A-level English Language & Literature

Dear Year 13

Those of you not in the lesson today will need to do the following in your own time.  This is important preparation for your transformation coursework:

Do background research into Rossetti and / or Owen (if you have made a definite decision which poet to transform, just research that one.  If not, look at both).  This should cover:

• Where were their poems published?  What can you find out about demographics, readerhip etc?
• Linked to this, who were the poems aimed at and who read them?
• Were there any specific literary or artistic influences on their poetry?
• When were their poems written and / or published?  Were there any relevant historical events or political issues taking place at the time?  Do any of these make their way into the poems?  What was life like for different classes, different genders etc at the time?
• Are there any relevant biographical details that you think might influence the poems?

The answers to many of these will be obvious for Owen and will need teasing out more for Rossetti.  We’ve looked at a range of poems with different subjects – e.g. Rossettis’ religious beliefs might be important for ‘Goblin Market’ and ‘A Royal Princess’, while class issues are more to the fore in ‘Cousin Kate’ and ‘A Royal Princess’.

If you find any good links, post a link below for others to use!

Hello Year 13!

Following Ms Clarke’s lessons on text types and audiences in journalism, here is a useful link to a booklet published by the Guardian a few years ago:

How to write journalism

It’s part of a wider ‘how to write’ series, and if you click on the dates in the left hand sidebar, at the bottom, you’ll get to the others, on children’s books, fiction, poetry, biography, etc.

Following the lesson where we analysed the fairy tale genre as a class, your half term homework is to do this for one fiction genre (e.g. romantic novel, detective novel) and one non-fiction genre (e.g. travelogue, obituary) of your choice.  Make sure that these are genres you are considering for your coursework.  I would also like you to complete one for Rossetti’s poetry as a whole.  So that’s 3 of these sheets in total.

Remember that, as we did in the lesson, you should try to look at more than one example of each text type, in case the features you identify are isolated and unique to that particular text, rather than features of a text type in general.  Try to find at least 2 examples before completing the sheet.

I’ve given you one sheet – you can either use the headings to write the analysis in your book, or download it below and print out more copies.  This is due in the first lesson back after half term.

Analysing text types and genres

Following our lesson on lexical fields and language change, I want you to do some more research of your own.

Go to this excellent, interactive BBC timeline.  You will need to have Flash installed and the sound turned up to appreciate this properly.  Download Flash for free here.  Click on the various icons on each page to read historical background, see words that entered the language at different points, hear audio of contemporary texts and discover unusual facts.  Make sure you look at all 10 ages by clicking on the arrow to move from age to age.

Post a comment on this page listing at least 3 things you have learnt about language change from this site.  These could be related to historical influences on language, derivations of words, texts through the ages or anything else that strikes you.

Due by 22nd October 2009

1.     Read Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale”.  You will be quizzed on the plot, characters, themes, etc so it would be a good idea to create a chapter summary like you did for “Jane Eyre” and “Wide Sargasso Sea”.

 2.     Record (using a mobile phone perhaps?) a transcript of a conversation

     between you and your friends talking about a particular topic, eg your   

     holiday plans, what you did on holiday, etc.  Some rules to follow:

·         Make sure you warn them some time before you record them that you will be recording any suitable conversation at some point in the future.  DO NOT RECORD CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.

·         The conversation needs to be at least 2 minutes.

·         Do not change anything they say and make sure that you include the hesitations, fillers, interruptions, etc as they occur.  Remember we are trying to get an impression of spontaneous speech.

·         Use the conventions of transcripts as seen in Text 17 in your AS anthology:

(      )      simultaneous speech

(.)           short/micro pause

(5)          pause in seconds

(laughs) non-verbal sounds

[             overlapping speech

_____    stress

-                             unfinished word

In your first lesson back you will be asked for your transcript (it would be ideal if you emailed these to me at: lduplessis@alexandrapark.haringey.sch.uk)

Here’s a link to the rest of Gordon Brown’s inaugural speech – it’s from the Independent’s website.

Use this to do the extension questions at the bottom of the emagazine analysis of the speech that we looked at in class.

