What should go into your coursework Task 1
Introduction
State topic
Say why you chose it
Say why it is important to look into/listen to
Main
what theories exist?
how will you collect data?
how will you go about analysing the data (methodology)?
what might you find at the end of it?
what are the challenges?
Conclusion
You will take questions/suggest
Key things to remember
You are speaking to an audience of fellow students. So write it as a speech not an essay. Refer to theories and use some terminology but not too much. You will have a discussion afterwards with suggestions from students and teachers. You will then incorporate these into your task 2. You will hand in your task 1 speech and powerpoint slides the following week.
Monday 12 December 2011
Monday 19 September 2011
Tuesday 24 May 2011
1066 and all that... History of English Site
This is a really good web site that contains all the key information that you need to know for the context bit of the exam. Whilst it is worth looking at Beowulf, Old English, 1066 and Middle English, remember that the texts in the exam tend to come from 1500s earliest, so perhaps start looking in more detail at Shakespeare, then American, Plain and Modern.
1066andallthat
Here's a timeline from the page with the main phases of English. Click on the image to enlarge. Start with Germanic tribes invade.
1066andallthat
Here's a timeline from the page with the main phases of English. Click on the image to enlarge. Start with Germanic tribes invade.
How to Approach the Language Diversity Question
Question 1a
Question 1b
Englang a2 exam q1a
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Question 1b
Tackling question 1b
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Language Change Quiz
Wednesday 18 May 2011
Technical Terms Test
Try to answer the following questions on linguistic terms. Then check your answers by scrolling down.
1) A verb used to help the main verb. E.g. Do you believe?
2) Using more words than is strictly necessary.
3) A key grammatical unit. Formed when a noun is linked to a verb.
4) The words ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’.
5) Moving a word to the front of a sentence to give it prominence.
6) Words or phrases that are part of conversational language, often figurative
and often difficult for non-native speaker.
7) A command verb.
8) The way words change their form to show, for example, that they are singular or plural.
9) When a word, usually noun or verb is changed by the addition of another word or phrase.
10) The study of spelling.
11) All that is written about the subject of a sentence. E.g. He played forty times for England.
12) The basic information about a text. E.g. Author, when it was written, genre etc.
13) The style of a text, which is determined by the context. E.g. The style of the Times is different to the Sun. It can be informal or scientific. Etc.
14) The core part of a word to which prefixes and suffixes are added.
15) The history of words.
16) The study of how words combine to form phrases, clauses and sentences.
17) A stem, together with any affixes that depend on it and possibly other stems (as part of a compound stem), which can be pronounced by itself in normal use of a language, e.g. in response to a question.
18) Some words in a sentence have little or no meaning of their own but instead refer to other words in the same or other sentences.
19) A ____ is a sequence of paragraphs that represents an extended unit of speech. (From Latin word for ‘to weave’)
20) –noun
1. the omission of a vowel, consonant, or syllable in pronunciation.
2. (in verse) the omission of a vowel at the end of one word when the next word begins with a vowel, as th'orient.
The Answers:
1) A verb used to help the main verb. E.g. Do you believe? auxiliary
2) Using more words that is strictly necessary. circumlocution
3) A key grammatical unit. Formed when a noun is linked to a verb. clause
4) The words ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’. article
5) Moving a word to the front of a sentence to give it prominence. foregrounding
6) Words or phrases that are part of conversational language, often figurative
and often difficult for non-native speaker. idioms
7) A command verb. imperative
8) The way words change their form to show, for example, that they are singular or plural. inflection
9) When a word, usually noun or verb is changed by the addition of another word or phrase. modification
10) The study of spelling. orthography
11) All that is written about the subject of a sentence. E.g. He played forty times for England. predicate
12) The basic information about a text. E.g. Author, when it was written, genre etc. provenance
13) The style of a text, which is determined by the context. E.g. The style of the Times is different to the Sun. It can be informal or scientific. Etc. register
14) The core part of a word to which prefixes and suffixes are added. stem
15) The history of words. etymology
16) The study of how words combine to form phrases, clauses and sentences. syntax
17) A stem, together with any affixes that depend on it and possibly other stems (as part of a compound stem), which can be pronounced by itself in normal use of a language, e.g. in response to a question. word
18) Some words in a sentence have little or no meaning of their own but instead refer to other words in the same or other sentences. Anaphoric reference
19) A sequence of paragraphs that represents an extended unit of speech. (From Latin word for ‘to weave’) text
20) –noun
1. the omission of a vowel, consonant, or syllable in pronunciation.
