A2 Computer Lesson

Afternoon A2 - end of term is finally here!

As we had a fairly heavy lesson on Tuesday with your timed essays, today you will be doing more work on Elevate. Log on and work your way through the tasks below:

Go through the section on why language changes (16.4.3) and do some further research online for reasons for language change. Make this functional, and make sure this is research you can actually use in the exam, no matter what texts you get. Write these notes up on your blog.

Next, read through Hefer's article in 16.4.4 and post some analysis to your blog. Use the 'ideas on activity 7' to help you with this.

Continue to do research, revision and writing over Easter to prepare for your mocks!

AS Language Paper 1 - Hints and Tips to Boost Your Grade

Hi everyone,

Now that you have had a go at the exam and have your feedback, you should now focus your attention on how to build on these skills you have picked up. Below is advice on how to address the exam as a whole, and how to approach each of the 3 questions.

A summary: quality not quantity, use 'sophisticated' terminology, proofread and edit (leave time after the 20 mins for question 3 to re-read and improve everything - it can make the difference of a full grade), don't worry about repeating points in question 3 - it is expected and not penalised, be subtle not straightforward, link techniques and context every time you make a point, comment on both texts in each paragraph in Question 3. 

Questions 1&2 

• You get two texts linked by theme but in different forms/genres to analyse separately (one in each question) - you need to show how the different contexts (form/genre, audiences, purposes, modes, means of reception i.e. how the readers access the texts, audience needs and expectations etc.) influence the techniques that the text producers use (identify these with as much terminology as possible). In other words, 'Why do the producers use the linguistic techniques you have identified?' In other words, 'How does language link to context?'
•  In questions one and two, you analyse each of the texts separately, looking at exactly how meanings and representations are communicated - you should try and explore a range of frameworks - comment about not just grammar and lexis but also ideas such as discourse (e.g. use of 1st/2nd/3rd person, structuring devices, discourse markers, level of formality, general tone); mode/multi-modality, and affordances and constraints of the genre, if they are technologically mediated; how graphology supports meanings made through language (e.g. the way the caption interprets the image in a particular way to guide the reader to intended meanings); the implied writer and reader, perhaps even exploring synthetic personalisation, building the consumer etc., the importance of phonological aspects if they are relevant etc.
• In Questions 1&2, you are given marks in AO1 accurate terminology and good PEE (10 marks for accurate terminology used to explore how meanings and representations are made, and SPAG, and coherent/cohesive analysis) and AO3 context (15 marks for the different aspects of the who, how, where and why - I identified some of these in the first bullet point)
• Higher marks are awarded if you comment on what is percieved to be the more 'sophisticated' terminology e.g. the grammar of sentence moods (also called clause types), sentence types (and the order of the clauses within them, including how they are linked e.g. with discourse markers, subordinating or co-ordinating conjunctions, fronting of adverbials etc.), text cohesion (structuring devices, register, tone etc.), affordances and constraints of technologically mediated texts etc.
• Use of even a couple of these 'sophisticated' aspects of analysis can boost even a lower-band marks and are necessary for top-band marks. Looking at the use of sentence moods (especially if you can identify and explore aspects like cloaked imperatives), modal auxiliary verbs, subordinating discourse markers etc. is going to improve your marks.
• Quality is more important than quantity so develop fewer points more deeply but ensure you cover a range of frameworks/levels (grammar, lexis, discourse, phonology etc.) - context is worth the most marks so ensure you comment on this in depth, perhaps exploring how purposes combine in particular quotes or how different sub-audiences might interpret or react to techniques differently.
• Proofread and edit to improve the amount of terminology used, the clarity and accuracy of your writing, the depth of your points, the amount/subtlety of contextual comment etc.

