Good LC overview

Naomi found this and I thought it was a useful overview. It seems to have been written by a student but I couldn't see anything incorrect except for a punctuation issue - this writer uses apostrophes in plurals sometimes so you get "1700's" and "eponym's" instead of 1700s and eponyms. Another thing to look out for (which I expect you would probably work out but just in case) is that LME stands for 'late modern English' which is the period we are studying (we start in 1700 but LME dates from around 1600 - Shakespeare's era).

Don't admit anything...

The language used to describe a quote or direct speech can influence a reader and/or reveal a bias on behalf of the writer. The verb we use after the quote/speech is a real indicator. Here is an article from The Guardian examining the use of the verb 'admitted' rather than 'said' so-and-so. It might be worth looking at the verb choices on Power/Gender/Language Change texts in the exam to see what they suggest about the writer's view about what was said.

A2 lesson Mon 18th May

Wisdomfulls (as always, read all the instructions before you start!),

please fill in the student feedback questionnaire for English. You will find it in the bottom box of the A2 page. Try and comment wherever possible to contextualise your answers so it is clear what's working, from your point of view, and what isn't. Try and be honest but not harsh if you are disappointed or annoyed by something - you should be able to make your feelings clear without sounding rude and stroppy: people listen to your points much more open-mindedly/sympathetically if they are made without rancour. That is a life skill (influential power).

Don't forget to bring a little food and drink to share for the second half of tomorrow's lesson. I am really going to miss you guys.

We will spend the first half of the lesson talking about the Morris Minor essay that I am taking in to mark today. If you are not in tomorrow, I will leave the essays on my desk for you to pick yours up when you can. If I mark it and you don't come to get it by Friday...

Today, we will spend the first half of the lesson in here; if you finish the questionnaire, please do some reading from my blog or research theories so you can ask me about anything you are not clear on. Then we will go back into the classroom after lunch and finish looking at the 'dancing etiquette' question paper.

Some lovely high level terminology for AS or A2 (derivational morphology)

Saw a sample essay using this really sparkly term for how words move from one word class to another by adding suffixes e.g. having a 'friend' becomes 'friending' someone by adding the suffix 'ing' to change the noun into a verb. Friending is then a neologism (new word) formed by the process of derivational morphology.

A2 will know this process under the Language Change terminology 'conversion' (converting a word from one word class to another but in that process you don't have to add an affix e.g. the proper noun Google becomes the verb to google without any morphological change).

LC - noticing metric vs imperial terms is very important

I still say how heavy I am in stones and pounds and how tall I am in feet and inches and although I do know how tall I am in cm (156), I couldn't tell you in kilograms how heavy I am.

So it is synchronic change happening and it's a long process, as this article from the BBC website reveals.

It is very worth being able to nitice and discuss metric vs imperial terms being used in the exam (even by the symbols e.g. 5', 1") so that you can see evidence of diachronic change and link it into synchronic change in current language use.

Read widely on this.