Lexical map of the brain

Fascinating article found by A2 student Aimee with some great visualisations of how certain words and concepts seem to map to particular regions of the cortex:


https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/apr/27/brain-atlas-showing-how-words-are-organised-neuroscience#img-1

Words that were invented by mistake

A little video in those words that were 'back-formed' -- produced by misunderstanding of their morphology.

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/words-that-were-invented-because-we-actually-just-got-t-1771890009

Timeline & A Street through Time

From the Making-Revision-Fun department, two suggestions for ways to ground your sense of historical context.


The first we played in class: the Timeline series of card games, which test your grasp of the relative order in which key historical events happened. you can get themed packs and even mix them up; in class we used the green and red packs ('Diversity' and 'Historical events'). Play solitaire or with a study buddy.


The second is from A2 student Emily, who suggested this beautifully illustrated book tracking the appearance of a street through time. Others in the series look at cities, farms, and so on too. You can get hold of these very cheaply!

The history of English can be explained in five words - Quartz

Not a bad selection -- compresses some key points of the story nicely.

http://qz.com/627204/a-history-of-english-in-five-words/

Developing children's handwriting

It's useful to look at the strategies teachers use, and the terminology they employ, in helping children develop their handwriting skills. This government document gives an example guide.

http://www.foundationyears.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Gateway-to-Writing-Developing-handwriting.pdf

Letter forms and abbreviations - The University of Nottingham

This site collects some useful info about early letterforms and abbreviations, with examples and terminology.

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/medievaldocuments/letterformsandabbreviations.aspx

Joos' Five Clocks

We looked today at Martin Joos' five-part system for analysing the register of a text, beyond just formal/informal, but instead classifying texts (or elements of texts, as we saw), along a five-position scale.


this article gives some further discussion of Joos' system., and lays out a helpful table of the five clocks against four features of texts. it includes some more examples and features that help identify the five clocks at work.


http://ww2.odu.edu/al/jpbroder/jpb_on_joos_1976.pdf

CLA Phonological Processes Chart

A beautifully-designed chart of the three major classes of phonological changes that happen in children's speech. This includes more than we tackled in class, alongside some ages at which the processes typically stop occurring. (If they're persistent, you might hire an expert linguist -- like yourselves! -- to help iron them out: you may not appreciate sounding 'cute'.)


http://mommyspeechtherapy.com/wp-content/downloads/forms/phonological_processes.pdf

Don't forget the Lesson Blog...

Just a reminder that the Park Language Lesson Blog is currently tracking the A2 year, and there is an archive of last year's AS course in its entirety:


https://parklang.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/new-blog-as-language/


That's the link to the first post, and if you click lower left you can march forward through the year.


This will make great revision for A2 students, especially those resitting the AS modules.


For A Level students, the concepts are the same and you might like the explanations there as a second way through the material we're covering. The sequence is slightly different, and crucially anything exam-specific will not apply to you, but it's still basically the same subject! Have a browse and see what's there.

Passive Form

Okay, cringey video, but some good advice and interactive practice to help get to grips with the passive form. It's very easy in fact -- it's just a verb form! -- as long as you don't try to make sense of it through the everyday meaning of the word 'passive', or try to take short-cuts in identifying it.


The page here helpfully discusses alternatives that might serve similar purposes, too.


http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/grammar-vocabulary/grammar-videos/passive-forms

Simple, Compound, Complex and Minor sentences

Really clear explanation here, in the context of considering your own essay writing.


Missing is the fact that sentences can be compound and complex at the same time, or multiply compound and complex -- with many clauses coordinated or subordinated. It also disregards the 'minor sentence' -- that is, a word, phrase or fragment on its own, marked out as a sentence but with less than a full clause.




http://www2.ivcc.edu/rambo/eng1001/sentences.htm

Sounds Familiar...?

I found to my surprise that I hadn't posted a direct link to this fabulous resource from the British Library. The Sounds Familiar archive collects accent and dialect variation across the UK, with interactive maps, recordings, transcripts, collections of lexical variation and more.


http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/