Question 3

• Question 3 is marked on a brand new assessment objective: AO4 - explore connections across texts - and is worth 20 marks.
• The trainer on the course said that quality is way more important than quantity and that you can pick just twoaspects to connect/contrast but you must develop those paragraphs fully to show how techniques make meaning similarly/differently because of the contexts or how meaning is made similarly/differently because of the contexts.
• The trainer said you should spend only 20 minutes of the exam time on this question (perhaps because you know the texts so well at this stage) - my recommendation is to independently find texts that connect on a theme for yourself and practise this type of answer, as often as possible, to get your speed up - how much you can plan and write in the time is like muscles that need developing through exercise. Get mentally muscly!
• You can repeat ideas from questions 1 and 2 because you are now contrasting the texts and it is that aspect that you are being marked on.
• You do still need to use as much terminology and contextual comment as you can, as it is the sophistication of the connections and contrasts and how they are explained that is important. Comment on both texts in each paragraph, using connecting and contrasting discourse markers to guide the reader.
• Ensure that you explore the thematic links (essential!) and any contrasting aspects (beneficial!), especially if they are part of wider discourses on education, race, the environment, politics, the media etc. How are groups and ideas represented, as well as how is the implied reader  represented and how is the implied writer self-representing?
• Comment on the mode and reception, the register, the degree of interactivity, the degree of politeness or whatever seems significant, because evaluating the significance and ambiguities of the techniques is high-level
• 'Straightforward' is the enemy of high marks - by all means cover all the bases by including as much terminology and context as you can but it is the subtler points that show the complexities in the texts and the connections that you make between them that will win you the higher marks.

Look through all of the advice above, the comments on your mocks and the highlighted target sheet. Use the feedback powerpoint and the exam board's A grade example to try and boost your mark.

Over Easter, you can re-sit your mock if you wish. If you do this, make sure it is in timed conditions (allow yourself 1.5 hours) and I will mark it when we get back.

Claudia

Mock Feedback

Morning to everyone who is not on the trip,

Today we will be going over your mocks and I'll be giving feedback to you all as a group. Today you will reflect on your feedback, and you have an opportunity to leave the lesson with a better exam response if you closely follow the instructions.

The first resource you will need is here - this is the PowerPoint with generic feedback. Read along as I am going through it and check your work at the same time - what have you missed? Where did you go wrong in the exam? What changes could you make to boost your grade? Annotate the exam texts at the same time to make a detailed plan of your re-sit.

Secondly you will need to click here - this is an A grade response. Look carefully through this response and try to decipher where you have missed out on marks. What does this response do that yours does not? What could you add to your response to boost your grade?

Choose one or 2 questions from the paper, and based on your personal feedback and target sheets, the PowerPoint and the exemplar response, re-write your responses to these questions.

Independent learning lesson 21/03

Afternoon everyone,

I am setting you independent work today. There are a few tasks you need to catch up with before the end of term and I know that many of you are at different points with your work/notes etc and there are a few topics to start this side of Easter, so I would like you to find a computer and work on the following tasks today.

1. Did your mock exam highlight any areas that you feel you need to do more work on? I.e. using terminology and integrating this into your answer, structuring PEE paragraphs, knowing your frameworks or terminology? Use today to try and fill in these gaps in your learning.

2. Log onto Cambridge Elevate and work your way through some of the topics you are not as confident with, either on Paper 1 or Paper 2. Post some notes to your blog.

3. Do some research into Grice's Maxims and Politeness Theory. Make sure you have a decent overview of both topics and make sure you have some notes on both. You can post these to your blog.

On Wednesday we will be going through the mocks and you will have an opportunity to re-do any parts of your mock you're not fully satisfied with.

Hope you have a productive afternoon!

Claudia

A2 Computer room lesson 17th March

Hi everyone,

Here are your tasks for today.

If you haven't completed the tasks on the Sandi Toksvig article from last week, please continue with that.

Log on to Elevate and go to chapter 16. Skim through the first part and get quickly to Figure 16.2 - it is information about different 'periods' of English. Please make notes on your blog. Remember, although you will only get texts that are 'modern' English (from 1700 on), they will have some influences from earlier forms of English (as our English does) and there is nothing stopping you showing learned knowledge by referring back where you can make it relevant. 

Include from other sources (e.g this brilliant timeline on The British Library site) the dates of Caxton's printing press, Johnson's dictionary and Lowth's grammar, linking to standardisation.

