The open road - Std, ES and EAL/D

<p>Many texts are more open than procedural texts like <em>Top 10 misunderstood road rules in NSW</em> and allow for a range of meanings. We all know that we can have responses to texts that differ from the responses of even our closest friends, let alone from people with entirely different life experiences.&nbsp;This is because sometimes texts are designed to:</p>
<ul>
<li>be ambiguous</li>
<li>connect with your own personal experiences</li>
<li>remind you of your encounters with other texts.</li>
</ul>
<details class="accordion">
<summary class="accordion__title">
<h5>Approach: Designing for ambiguity</h5>
</summary>
<div class="accordion__content details-wrapper">
<p>Sometimes language, of itself, may have more than one meaning as in these examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>Fruit flies like a banana (Groucho Marx)</li>
<li>Fine for parking in marked spaces</li>
<li>Woman without her man is nothing.</li>
</ul>
<p>Males read: Woman, without her man, is nothing.<br><br>
Females read: Woman: without her, man is nothing.</p>
<p>Punctuation is all!</p>
<p>Look at this image and identify the different ways it plays with the ambiguity of the caption: “You’re in our sights”.</p>
<p>  <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2021-07/drink-driving-police.jpg" width="600" height="300" alt="Drink Driving campaign image">
</p>
<p>Write your thoughts on the <a href="/sites/default/files/2021-07/cruise-control-section-3-student-worksheet-responses-to-texts.pdf" target="_blank">Responses to texts (All students) student worksheet</a>.</p>
</div>
</details>
<details class="accordion">
<summary class="accordion__title">
<h5>Approach: Designing for personal engagement</h5>
</summary>
<div class="accordion__content details-wrapper">
<p>In most open texts however, different meanings arise out of different experiences of the responder. Many times, composers make use of commonly accepted ideas of experience to invite particular responses to texts. For example, in advertisements they might use imagery of our childhood to evoke a mood of nostalgia; or soft colours, flowers and candlelight to build an aura of romance. Words often carry connotations, emotional associations that go beyond their literal meanings. This can be seen through variations in tone, the interaction of visual and verbal aspects of texts and the use of imagery, symbol or motif.</p>
<p><strong>Reading the gaps</strong></p>
<p>On the worksheet, write what you think the lines of dialogue refer to.</p>
<p>After you’ve read the text transcript of the MDT 30 second advertisement, write a reflection on how your own experience – personal, social and/or cultural – played a part in influencing your response to the statements on the <a href="/sites/default/files/2021-07/cruise-control-section-3-student-worksheet-responses-to-texts.pdf" target="_blank">Responses to texts (All students) student worksheet</a>.</p>
</div>
</details>
<details class="accordion">
<summary class="accordion__title">
<h5>Approach: Designing for textual resonances</h5>
</summary>
<div class="accordion__content details-wrapper">
<p>We all bring our own experiences, personal, social and cultural, to texts. These shape our interpretations and, as a result, each person’s response to a text differs from others.</p>
<p><strong>Intertextuality</strong></p>
<p>One of the ways we understand texts is by the echoes of other texts, their <a data-entity-substitution="canonical" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="7676141d-31bc-4d29-9bd6-3706b46de242" href="/pdhpe-activites/cruise-control/roadways-reading-glossary" target="_blank" title="Roadways to reading glossary">intertextuality</a>. &nbsp;Our engagement with any one text is influenced by our experiences with other texts. Seeing these connections brings pleasure and enriches our experience of the text because these connections bring with them other contexts and new meanings.</p>
<p>Look at the suite of stories that make up this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92buBSTZ21g&amp;feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">mobile drug testing educational video</a>.</p>
<div class="video-embed-field-provider-youtube video-embed-field-responsive-video">
<iframe width="854" height="480" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/92buBSTZ21g?autoplay=0&amp;start=0&amp;rel=0"></iframe>
</div>

