Opinionated articles

Why save a language?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/why-save-a-language.html?_r=0


Language rules are meant to be broken
http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/language-rules-are-meant-to-be-broken-20101202-18hry.html


Text speak: language evolution or just laziness?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/9966117/Text-speak-language-evolution-or-just-laziness.html


Straight from high school to a career
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/opinion/straight-from-high-school-to-a-career.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FEducation&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection


A fair chance after a conviction
http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/education

Why is there a lack of pupils wanting to take a language as a GCSE?

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/aug/20/why-drop-students-langauge-gcses-teachers-views
This article explores the issue of less and less pupils wanting to take a language as as GCSE.

The Guardian- ban on tackling analysis

Text A is an online article from The Guardian, informing people about banning tackling in school rugby. The audience are people who read The Guardian and possibly parents of children. I would argue that these people are middle class due to the fact that The Guardian is a professional newspaper, which is always written to a high standard. To add to that, the newspaper is online so you would need a computer to access it.



Text B is an online forum, where people can express their views on Text A. The audience are also guardian readers. However, instead of just reading the article, they also get the chance to comment on it and express their own views and opinions and discuss the article.



Text A contains a range of occupational lexis such as Ministers, chief medical officers, children's commissions. These are all authoritative figures/positions of authority, which highlights the formality of the article.



Text B contains a range of colloquial lexis such as 'can't hack it', 'drivel'. This language highlights that the text is a forum of informal register.

The Guardian- exclamation mark rules

http://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2016/mar/07/new-exclamation-mark-rules-proof-the-government-wants-to-penalise-enthusiasm

Top 20 words in English

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03hbx0s
Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright guide us through the top 20 words in English

• Common- The, be, to, of, and
• Highlights- With, I, you, have
• Not interesting words
• No nouns, very few verbs
• Grammatical 
• And comes out at 'um' very often
• There's a reason they're forgettable- because you process them faster
• They are very important, hold language together and express meanings
• All english
• Anglo Saxon words

Word functions

Nouns

• Nouns are naming words
• They name people and places e.g George, Sally, Bristol, Venezuela 
• They name objects, materials and animals e.g pen, carpet, sugar, oxygen, dog
• They name ideas, feelings and qualities e.g education, beauty, anger, happiness, intelligence

Verbs

• Verbs are often called 'doing words'
• Most verbs refer to actions or events e.g run, read, drink, drink, dance, describe, analyse
• Many refer to states, mental processes or sensations e.g sleep, think, believe, love

Adjectives

• Describing words that modify the noun

Adverbs

• They tell us how an action is done, they modify the verb, quickly, effortlessly, elegantly
• They may give us information about the time of an action e.g yesterday, often, rarely

Pronoun

• Stands in the place of a noun
• Use them to avoid repeating a noun over and over again
• Personal pronouns include: I, me, you, we, they, them, ours, their etc
• Other pronouns include: it, this, that 

Prepositions

• A preposition is placed in front of something- a noun 
• It links the noun into the rest of the sentence, showing the relationship between the noun and the sentence

Determiners

• Help determine the noun you're talking about
• E.g when we are talking about dog.... Do we mean a dog, the dog, my dog, this dog 
• The words in italics are determiners

Conjunctions 

• They join things together
• Co-ordinating conjunctions join two things (nouns, adjectives, sentences) so we see them as equal e.g and, but, or
• Subordinating conjunctions join sentences (or clauses) to show a relationship between them, if, because, when, although 

Auxiliaries 

• They are little verbs, which are used alongside other verbs for grammatical reasons
• E.g she was writing a novel
• I don't like that film
• We might go back tomorrow
• The main auxiliary verbs are do/does/did, have/had/had, be/am/are/were

Mind your language

http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language
The editors of the Guardian style guide write about language usage and abusage.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/27/eight-words-sexism-heart-english-language
This article explains how words reveal that sexism is very common as certain words make people think of certain things. e.g. 'nagging' is followed by 'wife'.