to ensure that you understand that she is very experienced in scuba diving. Um, we've got, um, another simple declarative here, but it's quite a long one, and that's because we're getting this really, really descriptive voice. So we've got this beautiful triad here. Um, I love the calmness of being submerged, the hypnotic sound of my breath, and the quiet clicks of fish eating coral. So it's quite sensory. Um, it's all sort of the auditory, uh, kind of senses here. And in order to sort of, uh, create that sensory voice, we've got some lovely sibilance here, um, submerged, sound, and then the S at the end of the clicks of fish eating coral. So this is all about creating a kind of very relaxed, very tranquil atmosphere.
[6:08]Okay, now we've got a bit of development, a little bit of extension, so that's the broad, this is who I am. Now we're moving to the specific, with the temporal discourse marker, and simple past tense. So the shift from present perfect continuous to simple past tense tells us that we're narrowing down to the event itself. Last October, I was on a diving holiday in the Philippines with a friend. It was a sunny morning, and after breakfast, we boarded the boat with seven other advanced divers. This was my 40th dive, so I knew the drill. I put on the gear and dived off the boat, slowly sinking to about 20m. I saw luminous corals, languorous turtles silhouetted in the deep blue of the ocean, and hundreds of tropical fish.
[8:29]So that tranquility, and that sensory, uh, language, the auditory, um, is coming from the elongated vowel sounds here, luminous, languorous, so long elongated sounds and continuant alliteration with that L sound here and here. So again, lots of lovely tranquility, but why? Because it's setting up the chaos. It's being used here to create juxtaposition with the next scenes where it's all really fast paced and chaotic and frightening. And moving to that straight away. So we're kind of getting this sense of horror in her voice now. She sounds horrified, she sounds frightened, there's a sense of disbelief in how dreadful this is. So we're continuing with quite a linear structure, um, it is, and again, that's a feature of reportage, so we are, um, conforming to the conventions. Then, discourse marker, we were enveloped by clouds of white sand that mushroomed up around us, and I thought, could it be an underwater bomb? So actually moving almost into free direct discourse there where we're being given her thoughts in this sort of rhetorical question. But what's interesting here is the use of metaphor. So look at this, we've got clouds of white sand, we've got mushrooming up, and then the reference to an underwater bomb. So this metaphor here, combined with the verb mushroomed, and this noun phrase underwater bomb, we are all alluding to a nuclear bomb. Now, interestingly, there'll be a later reference to Hiroshima, so that all ties in together. Why this allusion to, um, a nuclear bomb? It's all about how big, how powerful, how catastrophic and, uh, destructive, um, it all is. Note the juxtaposition here between the tranquility, and the fact that we had like languorous turtles before. Now we have a giant turtle raced past us and into the deep. Okay, so lovely bit of juxtaposition with the earlier, um, set up. We've got, um, metaphors here. And it's almost a bit of an idiom, vibration became so intense, I could feel it in my bones. I mean, you could actually argue that that's literal that she is literally like shaking from the inside, but it's quite a kind of well-used phrase. And the sound, so sorry. And the sound turned into a deafening roar. So again, we've got metaphor there, quite animalistic or zoomorphic. Um, I don't think we're going to say it's hyperbole, I think she really means this quite literal, you know, emphasizing just how loud it was. But we certainly have a bit of onomatopoeia here, helping us kind of, uh, imagine the kind of expanse and the sheer kind of volume of the sound. I could see waterfalls of sand pouring over the coral, and on the sea floor, a few meters below us, cracks began forming and the sand was sucked down. Note all those dynamic verbs, um, that, you know, really create again sensory imagery, but now this is visual. Um, helping us kind of imagine the horror, um, that's when I realized it was an earthquake. So simple declarative sentence there in juxtaposition with this complex sentence here that kind of demonstrates all of the different things that she's seeing all in one go. So we've got lovely sentence variation, that the noise was the sound of the Earth splintering open and grinding against itself. Notice how apocalyptic that sounds. So this idea of disbelief and horror really comes from this almost like apocalyptic, like end of the world. That's how it sounds, you know, splintering open grinding. It sounds violent as well. Okay. She creates a sense of confusion this little bit, but she's also again demonstrating that experience and that caution. Um, so she's quite precise, sound and vibrations lasted only two or three minutes. So that adverbial of time there gives us that precision, uh, though it felt a lot longer, and when they stopped, I heard the swoosh of the sand falling over the seabed. Now, again, we've got sibilance coming through here and you can argue that the word swoosh is onomatopoeic, one because of the elongated vowel sound, two because of the fricative sh at the end. Um, and unlike the last bout of sibilance, which was all about tranquility, this is actually about speed. So the idea of sand kind of pouring, um, over. We've got, um, this little adverb of manner here fronting the sentence, uneasily, so again demonstrating her fear. I followed the dive master through the plumes of sand. What a lovely metaphor. And again, notice elongated vowel sounds. Now, plume is like a feather. That's why it's a metaphor. But again, imagine these sort of long, trailing, cascading, almost like tubes of sand falling through. Okay. Enormous willpower to resist the urge to swim to the surface. So this is really, really personal. This is her sense of fear. She knows what she should do, but she's got this kind of gut instinct that is a kind of panic, um, you know, to go to the surface, but, remember, experienced diver, she knows not to do that, um, and then she's, you know, sees her friends 20 meters away. Again, note how we're using, uh, adverbials to demonstrate precision, demonstrating that she knows about safety, stop for three minutes to avoid decompression sickness. So again, subject specific language to do with diving, so in despite all of the chaos, they are still remaining, uh, calm and doing the right things. Um, towards the end of it, we get this kind of factual shift, um, where she again is, is sort of sounding quite authoritative on the subject. Um, back on the boat, we rushed to check the news and discovered we had witnessed a huge earthquake, measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. So we're using statistics here, and uh, subject specific lexis to do with earthquakes, the Richter scale. It released more energy than 30 Hiroshima bombs. Now, note, we've got the repetition of the allusion from the opening paragraph. So really nice kind of cyclical structure here, bringing, um, that, kind of suggesting that sort of hinting that she was giving at the beginning with the mushrooming up, underwater bomb. Um, but note, as in the fact that it's 30 Hiroshima bombs. So massive, massive scale, um, power and destruction. Uh, we've got shared knowledge here, um, assuming the readers are going to understand this reference, which of course they are. Uh, we've been pretty much at the epicenter. High on adrenaline and felt lucky not to have just, uh, not just to have survived, but also to have experienced nature at its most stunning and most ferocious. Nice little juxtaposition here, uh, using these superlative adjectives, most stunning, most ferocious. It's kind of drawing on the concept of the sublime, like the awe and nature, how nature can be both beautiful but dangerous in its power as well. Um, so there's a kind of suggestion that she is in awe of what she's seen, despite how terrifying it was. And then we've got further declaratives with, um, statistics, 200 people died, a thousand people, uh, injured. So the kind of sobering reality of, of what she's witnessed. That's it from me on this piece. There are other bits and pieces that I haven't looked at. So do give me a shout if you want me to go through any of them, just drop me a line in the comments and I will come back to you. Um, other than that, that's it for me. Thank you so much again. Happy revising.
