Debra Myhill’s Grammar Pages

Debra Myhill supports teachers in learning the grammar knowledge they’re now expected to teach to rather young children. As you know, it’s a challenge if you haven’t been taught it yourself!

A Level language students should be ready to take this little grammar test for teachers. Try it out; it’s the first .doc on this page: https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/education/research/centres/writing/grammar-teacher-resources/grammaraschoice/grammarsubjectknowledge/

There are some *really* great materials on that page to help you polish your understanding of grammar.

It’s also interesting to look over all the other materials suggested for teachers to use: 

https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/education/research/centres/writing/grammar-teacher-resources/grammaraschoice/

Language Resources from QMU

This is a great site of resources from Queen Mary University, suggested by our exam board AQA.

Much of it is aimed at teachers, but there's some great ideas for Language Investigations and great sources of further exploration and revision of the topics we study at A Level.

Especially valuable is the Glossary, with not only brief accounts of some key terms, but links to authentic recordings of speech with ready-made transcriptions! Wow.

http://www.teachrealenglish.org

Turn-Taking

Good source on turn-taking here, with some practice and testing. Interesting framing too, though a little incomplete in some of the sections elsewhere.


https://www.sedit.org.uk/learn/styled/styled-3/styled-11/index.html

Parts-of-speech.Info - POS tagging online

A cool site which can help confirm your knowledge of word classes, or aid you in tackling large amounts of text for a research project. It colour-codes a text you paste in according to the *most likely* part of speech (word class) each word would statistically represent.

BEWARE! It's just an algorithm, and it's not as clever as you! It will make errors, and needs a human to check each suggested tag.

https://parts-of-speech.info/

Dicitonary.com blog

Via A2 student Emily, here's a reminder of the excellent http://blog.dictionary.com/ which contains regular tidbits about language history and change. Great reading for A2 students doing Language Change and Variation.

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

Short TED Talks

You can search TED talks by length -- and the 0-6 minute talks are about the word count (600-750 words) that you're asked to produce for your Task 1 presentations.


Each talk has an interactive transcript, so you can see how the talk looks on the page (and click the transcript to hear how it sounds when delivered). You can also check the word count for a given speech. Around 5 minutes is approximately right -- but much depends on the pace of the speaker.


Loads of subjects covered here -- watch several! Pick up tips and good ideas on how to present!


https://www.ted.com/talks?duration=0-6&sort=newest

EngLangBlog: New AQA A level resources

The EngLangBlog, kept by Dan Clayton, is a great site for links and discussion of English Language issues -- and will also play host to some materials specifically for the New 2015 English Language specification.




EngLangBlog: New AQA A level resources

Lesson Blog for AS and more...

Don't forget about the existence of the Park Language Lesson Blog, which is presently tracking AS lessons, and has archives of A2 Language Diversity and Child Language Acquisition lessons from previous years.


Invaluable for revision for A2s especially, and crucial to follow for current AS students -- just put your email in the box in the upper right corner (they may send you a confirmation email, so check your inbox!) and you'll have a summary of each topic winging its way to you a couple of days after the lesson -- I usually update on Mondays and/or Thursdays.

Twitter search and analytics

Great find from A2 student Jess: this site enables you to search Tweets and other social media posts, and gives automated graphs of changes in usage over time. Great tool to gather language data, though remember that you need to do the thinking and choose your searches very carefully -- and this stream of data is always-changing.


http://topsy.com/

Dialect Blog

A useful guide to some key features of accents on this blog -- check the menu bar at the top for US, Irish and UK accents. Some omissions, but glance at the comments for helpful discussion of these.


http://dialectblog.com/

Trees of English and Architecture

The aim here is to illustrate the branching history of architecture and its roots; but the comparison to the history and development of English is interesting too, and I like their diagram. :)

http://www.period-homes.com/Previous-Issues-08/JulyForum08.html


A more English-focused version of the same thing can be found here: http://www.richardgilbert.ca/achart/public_html/articles/publications/words.htm

European word translator

Amazing. Try a range of English words in the box here and it'll show you translations from around Europe. A vivid way of seeing which language group a word comes from -- if you see it to the east, it's Germanic; to the south, it's Latin or French. 

http://ukdataexplorer.com/european-translator/?word=dwell

xkcd: File Extensions

Note that .html isn't on there. I suppose it'd be near .jpg. Also: the image itself is a .png.... xkcd: File Extensions

Mode characteristics flashcards | Quizlet

Site for creating your owns flash cards. Cool. This example links to a set about mode characteristics of texts or speech, but there are loads of others from all subjects on the site, and you can build your own as well as search by term, subject, or creator. There's a phone app too.

http://quizlet.com/13140013/mode-characteristics-flash-cards/

Appraisal and Systemic Functional Grammar

Alongside Alvin Leong's interesting and detailed set of systemic functional grammar pages, here is a useful-looking framework for analysing and assessing texts called 'appraisal'. The focus is on interpersonal meanings and speaker attitudes.

http://www.alvinleong.info/sfg/sfgappraisal.html

How to do CDA

One of many good pages on CDA from Strathclyde, giving some details and discussion of elements of language you can focus on when looking for the way texts wield power and seek to influence readers.


http://www.strath.ac.uk/aer/materials/6furtherqualitativeresearchdesignandanalysis/unit3/howtodocda-languageaspects/

Critical Discourse Analysis: A Primer

Good summary of CDA approaches, designed to use language tools to identify the power relationships in a text.

http://www.kon.org/archives/forum/15-1/mcgregorcda.html

Johnson's Dictionary Online

Great resource. Searchable, with facsimiles as well as transcripts (though not, apparently, complete yet) and with a Twitter feed of definitions to sign up for too. A great way to explore Johnson's seminal dictionary of 1755 -- and remember, he drops in some gems into his definitions.

http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/