Welcome to A Level English Language. We are so happy that you are considering studying this subject of depth and discovery! We hope you find that this is a great place for you to develop your

passion for the subject and to make sure that by the time September comes around, you feel confident that you can succeed on this course.

Within this booklet you will find a range of materials and activities covering some of the topics from the course, including representation, language and gender, child language acquisition and global

Englishes.

We hope you enjoy the start of your learning journey with us!

From Mrs Naylor, Mrs Reilly, Miss Harris and Ms Wood

AQA A Level Course Overview

Exam

inat

ions Paper 1: Language, the Individual

and Society40% of A level

• Textual variations and representations• Children’s language development (0-11 years)

Paper 2: Language Diversity and Change

40% of A level

• Language diversity and change• Language discourses• Creative writing on a topical language issue

Non

-exa

m a

sses

smen

t (c

ours

ewor

k) Language Investigation10% of A level

Independent linguistic research project on an area of interest, such as:• representations of different individuals, social groups or nationalities• regional dialect• gendered talk• the language of new communication technologies• children’s language use• norms and variations in usages of different kinds• the language of the media• code switching and mixing between English and other languages• the language of different occupations or pastimes• historical changes in English over time.

Original Writing and Commentary10% of A level

A piece of original writing based on one of the following three areas:• The Power of Persuasion—eg:

• a piece of investigative journalism• a speech delivered on a controversial topic• a letter to an MP.

• The Power of Storytelling—eg:• a short story• an extract from a biography• a dramatic monologue.

• The Power of Information—eg:• a piece of travel journalism• a blog focusing on social issues• a piece of local history.

and one accompanying commentary.

A Level English LanguageBluecoat Aspley Academy

ContentsRepresentation......................................................................................................................................2

Representing gender in children's reading materials........................................................................2

Quiz: Representation in children's reading materials....................................................................4

Language and gender............................................................................................................................6

Sugar and spice? What compliments reveal about women’s and men’s cultural values...................6

Quiz: Sugar and spice? What compliments reveal about women’s and men’s cultural values......8

Giving directions: do women do this differently to men?................................................................10

Quiz: Giving directions: do women do this differently to men?...................................................11

Child Language Acquisition..................................................................................................................13

Nature vs Nurture............................................................................................................................13

Quiz: Nature vs Nurture...............................................................................................................14

The Power of Babble.......................................................................................................................16

Quiz: The Power of Babble..........................................................................................................18

Global Englishes...................................................................................................................................20

Will English continue to dominate or decline, diminish cultures or enrich them?..........................20

Quiz: Will English continue to dominate or decline, diminish cultures or enrich them?.............21

1

RepresentationRepresenting gender in children's reading materials

Representation is a key aspect of language study. Language choices are made to represent different groups of people in society, and the study of this can reveal the 'angle of telling' - that is, the attitude of the writer and any unconscious bias. Studying large collections of 'real life' language is called corpus linguistics, and this allows linguists to reveal more than the bias of a particular writer, but underlying societal and cultural values and views.

Read this blog post which looks at the question: Are girls and boys portrayed differently in children’s reading materials today than in the past? You should then complete the quiz to demonstrate your understanding.

Representing gender in children's reading materials

Would a boy have been shown with flowers in the 1970s?

Are girls and boys portrayed differently in children’s reading materials today than in the past? During the 1970s and 80s, studies of children’s reading materials found that males not only featured more than females but also they tended to take the lead roles and were more active than their female counterparts, who were often restricted to traditional stereotyped roles.

Many of these earlier studies of gender in children’s reading material analysed the texts based on their content, which meant that researchers made their own judgements about what was sexist and what was not. Now, however, advances in computer and electronic technology mean that ‘corpus linguistics’ can be used to analyse texts more systematically. Using this method, John Macalister set about answering the question of how far gender roles in writing for children had changed since the 1970s.

2

Macalister based his study on New Zealand’s School Journal, a multi-authored journal of prose, drama and poetry, published and distributed to New Zealand school children every year. He focused his research on the words ‘boy/s’ and ‘girl/s’and any variants of those, such as ‘boyhood’ and ‘girlfriend’. He analysed the frequency of the words; whether they were alone or connected to each other somehow (usually by ‘and’); what ‘roles’ or occupations were assigned to boys and girls; their attributes, signalled by adjectives and, finally, what they were ‘doing’ by analysing their associated verbs. He concentrated his research on four issues of the School Journal from the years 1910, 1940, 1970 and 2000.