<p>  <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2021-07/mobile-drug-testing.jpg" width="700" height="159" alt="Mobile Drug Testing campaign">
</p>
<p>Here, through three different but parallel stories, the Centre for Road Safety is illustrating what happens when we are stopped by police for drug and alcohol tests. These narratives are interspersed with police commentary explaining the procedures and reinforcing an important message.</p>
<p>In a group of three outline the structure of one of the narratives by drawing a map similar to the one shown.</p>
<p>  <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2021-07/mobile-drug-testing-narrative.jpg" width="600" height="370" alt="Mobile Drug testing narrative diagram">
</p>
<p>In what ways are the narratives the same and in what ways are they different?</p>
<p>How have the similarities in narrative structure and variations in the events and characters helped you understand the safety message of the text?</p>
<p><strong>Intertextuality and cultural knowledge</strong></p>
<p>Intertextuality often plays with the narratives that resonate across time and have come to permeate our culture. These stories are often about heroes and how honourably and dutifully they confront danger. In the same way, the campaigns on the Transport for NSW web site address issues of personal responsibility. They focus on the ordinary person and how our daily lives can be poised between <a data-entity-substitution="canonical" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="7676141d-31bc-4d29-9bd6-3706b46de242" href="/pdhpe-activites/cruise-control/roadways-reading-glossary" title="Roadways to reading glossary">agency</a> and risk. The stories of heroes are implied in the campaigns for safety but, in these campaigns, the stories advocate caution and warn against hazardous behaviour as a way of confronting our everyday dangers.</p>
<p>Read the classic stories of Perseus and Andromeda and St George slaying the dragon? What connections do you see?</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="background-color: rgb(209, 223, 255); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Structure</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(209, 223, 255); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Perseus and Andromeda</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(209, 223, 255); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">St George</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Orientation</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Perseus, the son of Zeus and a mortal woman was loved by the gods and so was given special gifts to protect him: a curved sword, a winged horse and a cap that could make him invisible.</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This is a traditional tale in which a dragon threatened an area with wholesale poisoning unless it sacrificed a child to him once a year. To ensure fairness to all, the child was chosen by lottery.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Rising action</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As he was flying near Ethiopia he came across a naked maiden chained to a rock at the edge of the sea. Perseus, struck by her beauty, immediately swooped down to her. She told him that her name was Andromeda and that she was being sacrificed to a sea monster because her mother had angered Poseidon by foolishly boasting that her daughter was more beautiful than the sea nymphs. Poseidon was enraged and threatened to punish all Ethiopia with an immense flood and with devastation by the sea monster, Cetus. The only way to pacify him and save the entire country, was to promise Andromeda to the ravages of the sea and its sea monster.</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One year the lot fell to the princess who was then sent to do her duty. As luck would have it, a knight, St George, was riding by, attacked the dragon and succeeded in wounding it with his lance. He then asked the lady to give him the sash she wore around her waist so he could tie the dragon and lead it back into the town. The people were greatly relieved to see their princess return and the dragon captured.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Climax</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On hearing her pitiable story, Perseus fell in love with her and when the sea monster surfaced to devour his promised meal, Perseus slew him,</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When St George offered to kill the beast if they all converted to Christianity, they duly did so. St George slew the dragon</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Falling action</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">freed Andromeda from her chains</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">and, in gratitude for saving the life of his daughter, the king built a church.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Coda</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">and took her as his bride.</td>
<td style="background-color: rgb(230, 231, 232); border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">From the spot where the dragon fell, issued a stream of life-giving water.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>How do the connections in plot and structure help us understand the differences in the story more clearly?<br><br>
