Final computer room lesson term 1

Morning all

As this is our last computer room lesson of the term this is a good time to get some revision and knowledge consolidation done. You need to ensure, as I mentioned last week, that you fully understand the CLA topic as we have now finished our study of this and will only return to it for revision (if we have time) at the end of the term before your exams. If there is anything you are unsure of, now is the time to revisit it and ensure that you understand it. Additionally, you need to ensure that you are working on your understanding and knowledge of terminology

Useful revision techniques:

• Make revision cards
• mind maps
• consolidate your knowledge by reading articles that I have posted, or find your own wider reading
• revisit the PPTs we've been through in class
• research the theorists
• tidy up your notes from class/on your blog
• re-read your essays you've done so far and read over my comments to decide what it is you need to work on

If you feel confident with CLA, then you can move on to do some research on to our next topic of study we will be covering after Christmas which is Language Change. If you don't get onto this today, this is the work you need to do over the Christmas break:

• Find a short section of text (fiction or non-fiction) from 1600ish and translate it into modern English. Then analyse differences using as much linguistic comment as you can e.g. syntax, semantic shift (what sorts?) etc.
• Research a word that has changed and any phrases, collocations or uses (previous or current uses) that illustrate the different meanings e.g. not quite ready vs quite tired. This is a good resource - the etymology dictionary - which you can use to map the change and development of a word or phrase.
• Find two articles that show differing attitudes to a 'language change' issue e.g. an article that criticises young people's language and one that objectively describes it or is positive about it (look at the links at the side of my blog as a starting point). Or one about the change in the word 'literally' or on the use of non-gendered pronouns etc. Analyse the language used to represent the change/issue, comparing the two texts.

This task is due Wednesday 3rd January 2018; post to your blogs.

Any problems, let me know.

Additional Theories & Revision

Morning all

For all intents and purposes we have essentially finished our study of CLA. You have one essay coming back to you on Wednesday and we will do one final essay on Thursday, but at this point all bases are covered and you need to now work on your revision of the topic and ensure you understand it.

With this in mind, linked below are two resources which may be useful. The first (click here) is an article outlining some different theorists to the ones we have covered. Essentially, this article proposes that all children regardless of factors such as ethnicity, culture and social class will go through the same stages when learning language and at approximately the same age (Flanagan, 1996). What others can you find in this text - record the concept, the theorist and the year in your notes.

Secondly here is an article regarding virtuous errors. 
This is less academic, but good wider reading all the same. Read the article and make notes for your revision.

When you have completed these tasks, you need to continue revising and ensuring you understand the topic. Additionally, here is the PowerPoint on Overextension and Underextension from Thurs.

10 Language Mistakes Kids Make That Are Actually Pretty Smart

BY ARIKA OKRENT

 

OCTOBER 16, 2015

Little kids make such cute mistakes when they talk. We know they're still learning the language, so we tolerate their errors and chuckle at how funny they sound. Behind that chuckle is the assumption that the kids are getting it wrong because they just don't know the rules yet. In fact, kids' mistakes show they know a lot more about the rules than we think. The mistakes are evidence of very smart hypotheses the kids are forming from the limited data they've been given so far. Here are 10 really smart language mistakes that kids make.

1. "Dop it!" instead of "stop it!"

It's not easy to start a word with a consonant cluster. Kids don't have the fine motor control they need to produce the 'st' in stop, but they don't just leave it out. They substitute a sound they can produce. 'D' is a very smart substitution for 'st' in "stop." If you take a careful look at the acoustics of 't' in adult versions of "stop" vs. "top," you see that the 't's in those words look different from each other. The vocal cords kick in sooner for the 't' in "stop." A 'd' is basically a 't' where the vocal cords kick in sooner, so when children substitute that sound, they show they've heard the difference between "stop" and "top" and hypothesized that it's important for the language. And they are right!

2. Calls the dog "baby."

When children start using words, they haven't figured out all the situations in which they apply. They form hypotheses about word meaning and apply them on their own. The child might call all the kids and pets in the family "baby," but not the parents, revealing a hypothesis that "baby" means "family member who other people have to get food for." She may call everyone she meets "baby," extending the hypothesis to "living creatures." Like any good scientist, she can only confirm her hypothesis by testing it. Eventually, she will get enough data to settle on the right one.

3. Points to something and says "thank you" when he wants it.

This mistake shows complex knowledge of pragmatics, or the meaning of words in contexts. He knows that "thank you" is not the name of a thing in the world, but is rather something we say in a specific context. "Thank you" occurs in the context of a transfer of possession. He's saying, "Let's do that thing where 'thank you' gets said." Very clever way to try to bring about a transfer of possession!

4. "Baby drink. Milk all-gone!"

At about 18 months, children start putting two words together in phrases. But these phrases aren't just words haphazardly thrown in next to each other—they are mini sentences that express the relationships that full sentences do. "Baby drink" refers to the relation "actor performs an action." The words come in the same order they would in a grammatical sentence: subject verb. "Milk all-gone" expresses "object has some quality," and those words also come in the correct order: noun (is) adjective. The child has figured out that word order matters a lot in English for making those relations clear.

5. "I goed fast!"

Getty Images

Most children go through a phase where they treat irregular verbs like they are regular. The interesting thing is that they do this after they have already learned the irregular versions. They may say "went fast" for a while, when "went" is just a word they've heard a few times. Later they notice the larger pattern—words take –ed in the past tense. Only when they've noticed that pattern, do they start making these overregularization errors. "I goed fast" is a sign that the child is not just saying words, but figuring out the larger important patterns that relate words to each other.

