Unseen Text: Taiwan KOM Challenge – A Personal Account

Text Type: Descriptive Passage – Travel Writing – Web Article

Guiding Question: How does the writer use language to present the Tour de Formosa in this article?

Here is a perfect example of a superb Paper 1 text. The piece relates an interesting experience: a challenging road race for deaf cyclists. Most interesting is the writer’s use of language, and you are pointed in this direction by a fairly typical guiding question. Sometimes dramatic, at other times evocative, often informative, and even a tiny bit persuasive to the right kind of reader, the article can be approached in different ways. Read the extract first, then have a look at the model response which focuses on how the writer conveys a mixture of danger and excitement, and how that contributes to the reader’s impression of not only the Tour, but the writer’s courage and daring as well. As this series of model answers provides only one possible response to each text, you may have alternative ideas and approach your analysis in a way that is completely different, but equally valid. This text is exceptionally rich, so you could write a new analysis using entirely different observations and it could be just as successful:

Sample Response:

This passage is written by Daniel Carruthers, a writer from New Zealand who participated in the Tour de Formosa, a seven-day cycling challenge on one of“the world’s top 100 most dangerous roads”. The writer presents the Tour as both challenging and exciting, using descriptive language to portray the challenge and danger of the road itself, dramatic language to break down the action of the race, and imagery to portray the scenery as beautiful, almost other-worldly. Through this presentation, as a participant in the Tour, the writer comes across as daring and adventurous, prepared to take risks in order to fulfil a dream and tick the Tour de Formosa off his “bucket list.”

Firstly, Carruthers combines impressive facts about the road with descriptive imagery that accentuates the Tour de Formosa’s difficulty and danger. The reader discovers the “total ascent of 3,500m” and at one point the racers must complete “70km of solid climbing.” These statistics have been chosen because they illustrate the difficulty of the Tour and outline the challenge clearly for readers. However, to bring the ordeal more vividly to life, Carruthers combines statistics with descriptive imagery of the road: “the road snakes its way around the edges of the gorge with a gaping drop below.” The twisting shape of the road is bought to life through the verb ‘snakes’, a word that also connotes danger as snakes are symbolically dangerous and unpredictable creatures. The description of the ‘gaping drop’ uses hyperbole to emphasise the danger looming at the side of the road should the riders veer off course. This style of writing extends to the dangers posed by traffic on the road as well: at one point Carruthers reports:“a car nearly clipped me.” The use of diction such as ‘clipped’ and ‘plight’ dramatizes this incident and contributes to the sense of imminent danger coming from all sides when one is on the Tour. Overall, the challenge of the road itself, combined with the dangers coming from either side, are expressed in factual and descriptive ways, amplifying the drama and danger of the Tour.

The drama of the Tour de Formosa intensifies through descriptions of the action of the race itself, which Carruthers breaks down in detail for the reader to imagine. For example, he describes the start of the race as: “the pack just surged forward.” This line creates the impression that the cyclists are bunched together closely, like wolves in a pack, and the energy of the pack is released in a wave (‘surged’) like a natural, irresistible force. However, as a high-level competitor, the writer establishes how he was able to assert himself amongst the chaos: “launching one of my trade-mark suicide attacks” and “picking off blown riders one by one” are written in an expressive style that conveys the exhilaration of the rider as he overtakes others through his own skill and daring. The choice of language (‘suicide’) suggests Carruthers’ own daring by framing his manoeuvres as ‘life-or-death’, while ‘picking off’ and ‘attacks’ use the language of war, as if the writer is a sniper methodically taking down his enemies one by one. Therefore, through descriptions of the action of the race, Carruthers not only presents the race itself as exciting and dramatic, but conveys his own skill and daring at the same time.

Finally, through descriptions of the mountain scenery, Carruthers paints himself as a daring ‘explorer’ of faraway lands, capable of appreciating both danger and beauty. Beauty is conveyed directly in line 16 as “stunningly beautiful” where the adjective ‘stunning’ suggests the view has a physical effect, stopping him in his tracks. Later his perspective widens and vivid adjectives and sensory images combine in descriptions like “lush green native bush” which uses a visual description alongside ‘lush’ to imply density and texture as well. The word ‘native’ stands out as it’s a word someone would choose when writing from an outsider’s perspective. It helps readers appreciate that the writer is a visitor, almost like an old fashioned explorer, risking his life to adventure in faraway lands. Just like when he writes about the road, descriptions of scenery mix beauty with danger. We see “large twisted gaunt old trees straight out of the Goblin forest”, a line that wouldn’t be out of place in a fairy tale, complete with supernatural creatures (Goblins, like snakes, are traditionally associated with evil) and a distorted ‘twisted’ landscape, hinting at hidden dangers lurking in the depths of the trees. The photograph at the top of the page compliments this impression nicely: taken from a wide angle, the frame is filled with a dramatic sheer cliff face and shows riders coming out of a tunnel as if they have just emerged from an ‘underground kingdom’. Therefore, the writer combines vivid sensory imagery with a well-chosen photograph to portray the scenery as beautiful and also dangerous, playing in to the presentation of himself as a daring adventurer in a faraway, exotic land.

In conclusion, the article combines vivid descriptive language and images with facts about the road, impressions of the scenery, and an action-packed narrative to convey the Tour de Formosa as difficult, dangerous, and daring. As a result, he portrays himself as a daredevil, taking risks so that he can conquer the “epic climb” and achieve one of his lifetime dreams.