I have also now replied to your posts on idiolect, so please read my comments.  Thank you all for some thoughtful and interesting responses to this.

Having learned about accent, dialect, sociolect and idiolect, start thinking about your own idiolect.

Post a comment below, considering the following questions:

• How would you describe your accent?
• What features of a London dialect do you think that you use?  Or are there features of another dialect that you think you use instead?
• What factors do you think influence your sociolect?  Do you talk differently in different social contexts?  If so, what are your reasons for your different styles of speech in each situation?
• In addition to the factors above, what factors make up your idiolect?  Remember that this includes physical characteristics such as pitch, tone, a tendency to lisp etc.

Due date: before the lesson on Monday 22nd June

Task A:  Record any findings about the Big Brother episodes you have been watching. If you haven’t, you will have to make a point of doing this by next lesson. Take note of the following:

• Who are the dominant speakers?
• How do they show their dominance in conversation?
• What do you notice about the difference between the way men and women speak to each other and members of the opposite sex?
• When do people interrupt each other?  Think of a variety of reasons.
• Are there any housemates that show good conversation skills?  What makes a good conversationalist?
• Does age make a difference to the way they speak to each other?
• How does the way they speak to each differ from the way you speak to your friends?  How does this differ from the way you speak to a teacher, for example?

Task B:  Find 2 examples of transcripts on the internet.  Write an analysis on each transcript, looking at the issues raised in the bullet points above. Bring this on 18th June 2009.

This is the cover work for Tuesday’s lesson and your homework for this week.

Go onto this section of the BBC Voices website and read all 7 pages / sections of this ‘language and place’ topic, including listening to the audio clip in section 6.

Now go to this section of the site, where you can hear clips of speech from all over Great Britain, and go to the British Library site, which has similar recordings.  You can use either or both sites, but I would like you to do the following:

Find recordings (on either site) from the part of the country I have allocated you below.  On the BBC site, you can click on the map or search using the menus on the right.  On the British Library site, you just use the map, but the recordings are also colour coded as old, modern, RP and minority ethnic.  On the British Library site, some already have commentaries to help you analyse their use of language.

1. Listen to at least 3 recordings and post a commentary below, containing the following:

• A list of any words or phrases that you don’t use in your own dialect
• An analysis of any grammatical variations from standard English (e.g. ‘I done that’ instead of ‘I did that’)
• A transcript of a few sentences from one of the recordings, in which you attempt to show the accent of the speaker in writing.  You may use spelling and punctuation in order to do this (think about how speech was represented in the Catherine Tate transcripts).
• This is all due by Tuesday 16th June (the day before our next lesson)

2. Find an axample of accent and dialect as represented in Literature – i.e a novel, play or poem in which the writing shows a specific dialect.  Photocopy a page or two (no more) of this and bring it to the next lesson on Wednesday 17th June.

Regions for part 1 are as follows:

• London (Josh)
• Scotland (Chris)
• Wales (Jack)
• Northern Ireland (Emma)
• North-East England (e.g. Newcastle) (Zeynep)
• North-West England (e.g. Liverpool, Machester) (Pelin)
• Yorkshire (Duygu)
• South West England (e.g. Devon, Cornwall) (Audrey)
• Midlands (Yuniquer)
• East Anglia (including Essex) (Rohan)

I hope you all like the new blog header – to get you in the mood for the Anthology Unit!

Here is the resource on text 27.  As I said in class, don’t feel you have to answer all these questions in your books as you did for text 31, though feel free to if you find it helpful.  Instead, use them as a basis to help you explore the details of the text and annotate the text. 

If you find the text difficult, you can try these questions to help you with general comprehension, before going on to the link above.

You then need to make notes comparing this to text 12, looking at how attitudes to another culture are presented.  I will take these in on Wednesday. I recommend that you use the standard bullet points to do this, as this will help you get them in your head ready for the exam.  They are as follows:

• word choice
• figurative language
• grammar
• sound patterning
• form and structure
• layout and presentation
• contexts of production and reception

And while on the subject of today’s lesson, here is the link to the mark scheme for this unit.  Scroll to the bottom (pages 8 and 9) for the mark scheme for question 2 that we looked at today.