In the first three issues of the Journal, Macalister found that ‘boy/s’ outnumbered ‘girl/s’. However, by the final issue the numbers were roughly equal with ‘girl/s’ slightly exceeding ‘boy/s’. This shift in numbers since 1970 shows how awareness of gender bias has resulted in more equal treatment of girls and boys. The same can be shown with the ‘interdependence’ of the words. In the 1910 issue, 48% of the occurrences of ‘girl/s’ was found connected to’boy/s’. However, this reduced noticeably as the century progressed, so that by 2000 the figure stood at only 4%, proving that there is a trend towards increasing individuality in the treatment of ‘girl/s’.

Macalister found that there was a greater number of ‘roles’ associated with ‘boy/s’ in the 1910 - 1970 journals and these roles were more likely to relate to employment. However, it was striking that by 2000, there was an absence of any clearly marked occupation for ‘boy/s’, whereas ‘girl/s’ seem to have taken over roles beyond the confines of home and school, appearing as ‘delivery girl/s’ and ‘girl/s crew’ for example.

In all of the issues, ‘little’ was the only adjective that was consistently applied to both ‘boy/s’ and ‘girl/s’ and ‘girl/s’ was always more likely to be associated with an adjective than ‘boy/s’. Some examples of the kind of adjectives attributed to ‘girl/s’ in 1910 were ‘beautiful’, ‘dreamy’ and ‘gentle’ whilst ‘boy/s’ was attached to ‘bold’, ‘clever’ and ‘thoughtful’. However, by 2000 the adjectives had become more evenly distributed with both ‘boy/s’ and ‘girl/s’ described as ‘brave’, ‘naughty’, ‘young’ and ‘pretty’ amongst others.

When the verbs associated with the words were analysed it was found that in the 1910 – 1970 issues, ‘girl/s’ was encountered ‘doing’ far less often than ‘boy/s’ and even in 2000, ‘girl/s’ was marginally less often portrayed as ‘doing’. One interesting result to emerge is that in 2000 there is an absence of an association between ‘boy/s’ and mental verbs whereas before they could sometimes be found thinking and reading etc. So, it seems that boys are being depicted in a more limited fashion than they were in the past.

Macalister concludes that overall gender stereo-typing in New Zealand school reading material has been successfully addressed since 1970. It would be interesting to investigate whether the same has happened in Great Britain.________________________________________________________Macalister, John (2011) Flower-girl and bugler-boy no more: changing gender representation in writing for children. Corpora 7 (1): 25-44.doi 10.3366/cor.2011.0003

3

This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle

Quiz: Representation in children's reading materials

Use this quiz to check your comprehension and to bring in existing knowledge around gender.

1. In the 1970s and 80s, which gender featured more often in lead roles in children’s reading materials?

Male Female

2. Prior to this study, what about the research methods of earlier studies of representation of gender in children’s reading material made this research potentially biased?

3. What did Macalister focus his research on when looking in each edition of New Zealand’s School Journal? Tick all that apply:

The words ‘boy/s’ and ‘girl/s’ and variants of those Frequency of words Whether words were along or connected to each other somehow The use of politically incorrect/sexist terms The ‘roles’ or occupations which were assigned to boys and girls Their attributes, signalled by adjectives The omission (lack) of complimentary terms for each gender Their actions, signalled by verbs

4. From 1910 to 2000 there was a change in the frequency of references to ‘boy/s’ and ‘girl/’s. What was this change?

5. To what did Macalister attribute the shift in the number of references to 'boy/s' and 'girl/s' since 1970?

4

6. In 1910, 48% of occurrences of ‘girl/s’ were found connected to ‘boy/s’. This reduced by 2000 to 4%. Use your own knowledge of history to explain what this representation of males and females might reveal about gender roles and society.

7. In the 1910-1970 journals, which gender had the greatest number of ‘roles’ and occupations associated with them?

Male Female

8. Across all issues, which gender was more likely to have adjectives associated with them?

Male Female

9. In 1910, there was a clear difference in the adjectives attributed to each gender. Looking at the adjectives listed in the article, explain what this representation suggests about gender roles at the time.

10. What does the analysis of verbs reveal about the representation of males and females across time?

5

Language and genderSugar and spice? What compliments reveal about women’s

and men’s cultural valuesRead this blog to explore what compliments reveal about women’s and men’s cultural values. You should then complete the quiz to demonstrate your understanding.

Great playing today, Tom!

Sugar and spice? What compliments reveal about women’s and men’s cultural values

Men and women may be more equal today, but recent research on compliments suggests that their cultural values are as different today as they were 30 or 40 years ago.

