Communicative functions: Talking about experience

Who or what is involved?

Identifying people, places and things

When we use language to talk about 'what is going on', we need to identify the people, animals, places and things that are involved.

We make sense of the world through language by naming and describing the things around us. We might, for example, want to talk about:

We could refer to these as participants. In order to talk about participants, we usually use nouns:

We might want to give more detailed information about these participants:

what does it look like?
what shape is it?
what colour is it?
how big is it?
how many are there?
who owns it?
... and so on.

To provide more information about the participant, we can use a noun group:

Sometimes we use pronouns to refer to persons, animals, places and things:

Different text types will focus on different types of participants. Stories, for example, tend to focus on named, human participants and perhaps fantasy characters. General descriptions tend to focus on more technical, generalised participants. Arguments often involve abstract meanings, supported by concrete evidence.

For further information on the process of naming and describing, click on the menu on the left: What is happening?: 'Naming and describing'

To find out more about identifying people, places and things, go to the following sections. (To return to this page, use the back button on your browser.) 

Grammar

Here you will find more information about identifying people, animals, places and things by using nouns, noun groups and pronouns. Nouns (eg common/proper; countable/uncountable; singular/plural; days of week; months) Noun groups (eg naming, pointing, saying 'how many', describing, classifying) Pronouns (eg subject; object; possessive) The participants: 'Who or what is involved?' Using the clause to represent experience (eg naming and describing)

Text types

Here you will find examples of texts that focus on different types of people, places and things. Particular Descriptions (eg describing people and things; describing places) General Descriptions (eg identifying and describing; describing people and things; using technical terms) Recounts (eg putting people and things into events) Instructions (eg using countable and uncountable nouns; talking about materials and tools) Stories (eg building a story world; creating characters) Reviews (eg identifying and describing the characters) Explanations (eg identifying and describing people and things in a process) Presenting information (eg captions & labels; lists; signs; TV schedules; weather reports)