AS Language computer room lesson 1/12/15

Analyticals,

here's some feedback on the articles you wrote - read what you wrote and what I wrote first and then read the following for future pieces for me and in the exam:

• bibliographies are vital (not in the exam, obviously, but for me) and should show a range of reading
• what are the conventions of the text type you are writing (see below)?
• title to hook the audience is vital or no-one will read it - it should suit your stated audience (you have to state your audience e.g. Guardian readers, Elle readers, Daily Mail readers, your blog followers)
• a reason for writing - something that has happened to stimulate writing about the issue e.g. a survey, something in the news, an anecdote etc.
• strapline for articles, intro for blogs
• image and caption
• quotes and examples
• avoid jargon non-linguists won't know e.g. sociolect, idiolect

Please set yourself two-three targets to work on in your independent study time and/or on your next relevant piece and I will come around and check these. What task could you set yourself to start working on these?

Today, I would like you to research the following topics (they are findings from research done into accents and dialects). You will be assigned one to become a specialist in and you will be posting notes about findings, reliability and any relevant links you can make (and a bibliography) to your blog to be finished by next Monday if not today - be ready to explain the findings in class (you can make reference to your blog or notes):

• Labov's 1966 research in New york department stores
• Trudgill's 1964 Norwich study of the effect of class on accent
• Milroy 1987 Belfast accents
• Eckert 2000 jocks and burnouts 
• Cheshire 1982 teenagers in Reading
• Bernstein restricted and elaborated code
• Lave and Wenger 1991 communities of practice
• Milroy and Milroy 2014 grammatical differences in dialects
• Labov 1963 Martha's Vineyard (covert prestige)
• Giles 1970s matched guise technique
• Watson 2000s spread of Estuary English

If you do finish today, please research the following and post to your blog:

• Identify some of the ways in which dialects vary grammatically, giving examples

Jekyll and Hyde - win a textbook

Literarinesses,

have you read/been watching Jekyll and Hyde? It's a short book and worth reading (although half of it is a bit dull, the other half is great!). Cambridge publishers are looking for your views via Twitter to win a textbook (very useful):

http://mail-cambridge.org/2792-3TZB1-77KY93AS1D/cr.aspx?v=1

A fan of Jekyll & Hyde? Enter our #BrighterThinking competition

Join our #BrighterThinking Twitter conversation for the chance to win one of our GCSE English or A/AS Level English Student Books*. We want to hear from you! For 5 days commencing the week of the 30th November we will be tweeting questions about the novel and TV adaptation The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde from our @CUPUKschools Twitter account. How to Enter Tweet your responses to @CUPUKschools including the hashtag #BrighterThinking You will then be entered into a prize draw for that day!

A2 computer room lesson 30/11/15 analysis finesse tips

Analyticals,

feedback on the Leila paragraphs and the Evie mini-investigations - I will go through this as a class shortly because lessons learned here can be applied to investigation and exam work. Once you're done with Halliday (the last tip), go onto your analysis for your investigation, trying to apply any lessons learned:

Use a clear PEE structure with an ‘x uses y to z’ POINT format.

Be descriptive rather than prescriptive e.g. say ‘uses a non-standard pronunciation’ rather than mistake/mispronounced. I know you can't use 'virtuous errors' when talking about pronunciation because non-standard pronunications aren't virtuous (they don't show what a child knows about language, unless you can link to the 'fis phenomenon' perhaps) but some other non-standard uses (particularly over-extension and over-generalisation) probably could be explored as virtuous errors and linked to Chomsky.

Avoid stray apostrophes e.g. “support’s” – only use for possession and omission, not before other kinds of inflection e.g. plural or second person. Do use one in the possessive e.g. “Skinner’s theory”.

Grandmother not grandma unless using the name from the transcript as a name, not a concrete noun e.g. ‘Grandma uses interrogatives’ is fine with a capital (because it is her name as far as Evie and the trascript labelling is concerned) but ‘her grandmother uses interrogatives’ doesn’t have one. Same in the Leila transcript - also use father and not dad (unless Dad) - always go for the more formal alternative when making academic language choices e.g. avoid contractions.

Careful with imperatives -  “you choose” isn’t grammatically an imperative as it starts with a pronoun not a verb but it is a cloaked imperative (it is cloaked as a declarative but the modal verb is elided – it could be 'you can choose' or 'you should choose' but it has a commanding feel – although it is an offer, it is unlikely Evie would feel she could say no). If you say something is a cloaked imperative, you must say how it would be phrased if it were an imperative e.g. 'choose which animal is next, Evie'.