6. "I can't will go today."

Auxiliary verbs are hard! Can, will, do, would, should, might—there are so many little words that change the meaning of a clause. They pile up on top of each other, sometimes contracting into smaller versions, and who knows what order you're supposed to put them in? When kids pile these up, even if they don't do it correctly, they are making an amazing attempt to fit a lot of meanings together in one clause. "I can't will go today" includes information about permission status (can), negation (n't), and future tense (will) in one sentence. Trying these kinds of constructions out is a major step toward serious grammatical complexity.

7. "Ha ha. I won you."

This is not a bad guess. English has tons of verbs that can be intransitive (I watched, I pushed, I drew) or transitive (I watched you; I pushed you; I drew you.) Typically, situations where one person takes an action that affects another person will have a transitive verb associated with them. For a competitive kid of a certain age, what situation could be more stereotypically "one person affecting another" than when somebody wins?

8. "What are you eating it?"

Getty Images

Questions are complicated. When you ask a question like "what are you eating," you have a situation—"you are eating it"—that you want to know something about—"you are eating what?" The child has to figure out that to ask this question in English you have to move the object of inquiry, the "what," to the beginning of the sentence, and then switch the places of "you" and "are." In "what are you eating it?" the child has correctly switched "you" and "are" and moved the "what" to the beginning. But perhaps she then felt this movement left an empty space where there shouldn't be one, and so she sticks the "it" in to fill the hole. She is making extra sure the sentence is complete.

9. "Mommy, you're a grown up. I'm a grown down."

This shows that not only has the child learned that "up" is the opposite of "down," but that that sense of oppositeness can be applied to the relationship between "adult" and "kid" in a meaningful way. Just the kind of analogy-making that came in handy when learning the difference between "good guy" and "bad guy" or "backyard" and "front yard."

10. "Unless I will get a lollipop, if I won't will get dressed fast."

So much going on here. Clausal connectors like "unless" and "if" are some of the last words that children master. In fact, when used in tests of logical reasoning, many adults have problems with them too. The child here is combining two statements: 1. Unless I get a lollipop, I won't get dressed fast. 2. I will get a lollipop if I get dressed fast. He stipulates his conditions for getting dressed fast and lays out the anticipated consequences of his getting dressed fast all in one extremely complex blend. Before we can say he's mastered English, he needs to simplify this construction down to a level that even adults can understand.

Revision Micro-Teaches - CLA

Morning all,

We're coming to the end of our study of CLA and this is a useful time for you all to re-cap what you have learned and then apply this to exam texts, which we've been doing in our bi-weekly assessments (and you'll be doing another next week).

However it's also important for you all to learn from each other, so with that in mind today I am splitting you into 6 groups of 3 (attendance depending) and I am going to assign each group a different element of CLA, and you are going to gather all the info you know about this and present it as a "Micro-Teach" (i.e. a short, self-contained lesson) to the rest of the class on Wednesday.

The key criteria for your Micro-Teach is as follows:

• No more than 10 mins (but longer than 5)
• Everyone in the group must speak 
•  Use a Google Slides document which is shared with everyone in the group, in the event that one of you is absent; everyone must have access to the finished copy, no excuses.
• A handout/worksheet for the rest of the class
• Assessment for learning, so a task related to your conent that the class can do
• A plenary, which is a chance for you to check the understanding of the class (this could be as simple as a re-cap of what you've done, asking questions to the class or even a Kahoot quiz)

The subjects are as follows:

• Stages of Development and their linguistic characteristics
• Nativism
• Social Interactionsim
• Behaviorism 
• Cognitivism
• WUG Test, FIS Phenomenon & FOX-P2

These are always great fun (those in my class last year will remember the Lang & Gender lessons you did which went very well) and this is a great opportunity for you to showcase what you know, and to learn from each other. I will put you into groups once I see who is present/absent.

Enjoy!

CLA Revision & Timed Essay

Morning all,

You're going to be writing your timed essay tomorrow for the transcript we were looking at last week. The task is to analyse the language used by the children and their caregivers, and you've all been given 3 exemplar A grade essays to use as examples for how to approach a CLA question.

Today I'd like you all to spend time doing some revision as tomorrow when you are writing, I will allow you to have some flash cards with you as supporting materials, but nothing more.

So therefore today use the time to catch up on your revision for this topic. We've been studying it since September and will soon be leaving it behind so you should at least at this point have a good grasp of the things you need to cover in any CLA essay (it's a discursive task so the structure and content will always be largely the same whatever transcript you get). Please also take the time today to look up Halliday's Functions, which will be useful when writing about pragmatic development

Linked below is a great revision resource for CLA from Mindomo, which is a mindmap website. The mindmaps are interactive and can be downloaded and printed as PDFs, and you can create your own which will be really useful when it comes to revision. Bear in mind however that this task used to be much larger on the A Level language course than it is now (see your exemplar essays as evidence for this), so much of what is on this resource we have not covered and won't need to. Also, beware of misspelling Comsky as one of the mindmaps has (it's CHOMSKY, not CHOMPSKY!):

CLA Mindomo 1

CLA Mindomo 2

CLA Mindomo 3

You could spend all lesson looking at these, so make sure that this is something you are using at home to revise.