2. (in verse) the omission of a vowel at the end of one word when the next word begins with a vowel, as th'orient. elision
Monday 16 May 2011
Sample Queston 1a) The School Letter and 1b)
Click on the images to see the sample question and the texts a, b and c. Give yourself 25 mins at most on section 1a and about 1 hour 15 mins on question 1b. 
Thursday 7 April 2011
Wednesday 6 April 2011
Friday 1 April 2011
Analyse Newspaper Headlines
Go to UKFrontpages, a site that brings together the main UK newspapers in one place. Have a go at analysing the headlines of one tabloid and one broadsheet and comparing them. Focus on lexis, grammar and discourse.
UK front pages
Thursday 31 March 2011
BBC article on Language and Technology
An article from last year on the BBC site on how technology affects everyday language.
How the internet is changing language
Language and Technology Site
Andrew Moore's site contains a lot of info on technology and language issues. Skim read most of it and focus on more relevant sections such as Technology and the lexicon, and Web Pages.
Language and Technology
Wednesday 30 March 2011
6 Verbs for the next 20 Years
Following on from discussions in class about where technology might go in the future (as part of the Language of Technology unit) have a look at this blog entry: The 6 Verbs For The Next 20 Years Of The Connected World
Article on Global English and Technology
Some information on the role of the internet and media in the development and spread of English is dealt with in an article called Bilingualism in the mass media and on the Internet by Jannis Androutsopoulos:
Click here
Wednesday 23 March 2011
Global Language Maps
You can view language maps made by students here. Click on the maps to expand. Credits will appear here later.
Crystal on Language and the Internet
Go to the first chapter of Crystal's book on Language and the Internet.
Then, go to page 7 on the pdf document below and answer the questions on Crystal's chapter. (don't forget to click on the full screen icon or you won't be able to read it)
Then, go to page 7 on the pdf document below and answer the questions on Crystal's chapter. (don't forget to click on the full screen icon or you won't be able to read it)
Wednesday 2 February 2011
Thursday 27 January 2011
Wednesday 12 January 2011
Work for Thursday 13th Jan for Year 13 Language
We will be moving on to the next topic soon: Prescriptivism (Issues around the use of Standard English). Do the following tasks for next week to get a head start...
Read the Wikipedia page on Linguistic Prescriptivism and make notes.
Then, look at the following quotes from ch 9 of Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue and answer the following questions. Write a paragraph on each and use any other info you can find.
1)Why is it absurd to base English grammar on Latin?
2)Explain the problem with ending a sentence with a preposition and splitting the infinitive.
3)What is the difference between a prescriptive or descriptive approach to language?
• Consider the parts of speech. In Latin, the verb has up to 120 inflections. In English it never has more than five (e.g. see, sees, saw, seeing, seen) and often gets by with just three (hit, hits, hitting). [...] According to any textbook, the present tense of the verb drive is drive. Every secondary school pupil knows that. Yet if we say, "I used to drive to work but now I don't", we are clearly using the present tense drive in the past tense sense. Equally if we say, "I will drive you to work tomorrow", we are using it in a future sense. And if we say, "I would drive if I could afford to", we are using it in a conditional sense. In fact, almost the only form of sentence in which we cannot use the present tense form for drive is, yes, the present sense. When we need to indicate an action going on right now, we must use the participal form driving. We don't say, "I drive the car now", but rather, "I'm driving the car now". Not to put too fine a point on it, the labels are largely meaningless.
[p. 125]
________________________________________
• English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminologies are based on Latin -- a language with which it has precious little in common. [...] Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football. It is a patent absurdity. But once this insane notion became established grammarians found themselves having to draw up ever more complicated and circular arguments to accommodate the inconsistencies. As Burchfield notes in The English Language, one authority, F. Th. Visser, found it necessary to devote 200 pages to discussing just one aspect of the present participle. That is as crazy as it is amazing.
[p. 128]
________________________________________
• Consider the curiously persistent notion that sentences should not end with a preposition. The source of the stricture, and several other equally dubious ones, was one Robert Lowth, an eighteenth-century clergyman and amateur grammarian whose A Short Introduction to English Grammar, published in 1762, enjoyed a long and distressingly influential life both in his native England and abroad. It is to Lowth we can trace many a pedant's more treasured notions: the belief that you must say different from rather than different to or different than, the idea that two negatives make a positive, the rule that you must not say "the heaviest of the two objects", but rather, "the heavier", the distinction between shall and will, and the clearly nonsensical belief that between can only apply to two things and among to more than two.
