Illness

Sorry everyone,

I seem to have flu. Can't remember the last time I was this ill. Setting work has been a problem but I really am doing my best to think about what will move your learning forward. When I can think straight at all.

Hope to see you Friday but we will have to see.

Halla

A2 computer room lesson 28/9/15

Investigatives,

please blog about your coursework ideas. Include the following (and anything else relevant):

• hypothesis to test (someone's theory about what you will find in the type of language you are investigation) - phrase it as a statement e.g. A different consumer will be built in adverts for ready meals sold at different price points (based on Fairclough)' or 'The language of young women discussing both 'male' and 'female' topics will show Lakoff's deficit features.' you do not have to believe that this will be the case - it is for you to TEST/explore.
• a description of what you are planning to collect and why, showing evaluation of the complexities/difficulties of data selection and exploring what sample data might tell you/has told you
• what type of investigation you are doing e.g. experiment, longitudinal study etc? (Remember the Powerpoint?). Are you thinking of using any additional data e.g. a questionnaire? Why?
• any questions or sub-headings you might choose to structure your analysis and what they might help you explore
• any issues you expect to come up and how you will handle that in the analysis/evaluation
• what your media text could be about and how that links to the theory area you are using
• any questions you have that someone might help you answer, help you need

read and comment on the ideas of others. What do you predict they might find? What seems exciting and why? What problems can you forsee that they could consider? How does it connect/contrast with what you are doing? What help can you offer, if any?

We will soon be writing methodologies to ensure that you collect your data appropriately, so plan that for homework for next Friday: how can you show you have considered the complexities of the data pool you are collecting from? What exact steps are you taking to ensure that your data is comparable/reliable/ethical?

edit: because I am ill and won't be there, I expect to find your comments on at LEAST two other posts and for you to talk to each other about your sample data so we can have shorter, more focussed conversations when I get back - if you really need to, email me but I am a too poorly to do much at the computer, although I will check my email during the lesson. Good luck.

AS computer room lesson 22/9/15

Creatives,

job 1 (after you have read all the instructions on this post) is to finish your articles or get as close to that as possible, polish what you've got and add a comment about what you still think you could have improved on by 11:20.

Job 2 is to read my post about John Hegley.

Job 3 is to check your timetables for the week starting the 28th to check for any AIP lessons may have appeared.

Job 4 is to input targets and tasks onto Civica for English and a TAG (grade you'd like to aim at) if it will let you.

Job 5 is to follow all the blogs on the list I am sending around by clicking on the orange B square to get to the 'dashboard', finding the 'reading list', clicking on the 'add' button, copying and pasting the first address, clicking 'add', copying the next address in, repeat until you have done a few, click 'follow' and then start the process again for the next batch. Don't do them all at once because it is very frustrating if it goes wrong in the middle.

Then start reading and commenting constructively and politely on one another's blogs. Do that regularly as part of your independent work outside class 9as well as keeping up with my posts). I will be interested to see your comments and how constructive/perceptive and lovely they are! Or if you want to start with basic comments, that's fine - but don't be afraid of putting your ideas out there because everyone feels unsure about whether what they are saying is any good. It is.

Poet John Hegley talk and/or worksop tues 29th Sept

Wonderful poet (etc.) John Hegley as been invited to talk and run a writing workshop. Get tickets in finance for the £3 11.30 talk (you can get out of lessons - even mine, first years!) or the £10 1pm workshop (see posters for further details). Get your behinds down there if you are intersted in writing.  Here's one of his poems and a link to more:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/inplace/

Love Cuts

Love cuts
love juts out
and you walk right into it.

Love cuts
love comes and goes
love's a rose
first you smell the flower
then the thorn gets up your nostril
love gives you the chocolates
and then love gives you the chop
it doesn't like to linger.

Love cuts
love shuts up shop
and shuts it on your finger

Love cuts
love's very sharp
a harpoon through an easy chair
a comb of honey in your hair
just wait until the bees come home
and find you just relaxing there.

Love cuts, love guts the fish
of what you wish for
and leaves it in the airing cupboard.