The second resource I'd like you to look at is eMagazine; the English department here at St Brendan's subscribes to eMagazine and it is a wealth of resources and has hundreds of useful articles on CLA (and language change when we get to it), and you should make sure you browse through whenever you get the chance. Login below:

username: Stbren
password: eMag16*


Nobody should be stuck for things to do today, so let's get on with revision. I have some flashcards to give out to everyone at the front; you'll be able to bring in 5 with you tomorrow (however I will be checking that they are not packed to the brim with writing! Just brief prompts please)

Draft Deadlines

Morning all,

As you are all aware, today is your deadline to get your draft to me so you can have feedback on your introductions, methodologies and analysis.

You are only entitled to one official draft, so if you want feedback this needs to be in by the end of the lesson.

When you are ready, please save your work as a word document and send it to my staff email at:

cal@stbrn.ac.uk

Work in my absence 8th November

Morning all,

I'm unwell so unfortunately will not be in today, however since today is our coursework lesson you should all have no issues in getting on with the work that was set on Monday. A reminder that your introductions, methodologies and analyses are due on Monday 20th November.

Please see the post below and continue working on this, and please see your emails for an example introduction, methodology and analysis.

I am hoping to be back in tomorrow; in the lesson we will be continuing to prepare a response to the Tim transcript and writing this response in timed conditions, so do read up on this from last week and read back over the introductions you wrote on the Padlet page (click here to access).

I'll be on email periodically throughout the day so get in touch should you need to and I will try to get back to you.

Work in my absence 6th November

Morning all,

I have to attend a meeting this morning so we will not have a full lesson. I will set you up with what I want you to work on today and then you can either remain in C7 to use the computers or you can go and find another computer elsewhere. We will use today's lesson as our coursework lesson, so what I would like you to work on is as below.

Your first official draft of your introduction, methodologies and analysis of your data (not conclusion, we will add that in once the rest of it is up to scratch) is due 2 weeks today on Monday 20th November.

You need to be, in principal, working on your analysis, and also you need to keep chipping away at your intros and your methodologies. Additionally if you have not yet collected your data, this now needs to be done as a matter of urgency.

Remember that this is an investigation and not an essay so when you hand in your first draft, the analysis needs to be sub-divided into subheadings that will help you explore your hypothesis. This means that you need to give an overview of the data in each section of the analysis (under each subheading) and not explore each piece of data separately.

To structure your analysis section you need to:

1. Choose sub-headings
2. Present quantified data in the form of tables/charts
3. Explore those findings using PEE, context, theory and relate it all back to your hypothesis.


Choosing subheadings:

• Consider how you are testing your hypothesis e.g. if you are looking at the use of CDS, your subheadings might be 'interrogatives', 'child-led discourse', and 'simplification and diminutives' (notice that these are features of CDS across a range of frameworks that will be significant in the data that will allow you to explore the uses of CDS in the transcripts in a structured, comparative way)

• They don't necessarily need to be techniques, they could be key questions i.e. 'In which ways is dominance established by the dominant participant?' (Notice that this question allows the exploration of not only who may be the dominant participant in each of the transcripts but how they achieve this and could call for more subheadings under this key question)

• The quantifying you have done should lead you to choose these subheadings thoughtfully because it should point you to the significant or puzzling findings that need exploration with PEE

Using Tables/Charts:

• Tables and charts are an important part of your analysis - they help provide evidence of all the thinking you have been doing in order to test your hypothesis and are the basis for your findings

• They should represent the most interesting of your quantified data and should help you to explain why you have chosen to focus of particular areas of the data e.g. if you are looking at gendered language in written texts, you might have a table of which lexical fields dominate and then choose to explore the top two with PEE analysis

• They should be introduced at the start of of the section in a clear and useful way that establishes why they are interesting/useful and an overview of what they show

• They should be positioned where they will be useful to the reader of your investigation and referred to in the analysis, not just for show

 PEE

• Because of word limit, you need to be highly selective about what you explore: pick significant or puzzling findings and look at quotes in context (context is AO3 and worth 20 marks - for tentatively exploring how meanings and representations are affected by social and cultural issues etc.), applying all relevant theories (AO2 - 15 marks) and exploring techniques using terminology, clearly guiding the reader (AO1 - 15 marks)

• Always relate your explorations back to your hypothesis - remember, that's what the investigation is about - how far if your hypothesis supported/contradicted (not proven/disproven because it's sucha small investigation) by the data you have collected?

You may go over the word count at the drafting stage but it is better to have more that you can select the best bits from to raise the consistence of the quality of the overall piece. You might end up leaving out a whole sub-heading in order to go into more depth on the others.

Today's Lesson & Half Term Homework

Morning all,

Today will be our coursework lesson as we will need Wednesday & Thursday to go through your responses for the timed assessment, and for people who missed it to catch up.

First things first, if you haven't completed (or started) your research into the WUG test and the FIS phenomenon, can you please complete this today.

Secondly, you should have all now completed an initial draft of your introduction and methodologies. For today, can you put these two sections together onto a word document and see if they from a cohesive intro to your investigation.

Next, continue to work on gathering your data. This needs to be completed as your half term homework. You must have 2 copies, one annotated and one clean.

If you have done all of these, you can make a rough start on quantifying your data:

The first major step in analysing your data is to quantify as many things as possible that will test your hypothesis e.g. if you are hypothesising that you will find defecit features, you will need to count how many hedges, empty adjectives etc. you find. These quantified findings will tell you what is significant (common/patterns of results) and worth exploring or unexpected and therefore worth exploring.

Set out a protocol for anything where it might be ambiguous what you are counting and not counting e.g. for interruptions you might want to establish that you are not going to count any back-channel agreement i.e. only count something as an interruption when it's a contradiction, agenda shift or the first person stops talking immediately or within a second of when the second participant speaks.