Watch the video in 16.3 (or listen to it while you make notes and revise terminology from the section below - if you go to any other page, the video will stop). As you read through, particularly look at the page from Dr Johnson's dictionary - look at how the lexicographer's citations differ from the ones in modern versions. Also be sure you note down the idea of the inkhorn controversy, which is great to mention in the exam when you are discussing prescriptive attitudes.

Whip through the start of 16.4 and do a PEE analysis of 16.4.4 - Simon Heffer's article for The Daily Mail, linking to theories/concepts/learned knowledge that will help you get AO2 marks.

A2 Laptop Lesson

Afternoon A2

Today you can start with some terminology games on this website. Spend around 20 minutes having a go - they will refresh your memory on linguistic terminology you may have forgotten.

Next, browse a few online dictionaries. Choose a word and look at the entry for this word over several dictionaries. Do it a few times and look at a range of words (formal/technical/colloquial etc.) and look at the list of conventions that are used and think about this - how do they help the audience to gain a full understanding of the word and its uses? You can use Urban Dictionary too, and look at the comments. You might get a dictionary entry in the exam, but it will be a long one like the Oxford English Dictionary online (not the same as the Oxford Dictionary Online) which is a subscription service - so you need to have a good pragmatic understanding of dictionary conventions when we look at them in class. Note the conventions down on your blog.

When you finish this, log in to Cambridge Elevate and search for chapters 16-22 which are on Language Change, and work through these independently. The texts you can get in your Language Change question will be from 1700 in and as we learned on Tuesday you will have 2 questions, one is a single text and one is a comparison, and they could either be diachronic or synchronic.

After this, if you still have time, find an article that displays prescriptive attitudes to language change. Annotate it with which of Aitchison's metaphors for prescriptive attitudes are evident and explore how the attitudes are communicated. Put a summary on your blog as we will be looking at this in tomorrow lesson.

Enjoy!

AS Language computer room lesson 7/3/16

Afternoon everyone! I have lots of mock prep for you to do today, so by the end of this week you should all be experts on paper 1 ready for Monday!

First things first:

Make sure you have registered for Cambridge Elevate using the code I gave you.
This should give you access to the textbook; get familiar with how it works and read the section 13.5.1 up to and including 13.5.4. Make notes on some examples of how language is used in these sections to represent different groups and ideas. Try and apply terminology to the quotes. Put these notes onto your blog.

Make sure you do this properly: doing the actual task, looking up everything you need to in order to understand, blogging your notes and browsing the textbook (so you know what there is for you to look at independently). Your next task will be to build on what you've learned and written.


It's Fair Trade fortnight and I wanted to use resources linked to this to explore terms and ideas to use in Paper 1 (analyse two texts separately then compare them). This work should bring together some of the work on representation that we have done so far. you should be able to do most of the analysis and write-up in class. Use this opportunity to revise and practice your technique for the mock next week.

Task 2:

The question is 'how are meanings and representations communicated in the two texts?'

a) The first text is an official website (ActionAid) providing teaching resources for Fair Trade fortnight. Use the following questions and terms to help you explore it but your answer should be structured like an essay in PEE paragraphs:

• Select some key conventions/techniques across a range of frameworks/levels (grammar, lexis, discourse etc - particularly explore how graphology supports meanings made through language)

• Look at all the conventions of the form (website) and how these are used to make meanings and representations e.g. they might link to other reputable organisations to make them seems more reliable, or characterise the organisation in particular ways e.g. as professional ("get a job at ActionAid" hyperlink). Use the terms 'affordances' (benefits of the genre/mode i.e. what the technological aspects of the form allow the producer to do/achieve/communicate) and 'constraints' (the limitations of the form i.e. what the website cannot do or can only do in a limited way - try to tentatively establish the effect of constraints and how the producer mitigates/compensates for these).

• choose a range of points that cover meanings, representations and different aspects of the form (including affordances and constraints) and plan an answer. 

b) The second text is a Daily Mail article on research into fair trade.

• Again explore the language choices

• Then explore the representations of Fair Trade, the workers, the researchers, The Daily Mail etc.

