Literary analysis of academic article by Tarroja and Fernando

Introduction

 

“Providing psychological services for children of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs): A challenge for school psychologists in the Philippines” is an academic writing essay that is written by Maria Caridad H. Tarroja and Katrina C. Fernando. This is about the Filipinos workers and the impact of international migration on Filipinos families and children. I will compare two other writings with the academic writing, which is the speech and personal essay. The personal essay is called “The Man at The River” by Eggers, and the speech is called “My Daughter, Malala” by Yousafzai. Academic writing is a genre of text that has a directly stated object of study, long noun phrases consists of using a different verities and including a lot of pre-modification and post modification, and the reporting verbs are neutral.

 

Part 2

The rhetorical elements that are represented in the academic text are object of study, purpose, theme, Relevance/Audience, and Problem/Exigence. The object of the study for the academic article by Tarroja and Fernando is about the Filipinos workers and the impact of International migration on Filipinos families and children. The purpose of this article is providing psychological service for children, who their parents left to work abroad. This article is mainly for psychologist who Works in the Children Services. “Their educational background is either psychology or guidance counselling” (Tarroja and Fernando 12).  This clearly shows that the text is aimed to be read by the school psychologists since the word “psychology and counselors are mentioned regularly throughout the text. The exigence The children whose parents moved overseas because of their Poor life reasons and Children Feels lonely whom need some special services. The theme of this academic article is the family and the social problems. For example, “Existing literature points out the impact of migration on the families and on the well-being, academic performance, and school behaviors, family and peer relationships of the children left behind, and the need for interventions to address these concerns” (Tarroja and Fernando, 202). This quote clearly explains about the social problem that people, especially children, have.

 

 

The rhetorical element that can be compared between the academic writing text and the other two texts, which are the personal essay by Eggers “The man at the river” and the speech by Yousafzai “My daughter, Malala” is object of study. First of all, I will start with Tarrajo and Fernando (2013). The rhetorical element appears in two places, the title and the abstract, however its directly stated and it does appear more than once. The specific language and techniques that the author used to express the rhetorical element is specific language. For example, “Providing psychological services for children of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs): A challenge for school psychologists in the Philippines.” (Tarroja and Fernando, 1). This quotation is an example of specific language because it focuses on Filipino children’s not any children and gives a psychological service for children who their parents went overseas to work not for families that have and have children and still live in Philippines.

 

The second is The Man at the River. The object of study of the personal essay by Eggers “The man at the river” is The American and The Sudanese Culture. The object of study in Man at the River also appears in the title and the introduction, where is also implied and it does appear more than once. The author uses general language in his text opposite the Academic article. For example, “The tough relationship between the Sudanese and the American friend. “Our mutual friends have sent me. He would like you to visit the village over the river.” The final text is My Daughter Malala. The rhetorical element, which is the object of study, appears in the title and in the first paragraph, by comparing between the other texts, it shows that text 3 is really different than the other texts, however it directly stated and it appears more than once and the techniques and language that Yousafzia used is dialogue with monologue. For example, “in many patriarchal societies and tribal societies, fathers are usually known by their sons, but I’m one of the few fathers who is known by his daughter, and I am proud of it.” (Yousafzai, 1). These differences exist between these genres because every text has a different object of study. As we can see in the academic article, it has a very long and specific object of study, so the language needs to be specific and not general. Although, in the two other texts the object of study it is very general, so the language needs to be general due to the object of study.