You might want to sub-divide e.g. count all interrogatives but keep them also as separate totals for open, closed, tag, rhetorical, prompt questions etc.

Keep them sub-divided also if you have multiple pieces of data so you can see if there are anomalies (surprising results, outliers etc.) in particular contexts e.g. if the participant's number of interrogatives decreases in one transcript, it would be a signal to look closely at why in that context fewer interrogatives were used.

Once you have quantified anything you need to in order to decide how far your hypothesis is supported or contradicted, you can start doing close PEE anlaysis in context to explore why this might be the case according to any relevant theory - be tentative and don't come to any firm conclusions. Ever. Never say proves or disproves. Aways acknowledge the limitations of the data.

CLA essay feedback, planning for assessment and WUG Test/ FIS Phenomenon

Morning all,

Tomorrow you will be doing a timed essay for me which will be your first graded piece of work. This will be based on the 'Joey and adult' transcript you wrote about last week. I have given you all some brief feedback so can you take some time today and reflect on this and think about how you are going to make improvements to this during tomorrow's lesson.

Take a look at the mark scheme (which I gave you all a copy of last Monday) and the exemplar essay for this question by clicking here. Look at the examiner's commentary and think about what this person has and has not done well and how you might adapt this.

Here is a link to the Transcript.

Once you have done this, can you all do some research into the WUG Test and the FIS phenomenon; these are important Case Studies that you will need to reference in your analysis. Post the research notes on your blog and ensure you understand the studies and their relevance.

Any issues, let me know.

Investigation - Methodologies

Morning all

Last week you wrote a very rough draft of your introductions (I am still waiting for a lot of these so you need to make sure I have them by the end of the lesson) so you should all have an idea of what you are investigating and why, and you should have your hypothesis.

If you do not, this needs to be done today.

If you have, then today you need to do the next stage of the investigation which is your methodology. This is how you will test your data to prove/disprove your hypothesis.

Write your methodology in note form, taking into account the following:

• State your hypothesis first and explain the theory basis if necessary (this will go in your intro eventually, not your methodology, but I will need to know it) e.g. The interrogatives used by the caregiver will have an impact on the child's language (Bruner and Vygotsky's ideas about social interaction)

• Explain what kind of data you will collect (be as specific as possible) and how it will help you to test the hypothesis e.g. three transcripts showing a dialogue between the caregiver and child in child-led tasks - this will allow me to see how the caregiver uses interrogatives and how/whether that technique structures the task and the child's responses

• Under the relevant sub-headings, deal with the three key factors to show your sophisticated considerations of the problems and how to solve them - ethicality, comparability, reliability - reliability will be the most important factor in such a small-scale investigation and ethicality may not be an issue in public data - say so if this is the case e.g. ethicality: I will get full, informed consent from the caregiver and all participants over the age of consent (using initial verbal consent and then a form explaining the use of the data and the participant's right to withdraw their permission) and ensure that the recordings do not impact on the child's usual activities by having the caregiver record when the activity is already decided upon; comparability: I will ensure that the same caregiver and child are used, that all the dialogues are child-led as far as it is possible to ascertain this, that (where other participants are involved) any uncomparable sections of data are disregarded, that the context is the same as far as possible (home environment - although time of the day and day of the week will vary due to necessity of getting child-led dialogues, and the age of the child will need consideration as they develop so quickly at this age); reliability: longer transcripts and more of them are desirable (3 transcripts of >3 minutes seems a reasonable amount of data for an investigation of this size), as averages will be less affected by anomalies, but the small amount of data means the effect of possible anomalies will need to be considered, especially when comparing the transcripts rather than using averages across them, and contextual factors will need close consideration when trying to determine how reliable each piece of data is.

• If you need to establish a protocol for what you will include in your testing and what you won't, draft one now, although it might go in your final analysis rather than your methodology

• Please let me know if you will need to ask someone's permission to record natural speech or access private data e.g. someone's letters or diaries, or someone's Facebook data if the expectation is that only friends will see it etc.

• You will need to get me to check your methodology and any letters/forms for permission before you collect your data. Post the methodology on your blogs and email me a version of it at the end of the lesson. As with your introduction, this will not be the marked draft, I will take that in after you have collected the data so it is accurate; this one is just for me to check you have made good choices and considered problems and issues.

Writing a CLA Essay

Morning all,

I'd like you to have a go at writing a response to a CLA essay question today, including everything we have covered about CLA stages, theories and CDS, and remember you still need to include linguistic terminology.

Spend around 10-15 minutes annotating the transcript and then have a go at writing the essay. I'd like one typed essay in from everyone at the end of the lesson. Look at the mark scheme you've been given for guidance. Remmeber that this is your first attempt and we haven't covered the whole topic yet so there will still be gaps in your knowledge.

Good luck!

Child Directed Speech (CDS)

Hi all,

Please click here to access the PowerPoint for CDS.

Writing an Introduction

Morning all,

Today you will be writing a draft version of your introduction to your investigation. This needs to be about 300 words and needs to be finished by the end of the lesson and emailed to me. So essentially, you have 90 mins to write 300 words - should be easy!

This is an essential part of your investigation; a good introduction will orientate the marker and show off what you know in a concise, academic way.

Planning:

• Why you chose the theory area and data - what makes this an interesting and useful investigation? (remember to be academic and not overly enthusiastic)

• A summary of what you know about that theory area including a range of theories and how they connect/contrast

• What you have focused in on from all of those and why

• Therefore what your hypothesis is

• How you will test it (which features of language will you quantify/explore) and why

There is a clear flow here that is essential for getting good marks on AO1 (the structure and flow of your investigation and the clarity and precision). Really think about the reader's needs - what do I need to know to understand your thinking and your process?


