ENGLISH LANGUAGEA LEVEL TRANSITION

Contents:

1. AO1 Grammar

2. Grammar audit tasks

3. Do we need new words?

4. Analysis task

5. Wider Reading

6. Overview of the course

AO1 GRAMMAR

AO1 GRAMMAR

Your knowledge of grammatical terms, their meanings, and how to use them, is an extremely important part of the course; Assessment Objective 1 (AO1).

AO1 is examined in all the questions on the exam and in the coursework.

With this in mind, you mustcomplete the following grammar audit tasks.

Many of these terms are on the Y6 SATs, so - are you smarter than a 10 year old?

GRAMMAR AUDIT

The following slides are comprised of grammar terms on the KS2 SATs exams, taken by 10 year olds in Y6 of primary school.

For each of the terms:

• Write a definition and give an example of the ones you know (you may want to do these directly onto revision cards)

• Tick the ones you aren’t sure of (be honest, if you don’t know that’s ok, but you will need to find out to be successful on the course)

• You will be tested on these in the first week of the course!

Key Terms Unsure Definition and Example

What are adjectives?

What are comparative adjectives

What are superlative adjectives?

What is an adverb?

What is a concrete noun?

What is an abstract noun?

What is a collective noun?

What is a countable noun?

What is a mass noun?

What is a noun phrase?

What is a verb?

What is a transitive verb?

What is an intransitive verb?

What is an auxiliary verb?

What is a modal verb?

What is a finite verb?

What is a nonfinite verb?

What is an adjunct?

What is a subjunct?

What is a pronoun?

What is a conjunction?

What is a co-ordinating

conjunction?

What is a subordinate

conjunction?

What is the definite article?

What is the indefinite article?

What is a determiner?

What is a preposition?

What is a colon used for?

What is a semicolon used for?

What is parenthesis?

For what reasons can parenthesis

be used?

What is active voice?

What is passive voice?

What is a homophone?

What is a homonym?

What is a prefix?

What is a suffix?

What is pre/post modification?

What is a synonym?

What is an antonym?

What is a connotation?

What is a clause?

What is a phrase?

What are the five types of clause

element?

What are Morphemes?

Present Simple/

Perfect/Continuous tense

Past Simple/Perfect/Continuous

tense

Future Simple/Perfect/Continuous

tense

Simple/Compound/Complex

sentence forms

GRAMMAR RESEARCH

For any of the terms you were unsure about, go and research what they mean and how to use them.

Warning: beware of tricky words that have a very different everyday meaning from their meaning in an English language context, e.g. active voice.

You should present this in the form of revision cards or posters.

There are a plethora of sites online that you can use.

You may wish to purchase a copy of David Crystal’s Discovering Grammar or Rediscover Grammar as an investment for the course. You can find second hand copies online very cheaply.

EXAMPLES

EXAMPLES

DO WE NEED NEW WORDS?

The English language is always generating new words. New words can be created out of nothing (neologisms) or be formed by using other words – or parts of words – together in new combinations (what are called compounds and blends). Sometimes initials of words in a phrase might be used (acronyms and initialisms) and you might also see parts of words being added to the front or end of another word to give it a new form (prefixes and suffixes).

The A Level English Language course look at how and why new words are formed, but there is also debate about whether we need new words and when (or whether) they should appear in dictionaries.

Look at the list of some of the new words that have appeared (or suddenly become much more popular) in English over the last few years on the next slide.

Have you heard of these words before? Have you used any of them? Tick the relevant columns for each word.

Choose two words from the list that you think are an important addition to the language. Try to come up with a sentence or two explaining why they are so important.

Then choose two words from the list that you think are pointless and insignificant. What’s the problem with these words and why do you think they shouldn’t be included? Again, write a sentence or two explaining your thinking.

Are there any other new words – or new meanings for older words – that you have heard about? Perhaps you could make a note of new and interesting uses of words over the next few months.

What are your predictions for the most popular and widely-used words for the next 12 months? What

What recent neologism have been created as a result of the corona virus? Give examples and define them. Here’s two to get you started, but can you define them?