Research carried out in the late 1970s and early 1980s by researchers like Janet Holmes in New Zealand found that women friends gave more compliments to each other (and to men) than men, and that most of their compliments were about appearance, especially hair style and clothes. Janie Rees-Miller’s recent research found that women friends still gave and received many more compliments than men, and that these were still mainly about appearance. In fact what women valued most seemed to be the effort expended on their everyday appearance: they were more likely to tell a friend I like the way you’ve styled your hair than I like your lovely thick hair. The men in Rees-Miller’s study, on the other hand, gave fewer compliments than women, and the topic was mainly performance, especially performance at sports (for example, you were great in the game last night). Again, there is little change here from the results of the earlier studies.

However Rees-Miller’s research reveals a further aspect of women’s and men’s complimenting behaviour. The compliments that she analysed were collected by university students in the US

6

Wow! Your hair looks great!

Midwest, in two different types of setting. The results just mentioned concern compliments overheard in ‘unstructured’ settings, like the student snack bar or the lobby of the student dormitory, where people are free to choose what they talk about. A second set of compliments was overheard in more goal-oriented settings, such as a sports practice or sports training. Here not only were roughly the same number of compliments heard from women and men, but both women and men gave more compliments about their friend’s performance than about anything else.

Rees-Miller concludes that in goal-oriented activities men and women are indeed equal in that good performance in reaching the goal is valued no matter who makes it. In unstructured settings, though, compliments function as small talk, expressing approval and friendliness and often providing an opening for further conversation. They also reinforce shared values. The fact that men’s compliments in unstructured settings are still about sporting performance indicates, she argues, that sport embodies heterosexual bonding and strength for men. Women who are good at sports, on the other hand, face a tension between participating in sporting activities and taking part in more stereotypically feminine concerns. This explains why there are no examples of women complimenting other women on sporting performance in unstructured settings.

The difference in the number of compliments given by men and women in the two types of setting is equally revealing. Since it is only in unstructured settings that women give more compliments than men, men must have different ways of expressing friendship and opening conversations through small talk. One suggestion is that friendly insults may serve the same purpose for men as compliments do for women. A challenge for future researchers is to see whether there is any evidence to support this idea.________________________________________________Rees-Miller, Janie (2011). Compliments revisited: Contemporary compliments and gender. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 2673-2688.doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2011.04.014This summary was written by Jenny Cheshire

7

Quiz: Sugar and spice? What compliments reveal about women’s and men’s cultural values

1. What did research carried out in the late 1970s and early 1980s by researchers like Janet Holmes discover? Select two correct answers:

Men gave more compliments to each other than women Female friends gave more compliments to each other (and to men) than men. Most of men’s compliments were about appearance, especially hair style and clothes. Most of women’s compliments were about appearance, especially hair style and clothes.

2. The men in Rees-Miller’s study gave fewer compliments than women, what was the main topic of these compliments?

3. What did Rees-Miller’s research reveal about women’s and men’s complimenting behaviour?

4. What were the compliments given in unstructured settings being used to reinforce? Select the correct answer:

Self-confidence Shared values Prior knowledge Status

5. Based on her study of compliments, what conclusions about sport did Rees-Miller arrive at?

8

6. What tension do women who are good at sports face and how does this explain why there are no examples of women complimenting each other on sporting performance in unstructured settings?

7. When do women give more compliments than men?

In the workplace In formal social interactions In unstructured settings When meeting for the first time

8. What conclusions are reached about men’s talk?

9. What is one suggestion about men’s use of friendly insults?

They serve the same purpose for men as compliments do for women They enable men to express friendship in a different way to women They encourage the use of humour rather than compliments

10. What is a challenge facing future researchers of this particular topic?

9

Giving directions: do women do this differently to men?Read this blog that considers whether women really do give directions differently to men! You should then complete the quiz to demonstrate your understanding.

Giving directions:do women do this differently to men?

Previous research has found many differences in the way that men and women give directions when stopped and asked the way. Women tend to refer to landmarks such as particular buildings that will be passed, while men tend to orient people in terms of ‘North, South’ and so on. Men tend to estimate the number of miles to the destination, and to make fewer mistakes than women when describing the way to the destination. However this research has almost always been based on role plays or imaginary scenarios. Jennifer D. Ewald gathered data from a more natural context, by driving alongside a customer in a petrol station, winding down her window and asking the person for directions. She did this 60 times, asking 30 men and 30 women. Ewald found no differences in the directions that she received, with the single exception that men tended to estimate how far away the destination was more often than women did. However the men’s estimates were more likely to be wrong than the women’s!

