Welcome 12C! Homework 1

For Monday  11th Sep:
1. Sign up to Google Classroom using the code lhevgwb. You must sign in with your school email address. If you don’t wish to use this, forward all emails to your usual account.
2. Follow me on twitter if you would like to - @EnglangGeek
3. Read the article given to you in class and answer the questions

For Friday 15th 
1. Learn the terms in the Quizlet https://quizlet.com/_1kpngp ready for a test

Year 12 Gender homework

I think I was a little unclear with deadlines this week, and some of you seem to have quite a bit of work at the moment, so here are some clarified deadlines for outstanding work:

 

For Thurs (12B) and Fri (12c1):
Read articles and summarise key points ready to feedback in class set last Thursday/Friday

 

For Tuesday:

• Watch the film clips on the blogpost below and write a paragraph that summarises the message of the film. There is a sample paragraph to give you an idea of what to write in the booklet that we used last lesson.
• Write a paragraph about how the ManFlu Lozzers text positions the audience to view the male gender. What gender representations are created through language? Use AO1 terminology too!

Year 12 homework for Tuesday 31st January and useful revision for Y13

Miss Representation 
The Mask You Live In 

Homework – watch the two film trailers above. Below is the start of an essay that a student wrote after considering the issues raised by the film about the representation of women. Consider the issues raised by ‘The Mask you live in’ and write the opening of an essay about the effects of representation on men.

Objectification of Women:
Every day, women around the world are objectified, treated as less of an equal, and denied the same opportunities as our fellow men. 

Why? The media. 

If the media is sending girls the message that women are objects and that is their primary being, girls will think that this is their path to power. Conversely, the more girls self-objectify the more likely they are to have lower confidence, lower ambition, lower cognitive functioning and lower grades. 

Year 12 Genre Conventions homework

This is due for Tuesday 22nd November

I would like you to investigate the genre conventions of charity adverts.

1. You need to be confident that you understand what 'genre' and 'genre conventions' actually mean. Do some research and write down some notes and definitions so that you are confident that you understand the concept.
2. Read the website here and have a go at the task: what do all of the adverts have in common?
3. You may wish to read more widely about charity adverts.
3. Produce a guide for year 7 children, informing them what genre conventions would be expected of a charity advert, ie/ a list of features they would need to include if they were to write their own charity advert. OR Create a poster with a charity advert of your choice in the middle, labelled with the genre conventions identified.
4. Identify these genre conventions in the Elephant text that we looked at on Tuesday. Make a list of genre features with quotations if appropriate
5. Challenge (optional): Write a paragraph evaluating how closely the elephant text adheres to genre conventions.

Year 12 Phonology homework

Research and make notes on the following terms for Tuesday's lesson (8th November)


Alliteration
Assonance
Sibilance
Consonance
Paralinguistics
Prosody
Sibilance
Glottal Stop
*How are different consonants described?
*What is the difference between phonology and phonetics?

12B and 12C1 homework set Tues 27th due Tues 4th Oct - wouldn't be a bad idea for Y13 to revise too!

Homework – What do you know about Grammar?

Have notes available to check in class on Tuesday 4^th October

Note: You need to know definitions and examples.

            E.g. An adjective describes or modifies a noun, e.g. the irresponsible father.

Assumed – you must be 100% confident with the words in this column	Learn now – you should research what the following terms mean, make notes, and learn the concepts	Challenge – if you are already fairly confident with much of column 2, research some of these terms
Nouns	concrete, common, abstract, proper, plurals	Count and non-count nouns
Adjectives	Comparative, superlative
Adverbs	Adverbs of place, time, manner, degree, frequency
Verbs	Regular verbs and irregular verbs Main verb Auxiliary verb Tense (past, present, future)	Modal auxiliary verbs Primary verbs Aspect (continuous, perfect) Subject–verb agreement
Pronouns	First, second, third person	Subject form, object form, possessive, demonstrative
	Determiners	Indefinite and definite article
	Preposition	Prepositional phrase
	Conjunctions	Types of conjunction

Year 12 Week Three: what we've covered and homework

This week we have drawn together the notions of genre, audience, mode and purpose and learnt 7 key frameworks that we will be using in our studies to inform our language analysis:

• Grammar (syntax and morphology)
• Graphology
• Lexis
• Discourse
• Semantics
• Phonology
• Pragmatics

For Tuesday 27th September, please learn 5 new terms from the vocabulary sheet that I gave you at the start of term. Use a dictionary to find and write down the definition, then use the word in your own sentence to show your understanding of it. Be prepared to teach your word to the rest of the class.


