Family Holiday, from Phenomena. Extract from a short story.
Written by S Daly,

Identify TWO events that the writer suggests might be dangerous.

• When the person was on the swing bridge
• The shelf in the lagoon

Onomatopoeia
Waves crashed down and sucked everything away

The writer uses onomatopoeia to develop her feelings about their family holiday in the story because the sound of the waves ‘crashing’ and ‘sucking’ are quite violent words. We can tell that she is maybe upset about how her sisters jandal has been lost because of these words. The word ‘sucking’ may show how their hope about retrieving the jandal has gone.

A) Identify two language features that develop the narrators feelings about the holiday. Give an example of each:
Onomatopoeia
Waves crashed down and sucked everything away

Personification
A wave leapt up onto the beach

B) Discuss how your chosen language features along with others in the text develop an emotional theme for the family holiday:
The writer uses onomatopoeia to develop her feelings about their family holiday in the story because the sound of the waves ‘crashing’ and ‘sucking’ are quite violent words. We can tell that she is maybe upset about how her sisters jandal has been lost because of these negative words. The word ‘sucking’ may show how their hope about retrieving the jandal has gone, like their hope has been sucked away by the wave. The personification uses the word leapt, this word describes a sudden movement. The sudden movement could be from a fright. There is an emotional theme in this short story of a scared or worried girl. We can also see this when she is on the swing bridge and when they are driving on the second to last day.