Mr. Michael Wilson
IB English A Lang & Lit HL
18 November 2014
Text 1 vs Text 2 The two texts, “Cranes” and “To a Waterfowl” compare and contrast each other. Cranes by Jennifer Ackerman is published in National Geographic, an informative and journalistic magazine article discussing the approach of humans teaching cranes their migration routes. On the contrary, “To a Waterfowl” by William Cullen Bryant is a lyric poem talking about the narrator’s appreciation for bird migration. Both texts are similar in terms of their tone and central idea of bird migration, but differ in terms of their language style, context, purpose, and text type. Text 1 is a science informative article written by an expert, Jennifer Ackerman. This piece is to inform adults, science students, and nature lovers the new methods of crane migration. The article discusses how an endangered group of young cranes are raised in an environment that appears to be natural in the wetlands of Wisconsin but is actually an environment that is man-made to meet the needs of cranes. The author quotes, “As part of an experimental program to reintroduce a wild migratory population of whooping cranes to the eastern half of North America, these chicks have been fed and tended by crane-costumed people for two months.” Clearly, the cranes are monitored by humans, even though the cranes don’t get to see humans, in crane costume. The ultimate goal of the experiment is to train the cranes so they can be released in to the wild and survive. Before they are released in the wild, the cranes are trained to learn their traditional migratory routes. For instance, Operation Migration teaches the birds to fly behind an ultralight plane (flown by a pilot in a crane costume) to migrate to 1,200 km in Florida. Until now, two successful trips have been made by cohorts by thirty six birds. In essence, the beginning success of this experiment has allowed the project to take it a little further, and experiment with