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The English Pronunciation Research Unit
in association with
English:
Paradigms Found
Monday 9th to
Thursday
13th July 2007
Topic outlines
Teachit Language: Multimedia Approaches to Studying A Level Language
This session
introduces some of the Teachit Language resources which combine text, image and
audio and video recordings in multi-modal learning approaches.
Accents and
Dialects
Why are there accents, and what do we
use accents for? This session aims to answer these questions, and more. Taking
as our starting point Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the link with traditional
dialects, we’ll explore the social, economic and political factors affecting the
accents and dialects we use, travelling in time and space to examine phonetic,
phonological, lexical and grammatical aspects of the spoken language. A key
feature of the session will be an examination of methods in dialectology, in
which we look at the traditional survey (Survey of English Dialects,
1950s-60s), and compare that with more recent sociolinguistic approaches.
Finally, participants will get the opportunity to try their hand at designing a
study of their own.
Tutor:
Dr Jason Jones
Child Language
Acquisition
The development of
language by the child is usually seen as a distinct topic within the syllabus of
language and linguistics, although it properly belongs in the larger context of
language in the individual. The shift from pre-school to school age experience
has a profound impact on child language, especially through contact with the
written forms of language; and vocabulary development most obviously continues
throughout the school period and beyond, into higher education or the world of
work. Other aspects of language, especially written language skills, go on
developing too. So we can ask, not just: What does the child bring to the
development process? but also: How does this process lead on to developments in
later life?
It is also a topic which
recapitulates the major concepts of language structure and function: the sound
system (phonetics and phonology); grammar (morphology and syntax), and meaning
(semantics and pragmatics) – all these can be very clearly taught and
illustrated through the perspective of child language, but the teacher must
have a sound grasp of them beforehand.
In this course, we consider pre-school child language
development, giving detailed attention to grammar, vocabulary and sound system
development, and the school-age child’s encounter with the written forms of
language.
Tutor:
Dr Jacqueline Laws
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Grammar
How does grammar work? What does a
clause consist of? Does grammar have to be hard and boring? Do you teach grammar
and would you like to explore fun ways of presenting it to your pupils? The aim
of this workshop is to answer these and similar questions and issues. The workshop consists
of two parts: a grammar refresher session, followed by an exploration of
fun ways to teach grammar. In the grammar refresher we will look at some of
the basic grammar terminology and different ways of analysing words, phrases and
clauses. In the second part of the workshop we will explore ways we can make
grammar fun, interesting and more accessible to secondary school pupils.
Tutor: Dr Jacqueline Laws
Language and
Gender
Language and gender is a
subject that A Level students usually find fascinating, but they are sometimes
taught to view gender relations in terms of simplified differences rather
than appreciating the complexity of the issue. This session will briefly
review three key language and gender theories — deficiency, difference and
dominance— and introduce a fourth, social constructionism, in order to equip you
with the latest thinking in the field. While it is not intended that you should
teach these theories at A Level, the session will enable you to position content
areas and teaching activities within an up-to-date conceptual framework.
Tutor: Dr Judith Baxter
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Language and Power
The idea that “language” and “power” are
closely interlinked has wide acceptance, but what exactly is the nature of this
relationship and how can we understand it better?
In this session we will
examine how contemporary theorists have approached the interplay between
language and power and we will discuss how power is enacted through language use
in different scenarios such as the workplace, the courtroom and family
gatherings. We will apply various key concepts in the analysis of a wide range
of texts, including advertisements, newspaper articles, political speeches,
children’s books and transcripts of institutional discourse (e.g.
teacher-student and doctor-patient interactions), and consider further
applications of these aspects to the teaching of English Language A/S Level.
Tutor:
Dr Denise Santos
Language
Change
Since Anglo-Saxon times, the English
language has undergone substantial changes, and the English of many periods, as
illustrated in the example below, has become nearly unintelligible to speakers
of present-day English.
Þæs ymb iiii niht Æþered cyning & Ælfred his
broþur þær micle fierd to Readingum gelæddon. (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
year 871;
‘About
four days later, King Ethered and his brother Alfred led their main army to
Reading.’)
But how and why does language change? The session will be divided into three main parts. Firstly, by exploring
texts from different periods of English and we will see that change can affect
every aspect of a language including its sounds, words, and sentence
formation. In the second part of the session, we will consider some approaches
to the study of language change, focusing in particular on historical
linguistics, on sociolinguistic studies of language change, and on work based on
recent linguistic theory. In the final part, we will have a closer look at why
languages change and why they change in the way they do, and we will review the
major factors that have been identified as possible causes of language change.
Tutor: Dr Catherine Sangster
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Lexis and Semantics
In this workshop we will look at words and their
meanings. But first we need to define word! We'll look at multi-word units and
their functions, and at the processes we use for forming new words. We'll then
explore some aspects of meaning relations: sense relations and referential
relations, concluding with a look at some literary texts. Together we should be
able to come up with some ideas for questions and activities for students when
they are considering their literature and other materials.
Tutor: Ms Pauline Robinson
Researching
Language with Computers 1
This first session looks at what resources
and what tools are available for use in computer-based language research. We
will look at web archives of texts and sound recordings, and we will look
closely at web-based corpus resources. Participants will have the opportunity to
work with some large-scale corpora and will learn how to make a number of
searches of these corpora.
Tutor:
Dr Paul Thompson
Researching
Language with Computers 2
To help teachers to see how they can get their
students to build original text collections for language research projects, the
instructor will lead participants through the process of corpus design, data
collection, and text preparation. Participants will be given hands-on
experience. They will also practise using some popular language analysis
programmes, both commercial and freeware. Please note that "Researching
Language with Computers 1" is a pre-requisite for this course.
Tutor:
Dr Paul Thompson
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Transcribing
English Sounds
Phonetics: Difficult?
Boring? Scary?
Fascinating? The aim of this
workshop is to cure those who have a fear of English phonemic transcription, and
firm up the skills of those who feel confident. Participants will learn about and practice phonemic
transcription of English, using RP as a standard accent, but also taking into
account features of other English accents.
We will look at vowels and consonants, the syllable, and also features of
connected speech, such as assimilation, liaison and elision.
Consideration will also be given to the difference between phonetic and
phonemic transcriptions of English, and how a more narrow (phonetic)
transcription can give us insights into how speakers of English perceive certain
sounds.
Tutor: Dr
Jane Setter
Transcribing
English Intonation
This workshop, which
assumes no prior knowledge of phonetics, will concentrate on aspects of speech
above the level of the single sound or segment, and look at ways to describe and
annotate English speech rhythm and intonation. Intonation in speech is an extremely interesting subject for
study, but not the easiest to approach. The
method studied here is David
Brazil’s straightforward notation, which focuses on how intonation is
used in discourse. Participants
will practice identifying patterns of English intonation, and applying the two
systems of notation to stretches of speech.
As well as the discourse function of intonation, we will also look at how
a speaker can use intonation to convey grammatical and emotional information.
Tutor:
Dr Jane Setter
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page
For information or to book your place, please contact
Mrs Janice Brooks at the following
postal address, phone/fax number, or e-mail:
School of Languages and European Studies
University of
Reading
P.O. Box 218
READING RG6 6AA UK
Tel. +44 118 378 8123 (International), 0118 378 8123 (UK)
E-mail: j.i.brooks@reading.ac.uk
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