Covidiots

Doomscrolling

Finally, this article by one of the world’s most respected slang lexicographers (i.e. people who compile dictionaries of slang), Jonathon Green, is a very good read: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27405988

Word Definition Have

heard/seen

this word

being used

Have used

this word

myself

Floss A dance in which people twist their hips in one direction while

swinging their arms in the opposite direction with the fists closed.

Popularised by the game Fortnite.

VAR Video Assistant Referee. A system used in football to assist

refereeing decisions.

Gaslight To manipulate or trick someone by pretending that they cannot

trust what they see or hear until they doubt their own sanity.

Twerking A way of dancing that involves bending forward and shaking or

thrusting your buttocks in a rhythmic motion.

Dadbod A term used to describe the typically flabby and unsculpted male

physique that most dads have.

Cancel

culture

A way of describing the movement to ‘cancel’ - to publicly

disapprove of and then attempt to ignore - celebrities or

organisations because of their perceived immoral or unpopular

actions.

Climate

strike

A protest in which people leave work, school or college when they

should be attending to take part in a protest about climate change.

Influencer A person who uses social media to promote a particular way of life

or commercial products to their online followers.

Nonbinary A word describing a sexual identity that does not conform to

binary categories of male and female.

Hamsterk

aufing

Stockpiling food like a hamster storing food in its cheeks (from

German)

WFH Working From Home

Mansplain

ing

A patronising way of explaining something (by a man to a woman).

ANALYSING LANGUAGE

One of the things you will quickly notice about the study of language at A Level is that you don’t just look at serious, weighty books. You might have studied quite a lot of literary fiction on your English courses so far and even when it hasn’t been literature, it has probably been what is broadly termed ‘literary non-fiction’.

On the A Level English Language course, you will analyse all sorts of language. This activity gives you a taste of that and asks you to think a bit more about the language used in the media.

Annotate the text and add notes about the following:

FATP (its form, audience, topic and purpose)

What they might mean – the ideas, messages, opinions, personalities being expressed

How they use different methods of communication: design, colour, vocabulary choices, structure, style, interaction.

What is the language in each text designed to achieve? Do you notice any differences between the texts?

What kind of nouns and verbs are used consistently?

What kind of tense is it written it?

Write one paragraph summarising the difference between the language used in both articles. This could include the formality, the tone, the style of the writer or the purpose of the text.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8276995/Will-coronaphobia-stop-UK-getting-running.html

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/30/coronavirus-disruption-automation

WIDER READING

Wider reading is a requirement of the course.

In class you will learn the most well-know theorists on a subject, you will then be expected to continue learning about the subject with your own research during your study periods, finding recent ,relevant theory.

We have taken out a a subscription to eMagazine, a publication which provides lots of interesting content on English Language.

You can log on here:

The link is https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/e-magazine/emag-login/

Username: silver

Password: english

WHAT DOES THEA LEVEL CONSIST OF?

PAPER 1 - LANGUAGE AND THE INDIVIDUAL

Section A - Textual variations and representations

Does the media affect the way that we perceive things?

Why is the language used to represent a group or an individual important?

We can see here how the word used to represent a group of people can change people’s perceptions of that group. This can

be a very powerful tool in the hands of the media.

Children Youths

PAPER 1 - LANGUAGE AND THE INDIVIDUAL

Section B - Children’s language development

Can you remember your first word?

Why do we bother talking to small children who don’t understand what we say?

How do children learn to ascribe meaning to a word?

How do children learn the rules of communication?

PAPER 2 - LANGUAGE DIVERSITY AND CHANGE

Section A - Diversity and change

What is English? Where does it come from? What makes it so successful as a language?

How does language change?

Why don’t we speak the same way that Shakespeare did?

PAPER 2 - LANGUAGE DIVERSITY AND CHANGE

Section A - Diversity and change

How is a person’s language use affected by the social groups that they belong to?

Does your gender, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, class or age have an affect on the way you communicate? Or does it depend on the context of the situation you’re in?

How is language used to represent different groups and how does this affect them?

PAPER 2 – LANGUAGE DIVERSITY AND CHANGE

Section B – Language discourses

Here you will analyse the way that opinion articles are written and will write one yourself.

Over the two years of study you will read and analyse many articles like the one below, you are also expected to keep abreast of the news – particularly pertaining to articles about language use.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/aug/15/why-its-time-to-stop-worrying-about-the-decline-of-the-english-language