To exemplify this and to give you an idea, below is an introduction taken from a previous investigation. You can use this initially to give you ideas about the structure and content, but I don't want 20 slightly edited versions of this coming back to me at the end of the lesson:

Gender was the main focus throughout my investigation. Gender is stereotyped

by many people, therefore I have undertaken an investigation to gather and

analyse my own data. I wanted to investigate whether men and women speak

differently, using Robin Lakoff’s theory ‘The Deficit Model’ . Lakoff’s theory looks

specifically at gendered speech, in particular, women using deficient language

such as ‘hedges, tag questions and false starts’.

The data I have gathered is from ‘The Only Way is Essex’. Reality TV is a hot topic,

Towie has a main purpose to entertain, and its audience’s are teenagers, also the

cast within the show. In 2011 the show had 1.7million viewers. 6 I am using TOWIE

because it is an informal show where spontaneous conversations take place.

Danni and James are one of the main couples from the show. They are very

popular with fans which have led to them being shown more frequently on the

later series of the show. There are Fan Pages on Instagram which show that they

are a well-known couple.

The Deficit Model is a theory that suggests that ‘male language is the norm and female language is deficient.’  Robin Lakoff has a book ‘Language and Woman’s place’ which is based on female language being weaker than males. 8 She created a list of language

frequently used by women such as ‘hedges, polite forms, tag questions and

empty adjectives’. She also states that they apologise more and lack a sense of

humour. The Dominance model can be used in my investigation, which is a theory by

Zimmerman and West. This model states that ‘men dominate the conversation due to their superior status’. In mixed sex conversations, men are more likely to interrupt. The Difference Model may be useful for my investigation, looking at how men and women are brought up differently; meaning ‘communication between the sexes is similar to communication between two different cultures’.

Therefore my hypothesis is ‘Danni will use more deficit features than James whilst in conversation’.

Work in my absence Monday 25th

Morning all,

I’m absent today as I’m recovering from a nasty cold. Please spend today’s lesson time continuing to research your data for your investigations, and ensure that you have some form of data to bring to class on Wednesday and you will be starting to do some initial analyses on this. 

I will be on email periodically today, however if I don’t respond to you today I will get back to you tomorrow. 

See you Wednesday

Claudia 

Computer room lesson Monday 18th September

Morning all

Today you will be researching theories to further your understanding of Child Language Acquisition. You hould already have a firm understanding of the stages of development, and with this knowledge you can identify what stage a child is in just from a few lines of dialogue. The next step is to analyse this, which you need an understanding of the 4 main theories to do.

First things first, if you missed Thursday's lesson then you also missed watching the very important documentary, BBC Horizon - Why Do We Talk? which includes vital context that you'll need t remember for future essays, so could you spend today watching that please. Click here to access the documentary.

Those of you who were present, you will be using the format of the sheet I gave you on Thursday which outlined all the different theories we will be using. Research each theory and note down its characteristics in detail so that you understand it. Then, with your developed understanding of each theory and based on your research, comment on why this theory makes sense and then comment on what problems there are with this theory.

Plenty to be getting on with! See me if stuck.

Computer room lesson Monday 11th Sept

Morning all

This is our first computer room lesson of the year and we're going to continue to learn about the stages of CLA. First of all, research all the stages (starting with cooing, babbling, holophrastic and so on) and post a summary on your blog, citing your sources (use more than one). To help you with this, here is some information on the final developmental stage:

POST TELEGRAPHIC STAGE:

Remaining function words are acquired and used appropriatley.
Child can:
*Combine clause structures by using co - ordinating conjunctions ('and ' and 'but') and subordinating conjunctions ('because' and 'although') to make complex and compound utterances.
*Manipulate verb aspects more accuratley, for instance using the passive tense ('the car was followed by the lorry').
*Construct longer noun phrases ('the two big red buses').
*Sustain longer turns in conversation
*Start the conversation.

Here is a link to the PowerPoint from Thursday's lesson.

Next, using your knowledge of the developmental stages and their characteristics, read the following transcripts and decide which stage the child is in for each one. Write a short analysis explaining why you think this. There are  transcripts, each consisting of 2 sides:

3 CLA transcripts

This is a difficult task as we have not started on analysis of CLA just yet, but do have a go and out your knowledge from your research into practise.

Any issues, let me know.


For those of you who need it, here is a link to the CLA introduction from the end of year 1 which outlines the pre-verbal stages.

Welcome back, A2 Language

Morning all,

Welcome to your second year of the English language A level. This will be a jam-packed year and there is lots of new material to cover to re-cap from last year, so we need to hit the ground running.

The pace of this year will be very different to last year. Whereas last year was about establishing a good working knowledge of grammar and linguistic theories, this year we will need to actually apply that to your writing, as well as covering two new (fairly large) topics, Child Language Acquisition which we started at the end of Year 1, and Language Change. Additionally, you will need to manage your language investigation for your coursework which we will be doing some work on during Thursday's lesson.