 

Part 3

Noun phrases are really important to be included in the text. However, there are differences between the noun phrases used in the academic writing text and the other two texts that have different genres. The structure of the noun phrases in the academic text. Firstly, I will start with the Academic Article which is by Tarroja and Fernando, where the noun phrases are very long and very specific. The noun phrases of the academic writing text  by Tarroja and Fernando have a lot of pre-modifications and post-modification, where the noun phrases are all about the same key concept of the text and finally the noun phrases use a different variety of different words. For example, “The absence of mothers.” (Tarroja and Fernando, 5). The second text is the speech which is “My Daughter, Malala”, the noun phrases were very short, where the noun phrases were very general opposite the Academic article. However, the noun phrases of the speech have not a lot of post-modification and pre-modification, and last but not least, the noun phrases uses the same vocabulary over and over. For example, “A good girl.” This noun phrase does not contain a lot of post-modification and pre-modification, and the head noun ‘girl’ show that the noun phrases that have been used in the speech by Yousafzai are generally short and broad. Thirdly, I will describe the personal essay which is The Man at the River. The length of the noun-phrases was very short, where the noun phrases were very general, however, the noun phrases don’t have a lot of pre-modification and post-modification, the noun phrases have the key concept and the noun phrases in personal essay have used the same vocabulary over and over. For example, “My mom and dad.” (Eggers par. 15). This noun phrase does not have post-modification. Moreover, the head noun ‘mom and dad’ clearly supports the noun phrases to be just short and broad.

 

By comparing  Tarroja and Fernando, The Man at the river and My daughter Malala. Tarroja and Fernando is different from the other two text, based on the noun phrases that I just compared, where they just have similarities in one thing which is the noun phrases is all about the key concept, where the Man at the River and My daughter Malala has the same structure otherwise than Tarroja and Fernando.

 

 

Part 4

One more thing that I would like to discuss is the Outside Voices. In the academic text the reporting verbs are not neutral, where the author doesn’t use the same reporting verbs over and over, however the author uses more paraphrases than quotations, which made the author have in-text citation and references in his text. For an example, “Nonetheless, the func- tions of school psychologists as described by Watkins, Crosby, and Pearson (2001) and Farrell, Jimerson, and Kalambouka (2005)—that is, psychoeducational assessment, counselling”. This quote clearly shows how the author uses paraphrases more than direct quotes.

Secondly, I will compare the outside voices of personal essay to the outside voices that have been introduced in the academic writing text. The outside voices in the academic writing text are totally different to the ones in the personal essay by Eggers “The man at the river”. The reporting verbs of the personal essay is neutral which the author uses the same words over and over in the text, the author use more quotation in his text  than paraphrases, however the author doesn’t have any in-text citations and reference page. An example of outside voices in the personal essay, “‘Hello!’ the second friend says”. This reporting verb ‘says’ is clearly considered as a neutral reporting verb. This what makes the reporting verbs in the personal essay are different to the ones in the academic writing text. Finally, I will discuss about the speech. The speech has neutral reporting verbs and the use the same words over and over in his text, which also the author included more paraphrases than quotations in his text, and there were no in-text citations and a referenced page. For an example, and she abruptly told me, “Please don’t blame yourself. You stood for the right cause. You put your life at stake for the cause of truth, for the cause of peace, and for the cause of education, and your daughter in inspired from you and she joined you. You both were on the right path and God will protect her.” This quote contains some neutral reporting verbs that create the difference between this speech and the academic writing text. these differences exist because in the academic text there are a few people who read this text who are some professionals in that area, which means that they don’t need any exciting verbs that gets them curious to read the rest of the article, but in the personal essay and the speech, the audience is most of the people around the world, where they have to use simple reporting verbs, and with no in-text citations for the audience, because the audience of both the personal essay and the speech are not professionals and don’t need any citations to prove the information.

 

 

Conclusion

 

The things I learned while reading the three genre are about the academic writing, I see that the academic writing present its rhetorical elements in different way   the other genres, due to its rhetorical elements, and especially the Audience rhetorical element. In the academic wrting text, the object of study is directly stated, whereas in the other two texts, the object of study is indirectly stated. I enjoyed the personal essay the most, because it has a very simple language, and it is for everyone that can read. Also, I see that it an interesting article for me, because I like to learn about new cultures, and the article talks about the conflict between