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Topic: 'A' level

Relevant for England and Wales National Curriculum at 'A' level (Key Stage 5).

Word salads (secondary): Activity 1

Sentence 1

sometimes
her
I
hate

Sentence 2

water
of
can
a
I
glass
have
please

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Adjective identification

In this activity, students work through the criteria for identifying adjectives.

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Adjective identification: Activity 1

Which words do you think are adjectives?

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Adjective identification: Activity 2

Somehow, it didn't seem wise.

Is wise an adjective?

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Adverb identification

Applying the semantic and structural criteria for adverbs

In this activity, students work through the criteria for identifying adverbs.

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Adverb identification: Activity 1

Which words do you think are adverbs? Remember the following clues:

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Adverb identification: Activity 2

The feeling of hopelessness she'd experienced earlier that afternoon swept over her again.

Is earlier an adverb?

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Ambiguity and headlines

Newspaper headlines often compress sequences of actions into very compact structures. Sometimes the meaning becomes ambiguous as a result.

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Ambiguity and headlines: Activity

Police chase driver in hospital

Violinist linked to Japan Airlines crash blossoms

BT ducks break-up with price cuts

Reagan wins on budget, but more lies ahead

Juvenile court to try shooting defendant

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Analysing language choices in reviews

In this lesson, students examine word choice in a pair of published reviews.

Goals

  • Identify words with particular effects in a particular genre of English writing, the review.
  • Discuss the effects of word choice in real language in use.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will look at two published reviews and analyse the language choices that the writers made.

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Analysing representation - The Da Vinci Code paratext

A lesson analysing representation in an interesting short text

After the acknowledgements and immediately before the main text of the novel, The Da Vinci Code has a short text titled 'Fact' that asserts the accuracy of certain elements of the novel:

Fact:

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Analysing representation in romantic fiction

Lesson plan for Mills and Boon exercise

Goal

  • Use linguistic tools to analyse representation in romantic fiction

    Lesson plan

    Gathering the noun phrases and verbs relating to particular topics in a text can be a good first step in analysing the representation of those topics. This lesson uses blurbs from the Mills & Boon website to discuss how those texts represent gender and how that might suit its readers.

    Give students the blurbs and have them read out.

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    Analysing representation in romantic fiction: Materials

    Reunited by their Secret Son by Louisa George

    It started with one night…

    Will it end with them becoming a family?

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    Attitudes to language use, variation and change

    In this lesson, students will explore some of the different attitudes that people have towards language use, variation and change. They will be encouraged to adopt a critical approach to language study, thinking carefully about how language is intertwined with sociocultural factors. They will also be asked to reflect on their own attitudes to language.

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    Attitudes to new modes

    In this lesson, students will explore new modes of communication such as texting, online chat, and Facebook, which often come in for criticism from people who believe that they are damaging the way we use language.

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    Attitudes to new modes: Activity

    From a BBC News article about the expression LOL entering the dictionary:

    "There is a worrying trend of adults mimicking teen-speak," says Marie Clair of the Plain English Campaign, in the Daily Mail.

    "They [adults] are using slang words and ignoring grammar. Their language is deteriorating."

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    Baby Sentences

    Goals

    • Use implicit grammatical knowledge to translate examples of infant speech into complete sentences.
    • (For older students) use explicit grammatical knowledge to identify the types of changes that have been made in translating from the original examples.

    Lesson Plan

    The teacher explains that today, we will look at some real examples of English spoken by infants, and translate it into adult speech.

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    Baby Sentences: Activity

    Daddy go work

    Mummy read

    Daddy bike

    What that

    Where blanket

    Sock off

    Teddy fall

    Sammy tired

    Building verb phrases

    In this resource we’ll look at how verb phrases can be built up by putting auxiliary verbs and main verbs together.

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    Building verb phrases: Activity

    In this activity, use the interactive whiteboard to build verb phrases. Can you use all the words and make every verb phrase grammatical?

    Encourage your students to explore the meaning of the verb phrases they construct: how does the use of modal verbs affect the meaning of the main verb, for example? What about the tense?

    Drag words next to each other and they will 'snap' together. Double-click to 'unsnap'.

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    Building words: Activity

    In this activity, explore how words are built out of a prefix, base form and a suffix. 

    What meanings do different prefixes and suffixes have? Can any base form take any prefix or suffix? How can you manipulate language to create new forms? For example, deread is not an English word. What might it mean?

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    Certainty and uncertainty

    Sometimes we make confident statements, while at other times we want to express some uncertainty. In this resource we will explore the expression of certainty and uncertainty. This is one of the areas of meaning we call modality.

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