Refer to Grandma’s echoing, her modelling, her repairs to get more AO1 in a paragraph on the recasting of Evie’s utterances.

Observer’s paradox, not any other variant I have come across!

Tag questions, open and closed questions – what are they achieving? Put it into more of a developmental context. Link to Bruner, Vygotski and Piaget.

Link to theory as well as context every paragraph and don’t forget power and gender theory. Tentatively evaluate the relevance of theory looking for opportunities to challenge it e.g. when evidence contradicts theory.

You need more cohesion – plan for logical flow and linked points.

Leave out points where you don’t know the relevant terms and theory- it lowers your grade if you don’t write consistently in-depth. 

Never say proved/disproved! Say how far they are supported or contradicted and evaluate, offering alternative interpretations as to why.

Patterns and contrasts are high-level and overview is important. Try and plan to get those in.

Halliday's functions - do some research right now! They are great for giving an overview of the kind of talk happening - you don't need to memorise them all but some would be good. 

A2 computer room lesson 23/11/15

Analyticals,

EDIT: LAST CALL FOR EVIE MINI INVESTIGATIONS - BY WED PM OR I WILL HAVE TO TAKE DISCIPLINARY STEPS AND NO, YOU CAN'T USE TODAY'S LESSON TO DO IT IN!

you need to carry on working on your corsework while I do 1-2-1s:

The analysis should have a very short intro evaluating what you are starting with and why - each section could also have a brief explanation of what you are exploring and how e.g. if you are looking at Tannen's information vs feelings, explain what you will count as 'information'-related talk and what you will consider 'feelings' (e.g. words from the lexical field of feelings - would this leave anything significant out? How could you broaden the definition?). this is known as 'deining your terms' - taken into account the limited scope of the investigation and try and reduce any subjectivity (words could be said from their denotation to be from the lexical field of feelings so that is not subjective but how emotive a word is would be - it involves you making a judgement that could be argued with).

If you still can't work on your analysis and you have done all the theory reading you need to, work on CLA by starting on the research quiz I have given you - find out a lot about one of the answers and put the detailed exploration on your blog e.g. what was the 'wugs' research about and how was it done, what does it suggest, what does it link to etc? Or embed the learning from Friday's lesson by listening to some young children talk on Youtube and noting the kind of non-standard pronunciations they use - do some quantification of which patterns seem to be the most common and put your findings on your blog.

Wonderful!

Thanks!

Titles - a challenge, an insight, a mystery, a joke? AS Lang and Lang Lit and A2 Lang

Titles are a fascinating area and one you must master for the articles you are required to write.

Below is the end of an article by Barbara Bleiman from Emagazine (number 15) - don't forget to use the link and login on our Moodle page to look for info on all our topics in this great resource (use the 'emagazine' tab when you've clicked the link, 'student area' and then the password is all caps).

Lang Lit should especially notice the mention of one of our texts in the last paragraph!

Telling Titles  (the end of an article by Barabara Bleiman)
...
Writers suggest genres by their choice of language and sometimes even write counter to the genre implied by the title, to play with the reader's expectations. Margaret Atwood's title The Blind Assassin has all the marks of a thriller and there are many elements of the thriller in the novel. It turns out, however, that 'The Blind Assassin' is a book written by a character in the novel and is not the whole story. Interestingly, the question of who the blind assassin is and what Atwood means by it is one of the most thought-provoking and exciting aspects of the novel. Here the title is working very hard for its writer.

Some writers like to use word play, so that the title isn't just giving us a taste of what's to come, or telling us about it, but is actually part of the paradoxes and thematic complexities of the novel. So Ian McEwan's Enduring Love offers us the two different ways of reading 'enduring' as a verb - having to suffer or endure love - and as an adjective - love that endures. Both the verb and the adjective are relevant to the themes of the novel and the title forms part of our reading of those themes.

Titles can refer to other texts, accruing all the good associations of those other texts and gaining from all their rich reverberations. Famous lines from Shakespeare are a good source of titles (The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner, pinched from Macbeth), or from famous poems, (such as Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, taken from a sermon by John Donne), or biblical references (such as The Grapes of Wrath).

Whatever else a title has to do, it must act as an invitation to the reader, whether by being appealing, or intriguing or vulgar or simple or strong. And though there are tried and tested patterns, there's always someone ready to break the rules, to make the bookshop browser stop in their tracks as they roam the shelves. Though not strictly fiction I know, the most eye-catching title in recent months must be A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, an autobiographical work by Dave Eggers which, incidentally, has all the power of the best fiction. Eggers has taken an imagined quotation from the ideal review, such as you find on most book covers, and promoted it to the position of title. It's shameless self-publicising but it can be forgiven because it's tongue-in-cheek, one great big joke. Or is it? You have to read the book to find out. And would exactly the same book, with a different title, such as The True Life Adventures of Dave Eggers, or Dave, or Loss or Toph and Me, or Coping and Surviving or All the World's a Stage or any number of other possibilities, have ever stood a chance of selling the millions that this book has now sold?