For now, you need to ensure that you have all of the following links accessible on your own blogs. These will help you in both your exam preparation and coursework completion:

AQA Exam Board Home Page

Year 2 Exam Paper 1 Questions

Year 2 Exam Paper 1 Texts

Year 2 Exam Paper 1 Mark Scheme

Year 2 Exam Paper 2 Questions

Year 2 Exam Paper 2 Texts

Year 2 Exam Paper 2 Mark Scheme


2 blog posts to help with your investigations:

http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.co.uk/

http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/tackling-nea-language-investigation.html

General articles and web content to help you with grammar/theory/context:

http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/entertainment/how-well-do-you-know-your-grammar-a6802681.html

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/can-you-pass-year-six-52615

https://www.theguardian.com/quiz/questions/0,5961,211620,00.html

https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2013/aug/16/mind-your-language-apostrophe

https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2014/jul/11/mind-your-language-grammar-day

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/quiz/2013/feb/04/grammar-punctuation-quiz-test

Final lesson - CLA intro and Deb Roy's 'Birth of a word'

Morning all

This is our last lesson of Year 1, so you are now officially A2 students. As we discussed on Monday, this means that you now need to start getting to grips with the content of the second year.

With this in mind, please complete the following tasks today:

• Ensure you have a plan for your investigation, and you know what data you need to collect and analyse over summer. Be aware that your investigation may change shape, but at present you need to stick with your initial plan.
• If you need to record people, you must ensure that you a) have permission to record them and b) they are aware they are being recorded. If this protocol is not followed and evidenced (i.e. with signed, written consent) your data will be void.

• Read over the PowerPoints from Monday (see post below). We didn't have time to go through all of them but you can do that today. After you have read them, complete the TEDEd task on the Deb Roy TED Talk we watched on Monday:

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/deb-roy-the-birth-of-a-word/review_open#question-8

By the end of today's lesson, you should have a working knowledge of what your study of CLA will entail next year.

Have a great (and productive) summer!

Introductory CLA Powerpoints and Yr 2 Course Structure

Hi all,

Here are the PowerPoints from yesterday's lesson. We didn't go through them all however it would be useful for you to read over these over summer and to make notes.

Second Year Structure

Pre-Developmental Stages
Ages and Stages

End of year subject survey

Hi all,

Could you all please complete the survey below:

https://www.snapsurveys.com/wh/s.asp?k=149881655514

Mini prep-investigations

Please spend the remainder of this lesson, and Wednesday's lesson, trying out a prospective investigation by choosing a hypothesis and collecting sample data to test it with. Do a quick analysis to see if your hypothesis is supported or contradicted and to what extent (a successful investigation could either support or contradict theory or a bit of both!). Post your findings and any issues you encountered to your blog. What would make this a valid investigation?

Sample data is a bit like the data you might really collect - you'll need to make headway in collecting your real data over the summer so this is good practice. The sample data will give you an indication now as to the problems you might encounter, what you might find, how much data you might need etc.

Here are some examples of what you could do today and Wednesday.

Think back to last year's EU Referendum (or even this year's election). You could collect Vote Leave/ party political propaganda from the internet (your real data might be leaflets). You could test a power hypothesis (e.g. instrumental/influential power) or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis by looking at how controversial subjects are referred to e.g. lexical fields, use of synonyms, euphemisms/desphemisms, adjectives etc.

If you want to look at mixed-sex discussions to test the deficit theory you could find something on YouTube to transcribe in order to test the hypothesis that women will use Lakoff's uncertainty features, to see if that was the case and suggest reasons why/why not, bringing in other theory when you discuss it. You could then decide what you actually record.

You could look at how occupation affects language by testing the hypothesis by Swales that members of a discourse community share a pragmatic understanding by looking at comments on a particular business magazine or reviews of a product for a particular business and see the kind of abbreviations,  coined terms, shared references that were used.

Please post some analysis and reference to how far your hypothesis was supported/contradicted and what you learned about possible investigations.

Additionally, please read this example investigation on the AQA website. This will show you the kind of language you need to use when writing the investigation.

If you're struggling with ideas, here is a list from Dan Clayton's English language blog of some potential investigation hypotheses.

1. A study of the language techniques used by Great British Bake-Off judges when commenting on the cakes produced in the final rounds of the competition, focusing on politeness, directness and possible gender differences.

2. An investigation into the language of female boxers during interviews to see if stereotypes about female communication are true for these women.

3. A comparison of the language used by three children of different ages when responding to the same task, focusing particularly on the stages of development they are at and their ability to use vocabulary and grammar.

4. An investigation into the ways in which different political parties and pressure groups represented the EU during the 2016 referendum across their campaign literature.

5. A study of ways in which local newspapers in 3 different areas represent their local dialect and accent in reports about varieties of English.

6. A comparison of how Maybelline adverts change over a 75-year period in their representation of female beauty.

7. An investigation into the messaging styles of 3 different age groups when using WhatsApp.

8. An investigation into the ways that the language of Twitter arguments differs from those carried out face to face.

9. An exploration of the different language techniques used by three supermarkets to represent their values to the general public on their official websites.

10. A study of the linguistic techniques used by rugby commentators in a radio commentary compared to an online commentary from the BBC website.

Paper 2 Revision Lesson

Morning all,

One paper down, one to go. Tomorrow you will sit your Paper 2 mock. This paper has 2 sections:

Section 1 - a choice of 2 data-based questions focusing on linguistic theory. Could be language and gender, occupation or sociolect. Your essay must explore the data, but it must also be discursive and you must incorporate your wider reading to demonstrate your knowledge of the theory.

Section 2 - creative writing. You will be given a brief, and will need to write an opinion article in which you explore language traits and quirks. You must clearly state your intended audience at the start of the article and ensure that what you write matches your stated audience.

Use the blog and your own notes to revise. Ensure that you are prepared for any theory which might come up.

