Wish you were . . . analysing language

Being able to comment on the effects of language choices is essential to achieving grade C and above in GCSE English. Nonetheless students often struggle with this, getting tangled up in knots listing any literary terms they can remember and forgetting that the foundation of all language is words.

A recent way that I have tried to re-focus students on the importance of word choices was by using postcards. A colleague recommended cutting up a text and sticking a small section of it onto blank postcards so that a larger extract could be unpacked by students in more detail.

I tried this out with a year 10 class last week, in a lesson on ‘Of Mice and Men.’ I had never taught this class before and found out moments before beginning the lesson that they had never read the book. Trying to get the students to answer the question ‘How does the language in the extract influence your view of Crooks?’ suddenly seemed not only foolish but impossible.

However, the postcard method really worked!  I provided students with three different colours of pen to help them annotate the extract, by focussing on three different types of description. Breaking up the text on the postcards, forced the students to really examine the words used by Steinbeck. The different coloured pens allowed them to quickly visualise how Steinbeck’s word choices worked together (or apart). The feedback session was really fruitful as we were able to explore how Steinbeck’s use of words varied and developed across the text and how this related to the historical context.

The best ideas are often the simplest and this is a really simple one. Breaking up a text into smaller chunks is certainly not a new suggestion and using coloured pens to annotate is something I am sure we have all done before. Putting these two together, however, allowed these students to untangle language choices rather than getting tied up in knots with literary terms.

Try it for yourself! Download the resources below:

- Of Mice and Men Language Lesson Plan

- Of Mice and Men Language Lesson PowerPoint

Naomi Hursthouse

Advance Skills Teacher, Steyning Grammar School

Collins FREE online dictionary

Bringing an authoritative, free online dictionary into your classroom

It goes without saying that at Collins, we believe that print dictionaries remain indispensable tools for teaching and supporting homework. It’s crucial for pupils to know how to use a dictionary effectively to perform, and to improve their performance, in all subjects, not just English. Owning a dictionary helps students to work independently; at Collins, we believe that it’s a necessary investment for students’ learning growth and success in exams as well as in later life. We encourage parents to buy dictionaries for children and help schools to invest in sets of school dictionaries. This will not change. We simply wish to show how print and online dictionaries can work in tandem to make interesting learning, and ultimately, life easier for teachers.
 

In a recent report from the Bookseller, it was reported that schools were crying out for more and more ebooks. A sign indeed that in today’s world the need for ‘digital’ is growing rapidly. Faster internet access and online learning mean that ‘digital’ can make young people’s education and learning easier. You just have to look at the increased usage of the word 'online' over the last ten years in the word trends graph to realise how the need to embrace ‘digital’ is necessary.
 

May we introduce you to www.collinsdictionary.com: a new, free dictionary site which is both the perfect companion to online learning and guaranteed to get your students engaged in discussions about words, vocabulary and language trends. By opening www.collinsdictionary.com in a new tab, your students have instant access to comprehensive dictionaries in English, Spanish, French and German plus a thesaurus with audio pronunciation for every word, and much more*. The option of audio help allows your pupils to listen and learn the pronunciation of any word with which they are not familiar, or that they may need to double-check whilst completing their assignments.
 

This is why we designed a game to practise using print and online dictionaries – spot the difference with your students. If you need any additional resources simply use our printable worksheets, verb tables and audio files for French and Spanish to support your teaching.
 

GAMES:
Let’s just type in the word in the search box and get the meanings of words within seconds!

1. Let’s look up of the meaning of the word ‘jour’ in Collins Easy Learning French Dictionary. First of all make sure that you look in the right side of the dictionary, so French-English. To find a word more quickly, use the alphabet tabs down the side of the page. Does it indicate the form of the noun? How do you know that is masculine not feminine? Can you find the related verb and how do you know which verb table to use? For more help use our guide on how to use the dictionary.
 

If you forget how to pronounce this word simply type ‘jour’ into the French-English search box on www.collinsdictionary.com If you’re learning German and Spanish, it will give you the word meaning in these languages below. If you would like to see this word in use, scroll down and see the usage examples. Was this word used more often in 1912 or 2008?

2. Read the article from Le Figaro ‘La cérémonie des Oscars en images’, find the meaning of underlined words and learn their pronunciation. Imagine that you’re TV presenter reporting on the Oscars. Write a few Oscar highlights for Twitter, so use just 140 characters!

* Want to know more about www.collinsdictionary.com? Features Collins believe will make life easier for teachers and students:

• Easy access for every student - Collins comprehensive dictionaries in English, French, German and Spanish are available free online 

• Improve your students pronunciation - over 350,000 translations for the most frequently used words in English are available in 35 other languages with audio pronunciation 

• Increase vocabulary - Each page gives a comprehensive entry including alternative meanings, synonyms, word histories and etymologies in less than one-second page load time 

• Help students use the language correctly in context - full-sentence usage examples covering words and phrases in English, French, German and Spanish extracted from newspapers, fiction and non-fiction books from HarperCollins

• Words are easier to remember if students can relate it to others or a story - engaging and interesting articles and blogs with historical word usage trends in all languages dating back over the last 400 years and word frequency graphs to show how often words occur in common usage 

• Help spelling words - predictive search in all languages helps find ‘near-misses’ with a “did you mean?” function

• Help remember words by association - images from Flickr to support all definitions aid language students to grasp word-meanings more easily

Targeting Reluctant Readers

With the renewed push on reading for pleasure in schools, come many exciting opportunities for enthusing our students about books. But what do we do with those really reluctant readers? You know- those ones who try to get away with only reading the Guinness Book of Records or with flipping through the first three paragraph of any novel you place in their hands. Unfortunately there is no easy answer but one thing that definitely seems to have an impact is creating Reading Role Models in the school.

I have seen this working in a variety of ways in several different schools. A ‘Get Caught Reading’ competition for staff and student, with a prominent display of photos showing everyone reading in unusual places, can help to raise the profile of reading. It is important to get staff involved in this too, to model to students that this is not an activity just forced onto students by teachers but something that we all do and enjoy. I also know of a school who enlisted staff to visit form groups and speak about their favourite books and reading habits. Choosing the right staff (not English teachers) is imperative. Getting popular, usually male, teachers on board can open the eyes of the most reluctant reader to the idea of reading as an ‘acceptable’ pastime.

Enlisting older students can also have a really positive impact. At my school, we have recently started a paired reading programme, in which sixth form students read for ten minutes a week with some of our unwilling readers in years 7 and 8. Their job is to help build their mentees confidence in reading aloud but also to take an interest in their reading by discussing their reading habits and recommending books.  Already we have had some very positive feedback about this programme from students, parents and form tutors who are pleased to see the positive influence the sixth form mentors can have on these students and their feelings about reading.

We all know that getting our disinclined readers to read is going to continue to be an uphill struggle. However, if we model our enjoyment of reading as a whole school, then we can help to create a culture in which it becomes the norm for our students rather than an activity for the few.

Naomi Hursthouse
Advance Skills Teacher, Steyning Grammar School