Ewald’s research also revealed some interesting points about direction-giving as a pragmatic act. Learners of English are usually taught to ask for directions using a direct request such as “excuse me, please, can you tell me how I can get to X?” but Ewald found that indirect requests were just as useful. Her question to the 60 men and women was “excuse me, are you from around here?” and then, to those who said “yes” she asked “do you know where X is?” It seems that the context of the petrol station and a person driving a car is enough to trigger the understanding that the question is a request for driving directions and not, for example, some kind of introduction to a market research survey.

Ewald concludes that learners of English should be exposed to authentic examples drawn from natural contexts so that they can understand how native speakers perform routine speech acts such as asking for directions. Perhaps they should also be taught that, contrary to popular belief, women are just as likely to give them accurate directions as men are!

______________________________________________Jennifer D. Ewald (2010) “Do you know where X is?” Direction-giving and male/female direction givers. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2549-2562.doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.02.011This summary was written by Jenny Cheshire

10

Quiz: Giving directions: do women do this differently to men?

1. What has previous research found about the differences between the way men and women give directions?

2. What do men tend to do? Select the correct answers:

Men tend to estimate the number of miles to the destination Men tend to estimate how many minutes it will take to reach a destination Men tend to make more mistakes than women when describing the way to the destination. Men tend to make fewer mistakes than women when describing the way to the destination. Men tend to guess the amount of petrol needed to reach a destination

3. What has this previous research almost always been based on?

4. Where did Jennifer D. Ewald gather her data from?

5. How many men and women were involved in Jennifer D. Ewald’s data?

40 men and 20 women 30 men and 30 women 50 men and 50 women 100 men and 100 women

11

6. What differences did Ewald find in the directions she received?

7. Were there any exceptions?

8. Ewald’s research also revealed some interesting points about direction-giving as a pragmatic act. What did Ewald discover about the use of indirect requests?

Indirect requests were just as useful as using a direct request Indirect requests were not as useful as using a direct request

9. What understanding did the context of the petrol station and a person driving a car trigger?

10. What does Ewald conclude about learners of English?

12

Child Language AcquisitionNature vs Nurture

In this unit, you will explore a range of theories about how children learn to speak and write and the different factors such as the role of the caregiver can have on their language.

This radio programme considers the age old debate of nature vs nurture when it comes to using language.

Listen to the following BBC Sounds radio programme:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p00545cr

BBC SoundsIn Our Time

Language and the Mind

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of our ideas about the formation of language. The psychologist George Miller worked out that in English there are potentially a hundred million trillion sentences of twenty words in length - that’s a hundred times the number of seconds since the birth of the universe. “Language”, as Chomsky put it, “makes infinite use of finite media”. “Language”, as Steven Pinker puts it, “comes so naturally to us that it’s easy to forget what a strange and miraculous gift it is”. “All over the world”, he writes, “members of our species spend a good part of their lives fashioning their breath into hisses and hums and squeaks and pops and are listening to others do the same”. Jean Jacques Rousseau once said that we differ from the animal kingdom in two main ways - the use of language and the prohibition of incest. Language and our ability to learn it has been held up traditionally as our species’ most remarkable achievement, marking us apart from the animals. But in the 20th century, our ideas about how language is formed are being radically challenged and altered. With Dr Jonathan Miller, medical doctor, performer, broadcaster, author and film and opera director; Steven Pinker, cognitive scientist, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Centre for Neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California.

13

Quiz: Nature vs Nurture

1. Which of the following is true of what is meant by humans having an innate capacity for language:

It is something in the brain that makes language work Children learn language like parrots Children can extract words and grammatical rules from parental speech Humans have speech organs that allow them to talk

2. What word beginning with ‘r’ is the reason why we know the brain has a special ability to recognise how any language works? R___________________ allow us to recognise:

the way vowels and consonants are combined the way words and phrases are put together in a sentence how inflections (‘add-ons’ to the basic word) are used to define who and when how we describe who does what using language

3. Linked to the above (but not in the audio) explain what you think has gone wrong for each of the following:

Is this a word: chrty ?

Is this a likely sentence structure:The woman a gun acquired ?

Is this a typical use of inflections:I speaks quiet ?

What is wrong with this:The car thought about a man?

4. True or False? The brain can be damaged physically, and we know that this can affect the ability to produce/comprehend language; therefore we know which bit of the brain carries the innate capacity for language.