Revision

Morning all,

Hope you have all had a nice half term. As you know, your mocks are next week with Paper 1 on Monday and Paper 2 on Thursday with a revision session in between on Wednesday. Tomorrow we will be going over some Paper 1 techniques and will be doing some practice paragraphs, so today you are free to get on with whatever revision you need to do.

There is a wealth of information available on both this blog and Dan Clayton's blog so you shouldn't be stuck for materials. Read the info and summarise on your blogs - remember that everything you learn this year will be relevant for your final exams next year, so you need to be able to revisit them.

(Additionally for language and occupation, here's a really useful revision source for the theories.)

Any issues, let me know.

Coursework: Commentary

Hi everyone,

Your coursework hand-in is tomorrow, so we have one lesson left to get everything finished.

Please follow the advice below for how to approach the commentaries, and also for what your style model should be.

Commentaries

The commentary is designed to enable you to explain the decisions you have made in writing your piece and the language levels that you have employed and replicated following your exploration of a style model.

Word Count

The commentary is just as important as the Original Writing piece in that it is also 750 words and the same number of marks (25). 

Assessment Objectives 

This piece will test your ability to employ all of the assessment objectives equally. Below is a screenshot from the criteria on the top band features: 

What does this mean? 

A01: You need to use a range of language levels. Note the key words ‘integrated’ and ‘connected.’

Regardless of the language levels used, aim to cover a range rather than repeating multiple times the use of a particular word class. Do not write about the language levels in a disjointed fashion. You will do better by integrating them, e.g. The attributive adjective “gold” within the noun phrase “the gold surface.” 

A02: Through your knowledge gained from the style model, you will need to demonstrate an awareness of genre. How does your original writing imitate the genre? How have you shown understanding of how individual genres work (and possibly overlap)?

A03: You need to engage in the way language is used to create meanings and representations. Think about how the language levels are used to create different effects.

A04: Within your commentary, you must make reference to the style model. An integrated comparison between the style model and original writing piece is needed.

A05: Throughout the entire piece, you will be assessed on your ability to express ideas clearly and carefully using an effective structure. Note the key word “guide.” You need to provide a clear analysis that is well organised rather than a disjointed piece of work that lacks coherence.

Getting the process started

In order to produce a successful commentary, you should complete the following:

1. As part of your planning for the Original Writing, you will have have selected a style model and looked at the linguistic strategies that it uses. In order to write a successful commentary, analyse the language levels used in your style model. Highlight them in different colours, e.g. red = syntax, green = word classes. This is a really important starting point as you need to make connections (A04) to your style model. Your commentary cannot just write about your own Original Writing piece as you need to justify how they relate to your selected style model.

2. After analysing your style model in detail, you need to then identify the language levels used within your own work. Think about why they have been used. 

• What representation did you intend to create? 
• What purpose does the language level that you have employed serve?
• Ensure that you make a comments on the way the audience, writer and subjected are positioned along the way.
• When you are analysing your work, it is important to consider a range of language levels. Avoid just focusing on the ones you feel most confident with using. A good spread of language levels that are appropriate and meaningful to justifying your ideas is better than repeating the same ones constantly. 

Beginning the Commentary 

As part of your A Level course so far, you will be familiar with the importance of context and how this shapes the meaning and production of the texts. When producing your commentary, your opening paragraph should contextualise your Original Writing piece and making a clear connection to your style model. Consider the following as part of your opening paragraph: 

• You need to contextualise your own piece of work. Ensure that you comment on the purpose, form, topic, audience and how the subject is being represented. Do not generalise here. You need to be very specific. Generalisations will not help you reach high marks.
• You also need to introduce your style model. Why have you selected it? How does it relate to your own original writing piece? 

Example:

"My style model is in the genre of a dramatic monologue. There are different sections in the text with scene changes indicated by 'Go to Black' or 'Fade.' The monologue explores a character who is not fully self-aware and I have reflected this in my Original Writing piece... My monologue is similar to Bennett's in many ways, whilst also having differences..."  

Main Paragraphs in the Commentary

After establishing the context of both your own original writing piece and your style model, you then need to carefully analyse the language levels employed in your own work.

• Remember that you need to integrate linguistic description where possible, e.g. The pre-modifying attributive adjective ‘gold’ used within the noun phrase ‘the gold star’ is used to represent it as ….
• Once you have commented on your own piece of work, you then need to make sure that you make connections to the style model. It might also be the case that there are marked differences in how you have used the language levels. This is equally acceptable but you need to explain why, as this will enable you to discuss contextual factors shaping the production.
• Remember that you need to engage in meanings. Think about the way the linguistic strategies and language levels used create a representation.
• Adopt an interwoven comparison throughout rather than writing about the style model and your own production piece in isolation.
• Referring to the assessment criteria, you will note that it asks you to ‘guide’ the reader through. You will need to develop a coherent line of thought here. In order to guarantee this, you need to avoid leading with A01 features and instead developing topic sentences that enable the reader to understand the connections and points of comparisons being made. 
• Both the style model and original writing piece employ … but to create different representations…
• Within the style model, it utilises … which has been imitated in my original writing piece to …
• Throughout the style model there is use of …. This is mirrored in my original writing piece … so that the subject of … is represented …
• Whilst the style model utilises …. To represent the subject as … I have employed them in a different way so that the topic can be represented as … 
• Ensure that you refer closely to your style model by quoting specific examples from it. Likewise, you will need to do the same with your own original writing piece. If you provide no evidence, credit for A01 features cannot be given regardless of how vast a range of features you have employed. 

