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If you subscribe to this blog, you should get an email every time I post something. Unfortunately I also use this for my year 9 class, so you might get a few things aimed at them too, but the vast majority of posts are for English Language. Might be useful for some of you who are a little... forgetful?

Year 12 Gender Investigations

Year 12 English Language groups have been investigating various issues surrounding language and gender. You can use this page to see what others have found. Hopefully we can get an overview of the issues investigated, the results of your investigations and see if there are some patterns.

Leave your comment below in the following format:
Your name:
What you investigated: (summarise in a couple of sentences)
Your findings: What your results were, any statistics you can provide, anything particularly surprising.
Your conclusion: Your 'golden nugget'. Something to remember in the exam (eg. "Females actually use a greater range of swearwords" or "The number of terms for promiscuous females still outweighs those for males, echoing Stanely's much earlier work".

Year 12 - more Directed Writing style models.

The more you read, the better you'll write :)

Rhianna and the pop stars who change their accents

Is there such a thing as correct grammar?

Prejudice about accents still exists

Daily Mail style of writing

Women pioneer vocal trends

Last but not least, an article about writing articles!

Summarise the argument of one of the articles in the comments section of this blog for one of my amazing English Language Star Stickers :)

Year 12 - opinion article on Dialect. Useful style model for Paper 2 writing task

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/saying-no-to-gizit-is-plain-prejudice-8488358.html

This article really nicely blends AO2 (language issues and concepts) with a strong shaping of argument. There'll be prizes for people that leave a comment on this blog, either identifying one of her arguments, or identifying where she would have hit AO2 if this were an exam piece.

Year 12 Revision resources

I've created a new folder where I'm going to put resources that are useful for revision. I have put some glossaries in there, and I've also added a text that might be useful to practice writing about for Paper 1 (representation). I'll add more texts in here as I find them.

Here's the link.

Year 9 half term homework on Caliban

I suggest that you do this as quickly as you can after today's lesson - don't leave it until after half-term, or you'll forget what we did in the lesson. Sorry - it looks a bit strange on the page as I've copied it from Word, but you should still be able to follow it.

Act 2, scene 2: Another part of the island. Caliban meets Trinculo and Stephano.

 

Enter CALIBAN with a burden of wood.

CALIBAN

All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
By inch-meal a disease!

(A noise of thunder is heard)

His spirits hear me
And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch,
Fright me with urchin--shows, pitch me i' the mire,
Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark
Out of my way, unless he bid 'em; but
For every trifle are they set upon me;
Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me
And after bite me, then like hedgehogs which
Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount
Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I
All wound with adders who with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness.

Enter TRINCULO

Lo, now, lo!
Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me
For bringing wood in slowly. I'll fall flat;
Perchance he will not mind me.

 


My notes on text:

Inch-meal = every inch (every bit of him)

What does Caliban want to fall onto Prospero?

(He thinks the thunder is Prospero’s spirits spying on him.)

“yet” = but
“I needs must” = I can’t help myself
“nor” = not
They won’t pinch or frighten me with illusions (urchin-shows)
“firebrand” = piece of wood set alight and used as a torch
“pitch me i’ the mire” = throw me in the swamp
“bid” = commands
“every trifle” = every little thing
“mow” = make faces
“cloven” = forked
"perchance” = maybe
“mind me” = notice me
 Homework: use my notes, a dictionary, and maybe the internet, to help you understand this small extract. You need to do exactly what we did in class with the first extract.

What are your ideas about Caliban here? My thoughts about Caliban are that…

How does Shakespeare give you those ideas? (find some quotations from the text and underline particular words that give you these ideas)

Make notes on the questions above, then write your ideas into a PEE paragraph, explaining how the quotation you have chosen supports your opinion about Caliban.

Aiming higher? Explore the point (more than one quotation?); offer an alternative view (this could also mean...); link to the audience at the time; link to Shakespeare's viewpoint.

Library homework: learn the following terms and their definitions ready for a test:

Adjective	Describes a noun, eg the horrible cat.
Noun	The name of a person, place or thing, eg Paris, Sarah, table, love, hatred
Adverb	Describes or gives more information about a verb or adjective, eg she swiftly walked, he was very cold.
Verb	The word that carries the action of the sentence (doing or being), eg. She gazed out of the window, he was annoying
Pronoun	Stands in place of a noun, eg he, she, we, it, you, they

 

Writing about language - lessons for week commencing 1st February

No slides this week, but resources are in the folder: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0n14k4_2wH8dFF6MnpTVk8wWU0



Key learning points for this week:

• Feature articles are 'lively' (this is a key word in the mark scheme) - we looked at what kinds of features constitute a 'lively' style 
• The structure of your article is really important - the title and subheading should give the reader your controlling idea: what you will be arguing in the rest of the article
• You should be able to write a summary sentence for each paragraph. Each of these sentences should help to create your overall argument when you put them together. 
• Think carefully about your audience - remember that the style of an article for The Guardian will be really different from the style of an article for The Daily Mail, or the BBC, or Elle magazine.