A2 computer room lesson 16/11/15 intros and analysis

Investigatives,

read and make sure you understand the intro feedback below. If you have your data, you can start on your analysis, if you don't, you could make a good number of the changes to the intro now.

Intro feedback:

• Use past tense for all of the investigation (check for that after the first draft of everything is finished)
• Use footnotes like the exemplar intro did (you can use the latin term 'ibid' in the footnotes if the one you are writing is for the same source as the previous one)
• The text is formal, so avoid contractions unless you are writing enthusiastically about your engagement with the project and it suits the tone at that point
• Engage/hook the reader right at the start - this is where first impressions count so come up with an angle, a hook, a quote, some impressive theory, or something sparkly to start off with in the first sentence - check it with me to ensure it sets the right tone
• If your intro doesn't show off your skills, it isn't doing its job! Basic theory and boring explanations with no sizzle aren't going to cut the mustard!
• Your hypothesis should be according to theory so make sure it is clear which theory/theorist it relates to
• Remember you need to show 'evaluation' throughout so challenge theory and its relevance
• Re-read what you wrote, pretending you know nothing about you and your investigation. Is it clear what you are undertaking and why? 
• A working title is vital!

Analysis - starting to analyse

• Make sure you keep a clean copy of the data for your folder
• Quantification is the best place to start - what does your hypothesis say which you can test by counting/measuring something? That will then tell you which areas of the data are interesting to explore e.g. the most of something, anomalies, significant figures - we will look at an example of this in class tomorrow but see what you find
• Annotate all the techniques you can find that relate to your theory - are there any patterns there?
• Are there any techniques that are characteristic of your text producer/participants? Start to quantify or evaluate that in context
• Your conclusion will try to explore why your findings might be the case in context, but you need to do that at the very close 'details' level as you go along - which quotes would benefit from close PEE analysis?
• Evaluate what you can and can't tell as you go
• What sort of sub-headings might help you organise your notes? Your draft will need to be organised under key questions or frameworks or techniques or theory sub-headings
• Bear in mind you will find more than you can include in the final draft - you will want to select the areas that allow you to show off your skills and leave out the less effective passages - it is good to have work to select from

#masculinitysofragile - effective style model for writing an article

The idea of 'masculinity' being in crisis at the moment is a hot topic. Here's a roundup of some of the ideas in the kind of article AS might be asked to write in the exam and A2 can do for the media text in their coursework. Don't follow this example, which could come across all wrong...

Words of the year

Useful for understanding how our languaage is undergoing synchronic change (change happening at a particluar point in time because of reasons for language change particular to that time). What do you think are the pressures on language right now? What are the practices, attitudes and political shifts that bring about these words?

Languge and gender and CLA - Richard Scarry books updated

There have been some moves in recent years to update classics. In some cases it is controversial but when it comes to books for young children, I am quite sure that if we want them to enjoy some of the great books we did as children, they need updating to avoid reinforcing ideas about race and gender that are were prevalent then and have evolved now.

Here's an article from Upworthy about the changes made to the Richard Scarry book 'Best Word Book Ever'.

Just for contrast, here's a ranty blog post bemoaning the changes to Blyton's 'The Faraway Tree'.

What do you think? Dame Snap or Dame Slap? Know of any others that have had this treatment?

AS Lang help with writing the article for homework

Journalistics,

 

I wanted you to write an article or blog post discussing the change in accents and dialects that is happening and why dialects change.

Below is a a link to a good example of the kind of article I want that I found by going to the Guardian website and using their search bar to search on the term 'dialect'. I had to ignore quite a few that didn't look relevant before finding this so keep altering your search terms but also look down the search results quite far before you assume you haven't found anything useful. 

 

You can also use Emagazine to do some research if you don't have enough ideas to include yet (see the AS Language page for the login but the password EMC2015 has to be in capitals, someone told me). 

 

The aim is to take ideas from language study and make them interesting and accessible for general readers. 

 

The example does assume readers understand a good vocabulary and that, if they are bothering to read the article, that they have some interest in - and maybe knowledge of - the subject; these are the kinds of things you can think about when writing in the exam (and now) and mention in your commentary.