For those who still have work outstanding (writing about the context of the Tyrell's Popcorn text), you need to complete this with urgency.

Year 12 Week Two - the terminology onslaught continues

I won't upload the powerpoints from this week as there wasn't much on them in terms of key concepts, but see below for some of the vocabulary we have covered this week.


Key Vocabulary
Controlling Idea
GAMP
Genre
Intertextuality
Audience
Implied and actual reader
Implied and actual writer
Purpose
Primary and secondary purpose
Mode
Context of Production
Context of Reception


Homework for Tuesday 20th September: Read all of the texts about dogs and create a table that states the Genre, Audience, Mode and Purpose of each one.


Write a short explanation (no more than 1 side of A4) of what contextual factors need to be taken into account when reading the Popcorn text. You should be using some of the terminology from above.

Year 12 Homework 1

Read the following article (Article about A-Level English) and answer the questions below. You don't need to hand the answers in, so you can answer them in note format if you wish, but I will be looking at your note-taking skills. Be ready to explain your answers in class, though.

1. What do you understand by the phrase 'modern cultural references'? Paraphrase it. 
2. Give two reasons why people have criticised the A-level. Do you think these reasons are valid?
3. What is the 'crumbling castle' view of language?
4. What viewpoint does Laura Barton hold about this subject? Where does the reader first understand this viewpoint?
5. Find at least two pieces of vocabulary that you would not ordinarily use in your own writing. Write down the words and their definitions. 

 * The version of this article that you have read was the online version. What genre features in this article would you not have found 25 years ago?

*Underline 3 uses of language that stand out to you for any reason. 

Great TV Programme for Child Language Acquisition

This was on TV this week and watching it would be a great way of preparing for our study of Child Language Acquisition next year. Enjoy!

Year 12 homework due back after Easter

Homework over Easter is to thoroughly learn the gender theorists we have covered. If you have lost any resources, have a look in the shared drive to supplement your notes. Also, remember the Quizlet that might help you revise.




There will be a test after Easter, and I need to see evidence that you have revised for it.


In addition, I would like you to prepare to come back to Paper 1 (Representation) after Easter. Revise the language level that you are still not secure in and increase your ability to use the terminology.
 Find one text (anything at all) and pick out 5 language features from the text. Label them precisely, then for each one try to say why the writer has chosen that particular language feature - what job is the language feature doing to manipulate the reader? If you are really struggling to find your own text, there is a text on the shared drive that you could use (here).




Eg. This chancer of the exchequer’s budget has unravelled. He must take responsibility for cold political decisions with no basis in economics or morality (from The Guardian)




The choice of the past tense verb 'unravelled' in this single-clause sentence gives the impression that there is no going back as an 'unravelling' suggests something which was once whole, but is now hard to put back together. This is further emphasised by the use of the perfect aspect 'has unravelled' which highlights that the action is complete: there is no chance of the process being stopped. This represents Osborne as incompetent and not in control of the budget for which he holds responsibility.

Year 12 Current Homework

12B Mrs Morgan/ Mrs Desai


Devise a new test based on the level of terminology you are revising (most of you were level 4). It should have at least 6 questions and you should also know the answers. It would be good to have them written down on another sheet of paper. Due Tuesday 8th March


Create a poster or a mind-map based on the approach you were given in the lesson (Deficit, dominance, difference or diversity). Show the key ideas of the approach, key theorists and what they said, and any criticisms of that theory. You may need to use your gender theorists booklet and the quizlet to help you with this. Due Thursday 10th March


12C Miss Moody/ Mrs Desai


Devise a new test based on the level of terminology you are revising (most of you were level 4). It should have at least 6 questions and you should also know the answers. It would be good to have them written down on another sheet of paper. Due Thursday 10th March (extended from this week)


Plan two arguments from the sheet you were given in the lesson. Follow the structure on the sheet. You should come up with the paragraph plans, a suitable title and a sub-heading. Reading your title and sub-heading should leave us in no doubt as to what your controlling idea is. Due Thursday 10th March.


Create a poster or a mind-map based on the approach you were given in the lesson (Deficit, dominance, difference or diversity). Show the key ideas of the approach, key theorists and what they said, and any criticisms of that theory. You may need to use your gender theorists booklet and the quizlet to help you with this. Due Friday 11th March

Don't tell me I'm not good to you...

A quizlet for language and gender theorists. Not finished yet, but getting there.

Link

Homework delivered to your inbox?

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 Sample responses to mock paper - Proms

Read through the sample response saved in our lesson resources folder, paying particular attention to the examiner's comments.