Love cuts
love huts fall down
as all the walls get falser.

Love cuts
Love struts around on stilts of balsa
wood love cuts
love gives you a sweeping bow
then ploughs a furrow deep above your eyebrow
love cuts
love curtseys
then nuts you
where it really hurtseys.

Love cuts
love butts in
When you're in full flow
and you're so glad
your heart's aglow.

But like it comes
it likes to go
without so much as a cheerio
and you miss it so
until next time.


Copyright: John Hegley.

AS Language 21/9/15 writing an article

Clevernesses,

using the research you did in the computer room last Tues and this article as inspiration (and your own knowledge), write an article about how language is changing due to the way young people are using it. Post to your blog by the end of the lesson. I am doing 1-1s so bring your folder to show me all your work so far and particularly bring the initial assessment.

• try and write for the same audience as the article above does but don't plagiarise by just changing what's there a little - write about a new focus or idea using some of the same techniques (e.g. write about a particular gender or age group or social media or dialect or sociolect etc.). Really think about what the audience needs/wants/knows/expects (properly consider the GRAPE at the planning stage)
• remember what Gorman taught us about headlines, engaging the audience and surprises
• use all the conventions of that genre e.g. headline, picture/caption, byline, strapline, structure

This is the kind of directed writing you will need to do in the exam, so have a go and then you can work on the areas you find difficult as we move forward. If you are really stuck for ideas, do some more research.

Terminology test (A2s will have a good chance but anyone can have a go)

I posted this a while back but many of you won't have seen it. There were two I couldn't call to mind in the time...

A2 computer room lesson 21/9/15 synthetic phonics

Here's an article from 1999 outlining the phonics approaches, one of which is still championed today in some circles.

From the article, establish what 'phonics' is and how approaches differ. Look up what 'sic' means if you are not sure. Does the article seem pro- or anti-phonics?

Do some research into what opponents of a pure synthetic phonics approach say (and add to your notes about phonics) about how children learn to read.

Post your understanding of what phonics is, its advantages, and the alternatives with a bibliography and some recommended links. Try and get an impression of what the most up-to-date thinking is.

AS Language computer room lesson 15/09/15

Splendids,

to start with, please find the grammar test a few posts down - it is what Y6 are tested on but if you get 14/14 show me and I will be marvellously impressed! Find out where you went wrong otherwise and set yourself some tasks to practise grammar in your independent study time (note that's spelt se not ce - anyone know why? Comment below!).

Next, read the article re-produced at the bottom of this post and then do some research into how diversity in spoken language is being valued or de-valued. Summarise those articles on your blog with links to the texts (if they are free to access) or a Harvard-referenced bibliography if the article is from somewhere like emagazine (EXTREMELY USEFUL SOURCE! Find the login information in the top box - course resources - of our AS English Language Moodle page). Really think about what you can google to generate some interesting articles. You will need to write similar articles yourselves in the exam (shorter ones, obvs) and you will need to refer to examples in the exams of how language changes and why, prescriptive attitudes to language, gender issues in language etc.

All raait! It’s a new black-white lingo Steven Swinford and Laura St Quinton Sunday Times 11/12/05