 

Don't forget a bibliography for this task.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/apr/01/highereducation.britishidentity

Dialect explosion signals decline of BBC English | UK news ... Global travel and migration have given an unexpected shot in the arm to the world's dialects, until recently often viewed as a quaint, doomed relic of more primitive ... Read more...

Hope that helps!

So good! The Secret Life of 4-year-olds (best for Languauge students but good language to analyse for all)

This is a current show on Channel 4 but you can catch up and watch extra clips on Channel4.com - you need to register if you haven't already but it's free and easy.

It's a no-brainer for A2 Lang students who are studying CLA right now; AS Lang will be looking at chlidren's language next year and can start building their understanding now but it's good for everyone to look at some non-standard languge and try to identify how it is different from 'standard language use' and begin to explore why that might be the case in context.

A2 methodology feedback

Methodologicals,

great start with those drafts - there are some general issues that need addressing so make notes as and when these are relevant to you (most of them will be). We really need to focus on getting the intros done first before you can complete your methodology  - see the lesson post for today (several posts down since I wrote it a few days ago) - but have a first run at the ideas below as a starter and so we can discuss any issues you have:

• What does the reader (me in the first instance but also other Language teachers and perhaps the coursework moderator for the exam board) need to know (over the course of the intro and the method) to understand what you are doing and what decisions you made? Read through your work as objectively as possible to see if you have clarified everything.
• Write formally, avoiding contractions like 'isn't' and informalities like 'dad' (use father) - you are writing an investigation/report not an essay so bullet points and sentence fragments in tables are acceptable but the language should be academic throughout.
• The only theory you need in the methodology is research theory/concepts like the observer's paradox, the concept of demand characteristics etc. Look into this. The rest goes either in the intro or theories can be brought up as they are relevant in the analysis if they are not the main focus e.g. in a power investigation, you might find that bringing up gender theory is relevant as you explore the language used but that wouldn't go in your intro.
• Similarly, which techniques/aspects you will focus on in your analysis should go in the intro or in a short introduction to your analysis.
• Clear sub-headings are vital and a good idea might be a little overview paragraph to clarify anything you haven't said about the kind of data you are collecting in your introduction - once you have written your intro, you will be able to see what you need and what you can leave out as you have already said it.
• A data description table is vital to give me a sense of exactly what you have collected and how you will refer to it. By the time I have looked at the table, I shouldn't need to look at the data to make sense of the whole investigation.  See my earlier post on methodologies for an example of the kind of information and contextualisation that should go into it.
• A really good idea, if you collected sample data, is to talk about how collecting it informed your decision-making process about what to collect and how (and why).
• Refer to items that will go in the appendices (data, informed consent forms, questionnaires etc.) with 'see appendix [number or page reference]' to show how organised it is.
• Some of you are writing about data you have not yet collected, so remember to change it into the past tense and be very explicit about exactly what you collected and in what ways (to what degree) it is comparable, reliable and ethical.
• Use the word 'mitigate' for how you reduced the effect of detrimental factors like the observer's paradox because you can't overcome them completely e.g. I tried to mitigate the effect of the observer's paradox by...
• Data selection is often biased to some degree - acknowledge that and show how you tried to be scientific/objective. Note the adjective is 'biased' and the noun is 'bias' - don't say I am bias! You might be able to evaluate to what degree bias remains.
• This is the case with many aspects - evaluate how far something is the case rather than it is/is not - be tentative wherever possible.
• Some of you considered the possible presence of anomalies in your data - don't say you will remove them from the pool as how can you tell if they are actually anomalies? The only way to begin to identify them and mitigate their effect on your quantified analysis is to have a large data pool. If you identify (tentatively) one when you are doing your analysis, it might be interesting to re-quantify without that element to show how the figures are affected but you can't leave it out! You must show both and compare.
• Make sure you call me over if I have put on your methodology "discuss with me" - try and work out what my issue is beforehand.
• Remember to re-work this part of the coursework again and again as you write and re-draft your intro to make sure it all flows and doesn't repeat and that it covers everything necessary.
• Phew! Chip away at this and re-visit it periodically - you can't do everything at once.

Athletes shocked at interview questions (Language and gender/language and occupation)

Perspicaciousnesses,

here is an article that explores the kind of questions female athletes get asked in interviews (I've also seen one recently with a female and a male action film star). The video is fake in that the male athletes were not genuinely asked those questions (they have been added in over video of them responding to other questions that confused them or they didn't like) but it was done to illustrate how they MIGHT respond. Look at the lexical field of the questions - what do you notice about the key vocabulary?

