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Preparation work for live session
Preparation work for live session
Last week, we introduced the concept of register, and how language subtly changes depending on the nature of the topic, the audience, and whether we're speaking or writing. These aspects were called field, tenor and mode. We've looked at how changes in grammatical structure help us write in an academic register by depersonalising our language; specifically, we looked at nominalising verbs and adjectives, and using the passive voice. This week we will look at how word choice can also affect register.
Imagine you are messaging a friend to tell them you are running late, and then have to send an email to your boss to say the same thing. Can you use the same message, or do you have to change the language? If so, what would you change?
Now imagine you've just got a new job: it's a highly respected company in the capital city of your home country. Do you adjust the way you speak, your accent, choice of words? Or do you talk as you would in your own street in your home town?
Live session - task review of prestige lexis
Live session - task review of prestige lexis
Do you have a diglossia in your own country?
Can you think of any examples of historical events which have affected your language?
What imported words does your language contain? Are they seen as being 'prestigious'?
Think back to the questions on the language family tree on page two:
How many of the other languages do you recognise?
What do you think they all have in common?
What does the size of the leaves represent?
What other English/French synonyms can you think of, similar to the ones you looked at on page three?
What did you find out from the Oxford Learner's Dictionary about the ways in which the meanings differ?
Live session - task review of polysemic verbs
Live session - task review of polysemic verbs
On page six of the study materials we looked at some examples of polysemic verbs from the Sketch Engine for Language Learning. From your notes, discuss:
How many different meanings are there?
What synonyms can be used?
Do any of the examples refer to the physical act of taking something?
Use the Sketch Engine to bring up examples of how the other most frequent English verbs are used. What patterns can you find?
Just for fun
Just for fun
Iceland is the western most outpost of the Germanic languages in Europe. Unlike English, it has imported very few words and has changed little since it was settled by Norwegian Vikings in the 9th century. Although today Reykjavik is one of the coolest cities in the world (literally and figuratively), the language people speak is pretty much as it would have been a thousand years ago. Click below to hear an old Icelandic folk song performed by the band Kaleo. Although Icelandic is a cousin of the English language, it's difficult to spot any similarities at first. But you may be able to hear more in common with Anglo Saxon than Latin.
Live session - peer review
Live session - peer review
Upload practice writing task from page eight of the preparation work to Eduflow. Read some of your peers' work and see if it sounds academic, and whether they've applied the strategies we've looked at over the last two weeks. A good place to start is with the verbs. If you see that your partner has a lot of instances of the most common Old English verbs like make, do, take and get, see if any of them can be 'upgraded' to a more precise Latin verb.
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