Using the diagram below as stimulus, brainstorm associations and symbols relating to dragons, knights and princesses that are suggested in the story and that you have gathered from your own reading.</p>
<p>  <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2021-07/brainstorm-stimulus.jpg" width="700" height="158" alt="Brainstorm Stimulus diagram">
</p>
<p>Outline your idea of the conventional depiction of these three characters.</p>
<p>The ‘damsel in distress’ is a <a data-entity-substitution="canonical" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="7676141d-31bc-4d29-9bd6-3706b46de242" href="/pdhpe-activites/cruise-control/roadways-reading-glossary" target="_blank" title="Roadways to reading glossary">trope</a> that has echoed from ancient times, through different cultures to the present day. In your group, brainstorm stories you know that feature a version of this trope where a monster cruelly threatens a young girl who is rescued in the nick of time by a shining hero.</p>
<p><strong>Discussion:</strong></p>
<p>Given that these stories have a key similarity, why do we still enjoy them? Do we get more pleasure from their sameness or from their variation?</p>
<p>How does Uccello’s painting, St George and the Dragon, conform to the characteristics you have identified?</p>
<p>  <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2021-07/st-george-and-the-dragon.jpg" width="708" height="545" alt="St George and the Dragon artwork">
</p>
<p>U.A. Fanthorpe’s poem “Not my best side”, inspired by Uccello’s painting, recontextualises the St George and the Dragon story and its main characters into a modern setting.</p>
<p>The poem is available on the internet and can also be found in</p>
<ul>
<li>Richardson P and Watson K ed, (1990) <em>Postcards from Planet Earth</em> Oxford University Press Australia</li>
<li>Watson K ed ,(2013), <em>The Round Earth’s Imagined Corners</em>, Phoenix Education</li>
</ul>
<p>Using the Intertextuality charts on the <a href="/sites/default/files/2021-07/cruise-control-section-3-student-worksheet-perseus-and-andromeda-standard.pdf" target="_blank">Perseus and Andromeda (Std, ES and EAL/D) student worksheet</a>, compare the representation of each of the characters in “Not my best side” to their representation in the painting. Note at least:</p>
<ul>
<li>Three features each has in common and the effects of these similarities on the reader</li>
<li>Three features that are different and the effect of these differences.</li>
</ul>
<p>Discuss in small groups what kind of character is portrayed in each of these vignettes and in what other texts you have previously encountered them.</p>
<p>Give each a suitable name, if they do not have one, and write a brief character description conveying their appearance to indicate something about their attitude to the world.</p>
<p>In “Not my best side”, there are two levels of intertextuality, the first as a direct reference to the Uccello painting and the second is by implied reference character types that are recognisable and, as your discussions have shown, identifiable from contemporary texts.</p>
<p>However, there are further layers of meaning – the ones we take back to the original texts. The poem reflects back on the painting and on the tale. None of these texts is quite the same again for us as each carries resonances of the contemporary poem which explores its less than ‘best side’. Going even further back, the Christian tale of St George echoes the pagan tale of Perseus and Andromeda.&nbsp;</p>
</div>
</details>
<details class="accordion">
<summary class="accordion__title">
<h5>Bringing it all together</h5>
</summary>
<div class="accordion__content details-wrapper">
<p><strong>Class discussion:</strong></p>
<p>Texts echo each other in many ways, including plot, character / type, structure, form, genre, direct or implied reference – sometimes several of these.</p>
<p>Brainstorm texts you have read, viewed or listened to that echo other texts and:</p>
<ul>
<li>identify the intertextual references</li>
<li>group the texts into the kinds of intertextual references made eg plot, character / type, structure, form, genre etc.</li>
<li>discuss why you think composers make use of intertextuality. In your discussion, you will need to explain the effect of the intertextuality in any of the texts mentioned.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Experimenting</strong></p>
<p>Browse the campaign advertisements on the web site and suggest which cultural tales or <a data-entity-substitution="canonical" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="7676141d-31bc-4d29-9bd6-3706b46de242" href="/pdhpe-activites/cruise-control/roadways-reading-glossary" target="_blank" title="Roadways to reading glossary">tropes</a> they indirectly reference. You will find such tropes as wild youth, forlorn lover, the journey, fateful encounters, the call, choice and consequence and many more.</p>
<p>Take one of these stories and use any aspect of it and of the advertisement to create a poster with a cautionary message.</p>
</div>
</details>


<p>Please click on the below button to return to Section page.</p>


Section 3: Roadways to reading

title-left

Contact us

Policies

Teacher login

About

Transport for NSW acknowledges the traditional owners and custodians of the land, and respects Elders past, present and future.

Teaching & learning

Register

The open road - Std, ES and EAL/D

Find out more about road safety education in schools

About

All resources

Activities

Contact us

Policies