• Look for significant patterns in the language (quotes you could group together that work in similar ways or for similar effects)

• choose a range of points that cover meanings, representations and different aspects of the form ensuring that you can use plenty of terminology across a range of frameworks (lexis, grammar, discourse, graphology etc.) and then plan an answer

c) compare the two texts

• spot connections and contrasts across the two texts, focussing on the theme they have in common but also considering how and why they diverge

• choose quotes that you can connect and contrast because they are comparable (e.g. they both use interrogatives/noun phrases/metaphors or other shared techniques; they both talk about the Fair Trade initiative; they are both critical of something; they both refer to outside agencies etc.) 

• ensure that you talk aboiut how the meanings and representations that are made are similar and different using terminology from a range of frameworks

Remember the mark scheme and AOs:

AO1 terminology, clear PEE with linked points and clustered (linked/grouped) quotesAO3 show how the context affects the linguistic techniques used (why those techniques are used in that way for that audience and purpose, and how the form/genre affects language use)

A2 Language

Afternoon A2,

I am only to set you up with work today because I am part of a moderator's visit, so you will be doing a research task for me and, as I am sure you will all LOVE, doing a small group presentation tomorrow in class. Yay!

I'd like you to combine a few of the topics below, do some group research, and then turn this in to a short PowerPoint presentation for tomorrow morning, so the rest of the class can be informed on some excellent AO2 stuff - remember, you need to impress the examiner with your wealth of knowledge in this area!

I'd like you in groups of, ideally, no more than 3, and for each group to cover one topic per person. If there are 4 of you, you need to cover 3 topics to make it fair. Since you have the entirety of today's lesson to work on this, I expect you to be well informed and polished when presenting tomorrow morning. After the presentation, turn your research into a detailed blog post for Tuesday.

No repeat topics please! To ensure this is fair, I will be assigning you topics once you have got yourselves into your groups.

Here are the list of topics:

• Dictionaries from 1700's to today
• Grammar guides 1700s to today
• Prescriptive attitudes through time (examples)
• What is prescriptivism? Use Jean Aitchison's metaphors
• Fairclough's informalisation with some examples of real texts
• Standardisation 
• The Great Vowel Shift
• Shakespeare's impact on language - then and now (why is English suited to acquiring coinages?)
• The effect of social media on language change
• Textisms then and now
• Pidgins and creoles
• World Englishes and English as a lingua granca
• Political correctness
• Why do words get invented and become obsolete (incremental and decremental change)?
• Reasons for language change summary
• Examples of words that have changed using different terminology and relating to reasons for language change.

I am looking forward to seeing these tomorrow!

Attitudes to Language Change

Morning all!

It is important to consider attitudes to language change. Two key terms that you need to try and get into your essay (apart from diachronic and synchronic) are the terms for the two contrasting attitudes: prescriptive and descriptive.

A descriptive attitude is the one we try to take where you observe and try to objectively record what is happening linguistically, exploring what it might be.

A prescriptive attitude is giving a judgement about whether language use/change is 'good' or 'bad', 'correct' or 'incorrect'.

Although prescriptive attitudes have been discovered in texts written in the early centuries AD, it was only after standardisation (through dictionaries and grammar texts in the 1700s) that prescriptivists could make specific claims about what was right and wrong with any authority. You must remember that these texts (grammar texts and dictionaries) were written by self-appointed 'experts' and the only reason their ideas about what was correct and incorrect became authoritative was the popularity of their texts (we, as English speakers, agree on what constitutes a valid part of our language  - if it doesn't 'catch on', it won't be in our language).

Today's Task

Here is a detailed discussion from The Guardian linking attitudes to language change to attitudes to fashion and exploring that analogy. Read the text closely, looking up the links too. Then research Jean Aitchison's metaphors for prescriptive attitudes to language change (just Google 'jean aitchison metaphors'. Then sum up some ideas about attitudes to language change on your blog, thinking about the terms and theories/concepts you could link to in the exam.


If you finish these, I have another past paper text for you to look at and annotate with these new ideas.