Notice how focused it is on representation and how it integrates lots of language terminology into the answer.


https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0n14k4_2wH8dFF6MnpTVk8wWU0

Year 12 work until end of February

Year 12 Work tasks and deadlines - February

Piece of Work	Due Date
Article on language and gender	Thursday 11th February (1 hour)
Mock exam DIRT tasks (do task on front of your paper, circle all language terminology used in your answer, read the sample response - link below)	Thursday 11th February (30 minutes)
Wider reading (Pegg article and any others given)	Thursday 25th February (30 minutes)
Revise terminology for test	Thursday 25th February (1 hour)
Investigation work	Thursday 25th February (2 hours)

Year 12 Homework w/c 25/1/16

Sorry everyone - been a while since I wrote on here. I will get back into the habit.

This week we have rounded off our introduction to the topic of language and gender. We have discussed different ways in which society is sexist (both a historical perspective and more recent examples) and how this is mirrored by the language we use. We have learnt the difference between sex and gender, and we have discussed the topicality of the word 'transgender': this is a fast-moving area of language study! We have discussed the concept of socialisation and we have touched on the theories of language and thought (Sapir and Whorf). Finally, we have looked at a range of texts (both modern and older texts) and analysed how the different genders are represented within these texts.

We have learnt the terms: androcentric, derogatory language, pejoration, semantic derogation, lexical asymmetry, subordinate, promiscuous. 

See here to recap our lessons this week:
Lesson 1
Lesson 2

Homework: due Tuesday lesson (group I share with Mrs Morgan) / Thursday lesson (group I share with Miss Moody)

Your next assessment is a writing task. Question 3 of paper 2 asks you to write an article for a non-specialist audience. This means that you are writing for the general public, not A-level language teachers or students, therefore you should assume no prior knowledge of English Language study.

Task: Write an opinion article in which you discuss the issues of gender representation in modern texts. Before you start you should state your intended audience.

Homework (suggested time 2 hours)

1.  Go to the language section of The Guardian website: https://www.theguardian.com/science/language
2. Read a selection of articles. Have a browse around. Read what takes your fancy. There are articles on there about accents, gender, children’s language (a Y13 topic).
3. Choose one that you like the look of and a) summarise it in bullet points, or one neat little paragraph (like we did in class) b) what do you notice about the way the article is written? Underline at least three language features that you recognise from today’s lesson, or that you think are good examples of language to use in this type of article. Label them if you can (eg uses first person plural pronoun… uses modal auxiliary verbs…)
4. Draw together your notes from the last 3 lessons. We have covered a variety of ideas and you have been given some handouts to read. Make sure you have read them. Using your chosen method (bullet points, mind map) compile some ideas that you might want to use in your article. 

Still got time to spare?! Deborah Cameron (an important gender theorist we will be studying after half-term) has written a response to the debate this article refers to on her blog. It would be a useful read: https://debuk.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/a-rabid-feminist-writes/

Year 12 homework - Representation. Week 1 after half-term

Due to be handed in Thursday 12th November

The representation of gender in the media

The text on your handout (I can't reproduce it here - if you've lost it you'll have to borrow someone's or find me) is an opinion piece by Barbara Ellen writing in The Observer. It was written in response to a large number of articles in newspapers, magazines and on the internet criticising a well-known film actress for appearing to have used artificial means to rejuvenate her face and skin.

Below the task is a commentary about how this piece represents her. This is an example of how to write about representation, using linguistic knowledge. I do not expect you to write in this amount of detail… yet!

Your Task:

1. Read the article about Nicole Kidman and the analysis of how she is represented.

2. I would like you think about how women and / or men are represented by the media.

Find two pieces of media (advert, article, transcript of a TV ad…) that represent either women or men in either a positive or a negative way. You may find one  about men and the other about women, or both about women but one positive and one negative etc

Bring them to the lesson and be prepared to share some of the ways in which you think the language creates those representations.  I don’t expect you to have done an analysis like the example, but I expect to see copies of the texts, with parts underlined. Try to label those parts with linguistic features. Write a brief comment about how this language is creating a representation.

 * You may wish to have a go at writing up a couple of features into a paragraph, in a similar way to the example

 

Year 12 homework for half-term

Set Thursday 22nd October. Due Thursday 5th November. 

Analyse the article about Nadiya Hussein. You can do this with the paper version I have given you, or you can use this online version, then print it out: Nadiya article

I don't anticipate that you will all be able to answer all of the questions but I'd like you to have a go. At least try labelling some of the language, using the new terminology that we have learnt. Some of you may be able to think about the effects of this language on the reader.

Super extension - are there any features of language that I haven't commented on, that you think are noteworthy?