[p. 132-133]
________________________________________
• Until the eighteenth century it was correct to say "you was" if you were referring to one person. It sounds off today, but the logic is impeccable. Was is a singular verb and were a plural one. Why should you take a plural verb when the sense is clearly singular? The answer -- surprise, surprise -- is that Robert Lowth didn't like it. "I'm hurrying, are I not?" is hopelessly ungrammatical, but "I'm hurrying, aren't I?" -- merely a contraction of the same words -- is perfect English. [...] There's no inherent reason why these things should be so. They are not defensible in terms of grammar They are because they are.
Nothing illustrates the scope for prejudice in English better than the issue of a split infinitive. Some people feel ridiculously strongly about it. When the British Conservative politician Jock Bruce-Gardyne was economic secretary to the Treasury in the early 1980s, he returned unread any departmental correspondence containing a split infinitive. (It should perhaps be pointed out that a split infinitive is one in which an adverb comes between to and a verb, as in to quickly look.) I can think of two very good reasons for not splitting an infinitive:
1. Because you feel the rules of English ought to conform to the grammatical precepts of a language that died a thousand years ago.
2. Because you wish to cling to a pointless affectation of usage that is without the support of any recognized authority of the last 200 years, even at the cost of composing sentences that are ambiguous, inelegant, and patently contorted.
[p. 135]
________________________________________
• A perennial argument with dictionary makers is whether they should be prescriptive (that is, whether they should prescribe how language should be used) or descriptive (that is, merely describe how it is used without taking a position). [...] The American Heritage Dictionary, first published in 1969, instituted a panel of distinguished commentators to rule on contentious points of usage, which are discussed, often at some length, in the text. But others have been more equivocal (or prudent or spineless depending on how you view it). The revised Random House Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1987, accepts the looser meanings of most words, though often noting that the newer usage is frowned on "by many" -- a curiously timid approach that acknowledges the existence of expert opinion and yet constantly places it at a distance. [...] It even accepts kudo as a singular -- prompting a reviewer from Time magazine to ask if one instance of pathos should now be a patho.
It's a fine issue. One of the undoubted virtues of English is that it is a fluid and democratic language in which meanings shift and change in response to the pressures of common usage rather than the dictates of committees. It is a natural process that has been going on for centuries. To interfere with that process is arguably both arrogant and futile, since clearly the weight of usage will push new meanings into currency no matter how many authorities hurl themselves into the path of change.
But at the same time, it seems to me, there is a case for resisting change -- at least slapdash change. [...] clarity is generally better served if we agree to observe a distinction between imply and infer, forego and forgo, fortuitous and fortunate, uninterested and disinterested, and many others. As John Ciardi observed, resistance may in the end prove futile, but at least it tests the changes and makes them prove their worth.
Perhaps for our last words on the subject of usage we should turn to the last words of the venerable French grammarian, Dominique Bonhours, who proved on his deathbed that a grammarians work is never done when he gazed at those gathered loyally around him and whispered: "I am about to -- or I am going to -- die; either expression is used."
[p. 136-137]
________________________________________
Read the Wikipedia page on Linguistic Prescriptivism and make notes.
Then, look at the following quotes from ch 9 of Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue and answer the following questions. Write a paragraph on each and use any other info you can find.
1)Why is it absurd to base English grammar on Latin?
2)Explain the problem with ending a sentence with a preposition and splitting the infinitive.
3)What is the difference between a prescriptive or descriptive approach to language?
• Consider the parts of speech. In Latin, the verb has up to 120 inflections. In English it never has more than five (e.g. see, sees, saw, seeing, seen) and often gets by with just three (hit, hits, hitting). [...] According to any textbook, the present tense of the verb drive is drive. Every secondary school pupil knows that. Yet if we say, "I used to drive to work but now I don't", we are clearly using the present tense drive in the past tense sense. Equally if we say, "I will drive you to work tomorrow", we are using it in a future sense. And if we say, "I would drive if I could afford to", we are using it in a conditional sense. In fact, almost the only form of sentence in which we cannot use the present tense form for drive is, yes, the present sense. When we need to indicate an action going on right now, we must use the participal form driving. We don't say, "I drive the car now", but rather, "I'm driving the car now". Not to put too fine a point on it, the labels are largely meaningless.