Example: 

"As monologues are spoken, it is important to represent speech. Bennett employs ellipsis to make it sound spontaneous and realistic. For example, Marjory says 'Said it was Rawdon anyway." This has been imitated in my own original writing piece through..." 

Concluding the Commentary 

This does not need to be a lengthy part of the piece. A couple of sentences will do here. Your concluding paragraph should very succinctly summarise the overall representation that you have created in your original writing piece.

• Overall, my original writing piece employs a range of language levels that are similar to my style model to represent the subject as … 

Useful Phrases: 

• Emulate / Mirror / Employ / Reflected / Imitated / Utilised / Mimics / Aligns /
• Represents / Portrays / Illustrates / Illuminates / Conveys
• The audience are positioned / This positions the audience to …
• Both / Equally / Similarly / In the same way / Using the style model, I have …
• Whereas / In contrast / Unlike / Alternatively / On the other hand

Meanings & Representations contd.

Hi all,

We made some good progress on M&R work last week, especially last Thursday, but there's still work to be done, especially on using a framework approach to build up analysis.

Today I want you to find your own texts for analysis. The criteria is;

• Two texts
• Share a common theme
• Must be of different genres

For example, if you found a text about music, one could be a review of a particular band and the other could be a forum post discussing that band. 

Once you have found them, do the same as last week: build up some analysis of both AO1 (linguistic techniques and analysis) and AO3 (analysis of context and representation). Try to to GRAMPS and then a framework approach.

NOTE: Do bear in mind that the web filters may not allow you to access some sites, so you may have to work around this.

Meanings and Representations

Morning all,

More re-visiting of the meanings and representations tasks today. you should have all completed paragraphs that you were set on Monday. Today you will be doing more of the same to ensure that your close linguistic analysis is up to scratch.

First of all, click here and here to read the advice that Dan Clayton has on his blog about this task, and make some notes.

Then, try to have a go at this task. This is exactly the same task as the School Proms task we completed a few months ago. There are two different texts which are connected by a central theme. On your blogs, make a list of the linguistic techniques you can see in Text A and Text B (as an extension you can start turning these into PEE paragraphs). We will be continuing with this tomorrow and the start of our lesson will be a feedback session on the techniques that you have found in both texts, and we will be working on developing a comparison between them.

Plenty to do. Any questions, let me know.

Wider Reading - Gender & Sociolect

Morning all,

Due to trips/absences etc I think we're going to be quite depleted in numbers today. So instead of starting a task which will span today and tomorrow as we usually do, today I want to devote this lesson to research and wider reading.

As we know, wider reading is essential when you want to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding in this subject. However, unlike a subject more established and traditional, such as as English literature, English language theories are constantly evolving and changing with new studies surfacing almost every week, so it can be really difficult to know where to start when you're trying to read around the subject.

Today I've got some great resources for you for Sociolect and Gender from Dan Clayton's blog - again make sure you check this regularly when revising as it's great for revision.

For Sociolect, check out these posts:

Regional variation & accents

Class & social groups and here

And for Gender, click here (look at the Daily Mail 'Legs-it' post especially!)


Choose a good variation of these posts and follow the links in the posts to access the wider reading materials. Read them and summarise them on your blog so you can access them for revision at a later date.

Mini Lesson Planning

Morning everyone

Since our lesson was disrupted on Monday we've lost some planning time for your mini-lessons, and as some people were absent on Thursday we may need to re-shuffle the groups a bit. I will sort out the groups and when you are all paired up, please continue with your planning for the mini-lessons.

Remember that your lesson needs to include the following:

1. Clear aims and objectives - what do you want the class to achieve and learn?
2. A starter activity to engage the class and get them working.
3. Present your assigned theory in terms that the group will understand.
4. A work sheet or an activity to assess the class' learning.
5. A plenary to summarise your lesson and to decide whether or not your aims and objectives have been achieved.

We will be presenting these tomorrow, so make sure you are ready!

Grice's Maxims, Politeness and Face Theory

Hi everyone,

We covered a lot of ground on Monday and I introduced you to 3 fairly complex theories. Without you completing your own independent wider reading and research, you will not be able to fill in the gaps to ensure you fully understand these concepts, which are vital to your study of language and will be far more pertinent in Year 2.

With this in mind, today I want you to spend this lesson re-reading the theories and researching them online, looking at linguistic blogs, articles, anything you can find to aide your understanding.

Please make notes on your own blogs.

Click here to access Monday's PPT.

Here's a YouTube clip relating to Grice's Maxims.

Language & Occupation

Morning all

You will be completing some writing tasks today. Please look back through the two PowerPoints relating to language & occupation and complete the following tasks - some of these will be continuations of what we did on Thursday and Monday. Complete them on Google docs and share your work with me at claudiaalgieri23@gmail.com

1. Write an analysis of the kitchen staff transcript which focuses both on close linguistic analysis and how this transcript applies to John Swales' theory of discourse communities. (Minimum 500 words)

2. Add on two paragraphs in which you compare and contrast the language between those in different positions of power within the transcript. 

3. Read through the Drew & Heritage 'Talk at Work' theory, and add in 2 paragraphs in which you discuss how this theory applies to the kitchen transcript.

I am expecting thorough and detailed work in the form of PEE paragraphs. Those who do not complete the amount of work expected will be in supervised study this week to catch up.

Language & Occupation - Discourse Communties

Click here to access the PowerPoint for Lang & Occupation and to re-cap John Swales' discourse communities. Use the PPT and click here to access another resource to add to your notes and to ensure you understand the concept.

Additionally, click here to re-cap the Drew & Heritage 'Talk at Work' theory.