Email etiquette - are you being rude, trendy or warm and friendly? (signoffs and language change)

Here's an article that talks about that common minefield - the proper etiquette to use in email signoffs. I've had to raise the issue with a few students recently that I expect (what I consider) the standard email conventions but clearly that is subjective opinion because no-one seems to know the 'rules'. A salutation and a sign-off seem to me to be obligatory except in the middle of a rapid-fire email conversation or with someone you are very relaxed with. what other closing conventions do you use that might be similar to how you finish a texting or messenger conversation or even a phone call?

Please comment with your email examples (anonymised), questions, thought etc.

Lang Lit 'History as entertainment' homework

Here's the link for the documentary I couldn't show you. Complete the following activity for next Friday (13th nov).

Watch about 5 mins and note down the techniques used to make it engaging/entertaing/hook the audience (who might the audiences be?). Also note key quotes and put an analysis of how language and other teachniques combine to inform and entertain the documentary's audience on your blog - remember to identify techniques in the quotes wherever possible.

What have you learned that will help you to write that kind of text yourself?

A2 computer room lesson 9/11/15 - introductions

Introductions

Your introduction should be a way in for the reader. It should help me to understand the following: what you think is interesting about the topic/data; what you know is relevant theory-wise; why you have chosen this hypothesis/these hypotheses; which techniques you will look at or which questions you will attempt to answer.

Above all, it should be formal and academic but engage and impress me.

Your introduction should lay out clearly (not necessarily in this order):

• ·         Your title (a working title is fine or use your hypothesis)

• ·         What you know about the relevant theory and how it relates to your area of investigation (remember to be challenging of the validity/longevity/relevance of theory)

• ·         What focus in terms of theory and data you have chosen and why (show engagement with the topic and clarify exactly what you are dealing with for a reader who doesn’t know)

• ·         What your hypothesis is (this should be phrased as a declarative and should indicate whose theory it relates to and you can have multiple hypotheses if you wish but it’s challenging)

• ·         How you intend to test your hypothesis (frameworks/techniques/key questions/approaches)

There should be a really clear progression from:

Your theory  knowledge ->  your hypothesis -> how you will test the hypothesis/explore the data

Read this first draft introduction and evaluate what is good and what could be improved and then plan and start writing your own (due in on Friday):

Introduction (word count 491)

 The myriad theories regarding possible differences between male and female speech is a daunting but fascinating area of Language theory. Over time, it appears that the shift has been from distinctive differences percieved during the Dominance/Difference/Deficit research of the 1970s/80s (Zimmerman and West, Tannen, Lakoff) to a focus on the biological aspects [citation needed] and, more crucially, on the context that language is used in rather than by which gender (Cameron: "your genes don't determine your jeans"*1). Although Cameron's point is convincing, while our physical gender may not determine our language, particularly in a college where many feel the need to fit in and/or find their niche, society does appear to have some expectations of what is masculine or feminine speech; we may (even subconsciously) choose to conform to this. I am interested to see if this is the case.

I chose to examine the language of my peers but not those who shared my friendship group so that I could remain objective. I wanted to record people participating in a task and, when not asking friends who might give their time generously, I decided on students who regularly participate in group tasks to gain a better chance of them agreeing. I could have chosen Sports students, but since I wanted verbal responses rather than predominantly physical participation in my tasks, I decided that Drama students would give wholehearted participation and (I predicted) be confident enough to retain their individuality in a group task. I know that accommodation would be something worth looking at, but in the time frame of this investigation, I decided that differences would be more practical to explore within a limited data sample.

I needed to set tasks that would provide the participants with opportunities to use a range of language, so I decided on one discussion task, one problem-solving task and one solo interview (with the same questions and delivery for each participant - I practised this in advance).

Each of the six participants (three female and three male) would take part in each activity and, using the Dominance/Difference/Deficit theories, I could determine how far the language they used was in line with those gender expectations.

Hypotheses:

• According to Zimmerman and West, males will interrupt more in mixed-sex conversations (the discussion, the problem-solving and potentially in their interview with me).
• Males and females will predominantly correspond to the traits described in Tannen's Difference theory pairings (I will focus on status versus support in the discussion, competition vesus co-operation in the problem-solving task and report verus rapport in the interview).
• The language of females will be deficient in comparison to that of the males (I will look for Lakoff's 'deficient' techniques in both males and females and evaluate their use in context).

Rather than key frameworks, I will use theory headings, however the exploration will necessarily focus on discourse (for interruptions, back-channel agreement, length of turn etc.) and grammar (for sentence moods, syntax analysis, word-classes etc.).