[p. 125]
________________________________________
• English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminologies are based on Latin -- a language with which it has precious little in common. [...] Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football. It is a patent absurdity. But once this insane notion became established grammarians found themselves having to draw up ever more complicated and circular arguments to accommodate the inconsistencies. As Burchfield notes in The English Language, one authority, F. Th. Visser, found it necessary to devote 200 pages to discussing just one aspect of the present participle. That is as crazy as it is amazing.
[p. 128]
________________________________________
• Consider the curiously persistent notion that sentences should not end with a preposition. The source of the stricture, and several other equally dubious ones, was one Robert Lowth, an eighteenth-century clergyman and amateur grammarian whose A Short Introduction to English Grammar, published in 1762, enjoyed a long and distressingly influential life both in his native England and abroad. It is to Lowth we can trace many a pedant's more treasured notions: the belief that you must say different from rather than different to or different than, the idea that two negatives make a positive, the rule that you must not say "the heaviest of the two objects", but rather, "the heavier", the distinction between shall and will, and the clearly nonsensical belief that between can only apply to two things and among to more than two.
[p. 132-133]
________________________________________
• Until the eighteenth century it was correct to say "you was" if you were referring to one person. It sounds off today, but the logic is impeccable. Was is a singular verb and were a plural one. Why should you take a plural verb when the sense is clearly singular? The answer -- surprise, surprise -- is that Robert Lowth didn't like it. "I'm hurrying, are I not?" is hopelessly ungrammatical, but "I'm hurrying, aren't I?" -- merely a contraction of the same words -- is perfect English. [...] There's no inherent reason why these things should be so. They are not defensible in terms of grammar They are because they are.
Nothing illustrates the scope for prejudice in English better than the issue of a split infinitive. Some people feel ridiculously strongly about it. When the British Conservative politician Jock Bruce-Gardyne was economic secretary to the Treasury in the early 1980s, he returned unread any departmental correspondence containing a split infinitive. (It should perhaps be pointed out that a split infinitive is one in which an adverb comes between to and a verb, as in to quickly look.) I can think of two very good reasons for not splitting an infinitive:
1. Because you feel the rules of English ought to conform to the grammatical precepts of a language that died a thousand years ago.
2. Because you wish to cling to a pointless affectation of usage that is without the support of any recognized authority of the last 200 years, even at the cost of composing sentences that are ambiguous, inelegant, and patently contorted.
[p. 135]
________________________________________
• A perennial argument with dictionary makers is whether they should be prescriptive (that is, whether they should prescribe how language should be used) or descriptive (that is, merely describe how it is used without taking a position). [...] The American Heritage Dictionary, first published in 1969, instituted a panel of distinguished commentators to rule on contentious points of usage, which are discussed, often at some length, in the text. But others have been more equivocal (or prudent or spineless depending on how you view it). The revised Random House Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1987, accepts the looser meanings of most words, though often noting that the newer usage is frowned on "by many" -- a curiously timid approach that acknowledges the existence of expert opinion and yet constantly places it at a distance. [...] It even accepts kudo as a singular -- prompting a reviewer from Time magazine to ask if one instance of pathos should now be a patho.
It's a fine issue. One of the undoubted virtues of English is that it is a fluid and democratic language in which meanings shift and change in response to the pressures of common usage rather than the dictates of committees. It is a natural process that has been going on for centuries. To interfere with that process is arguably both arrogant and futile, since clearly the weight of usage will push new meanings into currency no matter how many authorities hurl themselves into the path of change.
But at the same time, it seems to me, there is a case for resisting change -- at least slapdash change. [...] clarity is generally better served if we agree to observe a distinction between imply and infer, forego and forgo, fortuitous and fortunate, uninterested and disinterested, and many others. As John Ciardi observed, resistance may in the end prove futile, but at least it tests the changes and makes them prove their worth.
Perhaps for our last words on the subject of usage we should turn to the last words of the venerable French grammarian, Dominique Bonhours, who proved on his deathbed that a grammarians work is never done when he gazed at those gathered loyally around him and whispered: "I am about to -- or I am going to -- die; either expression is used."
[p. 136-137]
________________________________________
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