LINGUISTS have identified Britain’s first multi-ethnic dialect — a variant of English that includes words and sounds from cockney, Jamaican creole, Bengali and other languages. The dialect is becoming the standard way for teenagers of different ethnic groups to communicate across the racial divide. While it may be baffling to teachers and parents, researchers believe it will spread outside its urban heartlands and become a firm part of everyday English over the next 20 years. Professor Paul Kerswill, a sociolinguist at Lancaster University who led the study, said: “Inner-city Londoners are using a new kind of English as their everyday speech, their completely internalised way of speaking, parallel to a local dialect like cockney or geordie. “In one group we had students from white Anglo backgrounds along with those with Arab, South American, Ghanaian and Portuguese backgrounds and all spoke with the same dialect.” Kerswill said there was some evidence similar ways of speaking were emerging in multicultural cities such as Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester. “We think some of the features of this multi-ethnic kind of speech will become more mainstream through force of numbers with migration, and because it is fashionable and cool,” he said. “In central London a home-grown variety of English is appearing now among people who want to mark themselves out culturally and socially. Their speech is something that’s entirely new.” The spread of the dialect is being encouraged by a wave of successful London rap stars such as Lady Sovereign and Dizzee Rascal. A recent hit single by MIA, a Sri Lankan-born rapper who was raised on a council estate in Hounslow, west London, has the following lyrics: “London calling, speak the slang now/ Boys say wha gwan (what’s going on), girls say wh’what (what what) slam, galang (hot) galang galang.” The slang spreads as the music is broadcast on national radio stations. G Money, a DJ at 1Xtra, the BBC youth radio station, said: “Music is responsible for its spread, especially with stations like 1Xtra playing it on a national basis instead of the local pirate stations. “I was in Watford (Hertfordshire) the other day, which you don’t see as the hippest place, but the kids on the street corner were no different from the kids that hang around in London. They all dress the same and speak the same — isn’t that a beautiful thing?” Kerswill’s team first identified the dialect at an inner-city college in Hackney, east London, during a three-year research programme into teenage English. The £275,000 study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, involved analysing the conversation of 32 teenagers aged 16 to 18. Half were from white British backgrounds and half from immigrant families. The team, which included four linguistic experts from Lancaster and from Queen Mary College, University of London, found all the students used the same multi-ethnic dialect, regardless of their background. The accent was peppered with different influences. The word “face”, for example, was pronounced as the longer “feeece”, which researchers believe is West Indian in origin. When saying “pound” the students reverted to the traditional cockney pronunciation of “paaand”, while instead of “right” they used “raait”, a pronunciation which bears more resemblance to Yorkshire or Lancashire accents than any immigrant varieties. The vocabulary included words originating from the Indian subcontinent such as “nang”, meaning good, and “creps” for trainers, a word which probably comes from Jamaica, as does “crib” for home and “ends” meaning area. Traditional cockney words such as “manor”, also meaning home, were still in use. The multi-ethnic dialect is replacing traditional cockney in the East End of London, which is now more likely to be heard in Essex towns such as Basildon and Harlow, where many East Enders relocated. Some concerns have, however, emerged over the use of the dialect. At Lilian Baylis school in south London, the patois has been banned from the classroom as part of a government pilot project to improve results. Pupils are taught such dialects are only acceptable in certain circumstances, not including essays or debates. “The language in the formal world of work is standard English. Where children drop into anything that isn’t standard they are picked up on it,” said Gary Phillips, the head teacher. He added, however: “We’re not trying to devalue patois, we’re trying to teach the kids that there is a time and a place for it.”

 http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/article209405.ece      last accessed 14/9/15

A2 computer room lesson in C7 14th Sept

Marvellousnesses,

I will be with you as soon as I can (childcare issues) so here’s what I’d like you to do:

Find the grammar test a few posts down and have a go. Let me know how you did when I get there. Look up any of the terms/concepts you got wrong and learn them. 

Research Chomsky and/or Skinner and/or Bruner’s ideas about how children acquire language – put a summary (you can use quotes in the summary but some of it must be you paraphrasing what is said) of what some different articles (not summary sites although you can whip through those first to get an overview) say about their ideas. You could use articles/chapters from newspapers or emagazine or Jstor etc. Put Harvard-referenced bibliographies into your posts.

This work will help you develop your ideas about CLA theory (including how to challenge the theories) and also prepare for the 'media text' element of you coursework where you paraphrase linguistic ideas to make them suitable for non-specialists (non-linguists).

See you soon.

Spoken language in written form - add your examples

Mixed-mode texts (containing spoken as well as written features) are the norm rather than the exception in many of the texts we are exposed to daily (see Fairclough's 'informalisation' theory). Please keep your eyes open to spot published texts that write to the audience almost as if speaking to them (don't quote people's private writing e.g. from facebook; use shop signs, adverts, articles etc.).

Please comment below giving the quote, the form and where you saw it e.g. A billboard for Thatcher's around Bristol says "What cider's supposed to taste like."

