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.