If it was a formal written text, you wouldn't expect to see the contraction, you would see 'cider is' - for me it creates the effect of a friend giving a recommendation and intimating that I ought to try it so that I would know what authentic cider is. The company seems to be opening a dialogue to get people talking about the product. If the contraction were not used, it might seem like a boast from the company and appear inherently untrustworthy.

If you can, do some analysis like I just did on why the informality/directness of the spoken form is used. Try and be tentative about the possible effects.

PAID WRITING WORK for student journalists!

Check out this link here from the NUS, all you aspiring journalists!

Gendered pronouns and language change

Academically, there is a problem to overcome in analysing texts when you don't know what gender the writer is - 'The writer uses a powerful metaphor: he/she/they uses..?' The use of 'they' is gaining ground but it can be confusing, sound ungrammatical and there are other issues with this 'gap' in our language (Sweden have just filled the same gap in their language by adding 'hen' to 'hon' (she) and 'han' (he)). For example, just like the issue with choosing between Ms/Mr/Mrs/Miss for non-binary gender identities or taking issue with the terms for feminist reasons, read this post on how an American university is dealing with the form-filling all students have to do.

I read a science fiction book at about your age called 'Golden Witchbreed' where the gender of children was not disclosed until puberty and they were all referred to as "ke". Would "ke" work or is "ze", "xe" or something else more convincing?

How newspapers spin real speech into headlines

This is a good example of how what someone said can be 'spun' to give a certain impression about them. We look at representation in English Language, so look at how Corbyn is being represented both in this text and in the headlines.

Paraprosdokians

These are phrases (often used by comedians) where the second half doesn't go where the first half leads you to expect it will, leading you to reinterpret what was said in the first half. The Marx brothers were very fond of these e.g. Groucho Mark said "Ive had a perfectly wonderful evening but this wasn't it." which leads you to believe he was complimenting the party he attended but turns (at the conjunction "but") into an insult about the soiree - the unexpectedness of it because it plays on a commonly used polite phrase is what is intended to create the humour and make it memorable.

I found this on facebook, so I've no idea who wrote or collected them. Some are better than others...

Paraprosdokians
(Winston Churchill loved them) are figures of speech in which the
latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected;
frequently humorous. 
 
 
1.  Where there's a will, I want to be in it. 


  2.  The last thing I want to do is
hurt you. But it's still on my list. 


  3.  Since light travels faster than
sound, some people appear bright until you hear them
speak. 

  4.  If I agreed with
you, we'd both be wrong. 

 
5.  We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in
public. 

  6.  War does not
determine who is right - only who is left. 


  7.  Knowledge is knowing a tomato is
a fruit . . . Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. 


  8.  To steal ideas from one person is
plagiarism. To steal from many is research. 


  9.  I didn't say it was your fault, I
said I was blaming you. 

 
10.  In filling out an application, where it says, 'In
case of emergency, Notify:' I put  'DOCTOR'. 


  11.  Women will never be equal to men
until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer
gut, and still think they are sexy  . 


  12.  You do not need a parachute to
skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice. 


  13.  I used to be indecisive. Now I'm
not so sure. 

  14.  To be
sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit
the target. 

  15.  Going to
church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a
garage makes you a mechanic. 

 
16.  You're never too old to learn something
stupid. 

  17. 
I'm supposed to respect my elders, but its getting
harder
and harder for me to find one now. 

 

  
18. The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets
the cheese.

19.
Do not argue with an idiot; he will
drag you down to his level and beat you with
experience.

Grammar support

Here's Bristol University's grammar support page.

If you want to work on grammar basics and really go back to the start, here's BBC's Bitesize page on word classes (also called word types or 'parts of speech'). You will also need to know about abstract nouns and that 'articles' are part of a larger word-class called determiners very early on.

You can get lots of grammar guides or there are other sites like Grammar Bytes (warning - it's American) that have info and interactive tests.

Keep plugging away at it over the two years! These terms are part of the toolkit you need to explore language use and are absolutely vital!