True False

5. Which of the following statements are true, in the (rare) cases of feral children growing up with only animals for company:

They inherit the ability to speak in chicken or wolf They inherit language anyway They don’t acquire human language competence because they haven’t been exposed to it

14

15

6. True or False? There are debates about the relationship between language, biology and culture – and the role these play in language development

True False

7. Linked to the above – and broadly linked to the latter part of the audio – tick which of the following you think are true:

I have organs of speech so I can produce language competently I am deaf so I cannot produce language competently ‘She’ is an appropriately used pronoun for cis females I can’t say it if I can’t think it I can’t think it if I haven’t the words for it

8. In the last part of the audio, the ‘evolution of language’ and the disappearance of particular languages are addressed briefly:

a) What is meant by ‘evolution’

b) Is the use of the term ‘evolution’ a negative or a positive one?

c) Why might you agree with this perspective?*

d) Why might someone disagree with this perspective?*

e) The loss of particular languages is felt to be a negative, as far as one of the guest speakers is concerned: why is this?*

*Bonus points if you can illustrate c) d) or e) with any examples you can think of to support/elaborate your answer.

16

The Power of Babble

Read the digest of Elminger, Schwade and Goldstein (2019).

The Power of Babble

"Ma-ma, ba-ba, da-da" - you probably associate sounds such as these with babies, in particular the babbling that babies make when they're first acquiring language. But what do these sounds do? And why do babies babble? This is a question that some recent research has addressed.

In their recent research report, Elminger, Schwade and Goldstein examined the function of babbling in infants’ language development. They explored the idea that a caregiver’s response to their child’s vocalizations is key to the beginnings of communication and found that infants themselves may actually be in charge of this process. By 5 months old, babies will babble and expect their adult caregiver to reply and by 9 months, they will begin to produce more speech-like noise once the adult responds to them. Previous research has suggested that parents’ speech will match the child’s current age, changing as the child grows. A baby’s most varied ‘pre-speech’ repertoire of sounds is between 9-10 months and this is when a parent’s speech is most sensitive to their child’s vocalizations.

The researchers focused on this age group and were interested in further investigating the relationship between the adults’ and infants’ vocalizations by closely examining adult speech in response to infant babble. They used three measures to assess the type of speech parents used to respond to babbling: Firstly, they counted the number of different types of words that were used; secondly, they counted the average number of words in the responses and thirdly, they calculated how many of these responses were just a single word. There were thirty mother-infant pairs who participated in the study and they were recorded in a naturalistic environment, as the child played, over two thirty minute sessions. The researchers split the adult responses into two different categories: ‘contingent’ which were immediate, direct responses to the child’s babble and ‘non-contingent’ which did not occur within two seconds of the babbling.

17

Overall, the investigation showed that the mothers produced less contingent than non-contingent speech and that the contingent speech consisted of significantly shorter utterances with simpler words. They also found that there were more single-word contingent utterances than non-contingent. So, in general, it seems that parents may simplify the whole structure of their speech in response to their child’s babble, suggesting that infant babbling really does influence the adult response. It may be that this immature, pre-speech babble is actually engineered by the child to create language learning opportunities through eliciting simplified, easy-to-learn responses from their caregiver. In fact, it seems that infant babbling in general is indicative that learning is happening: It has previously been found that infants more accurately remember the features of objects at which they have babbled than those that have been looked at and handled but not babbled at. So, when an adult responds vocally to babbling, the already alert child will quickly learn the patterns of their speech.

Overall, these results show that children learn to recognise language much more quickly when the information they need to do so is presented immediately on babbling. During the first year of their life, infants associate their babbling with a response from their caregiver which will guide their learning and speech development. So, unlike the Tower of Babel, fabled to have been built to divide people linguistically, in this study the power of babble is shown to rely on infant and caregiver closely working together.

------------------------------------------------------------

Elmlinger S.L.; J.A. Schwade & M.H. Goldstein. 2019. The Ecology of prelinguistic vocal learning: parents simplify the structure of their speech in response to babbling. Journal of Child Language. 16:1-14.

This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle

18

Quiz: The Power of Babble

1. From what age is babbling likely to start?

2. What did they find about who is most likely to initiate in carer-child interaction?

3. At what age does babbling become more speech-like?

4. How does this impact the adult caregiver?

5. Bullet please, the 3 methods Elminger, Schwade and Goldtein used to look at how adults responded to their child’s speech. Add a star if you can think of why any of these methods were used

19

6. What did you learn about the size of/the situation of and the respondents in the study? Add a star if you can evaluate these factors in any way.

7. There was a fourth way they analysed the data they got back – looking at contingent and non-contingent responses. Did their findings link to your expectations here? (There are two aspects to think about)

8. Overall, what summative statements can be made about their findings?

9. Bonus Q: watch this delightful clip of a father and child ‘pseudo-talking’. As someone interested in studying language interactions and looking at the role of parents/carers in supporting their child’s language development – bullet your observations !https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn8j4XRxSck

20

Global EnglishesWill English continue to dominate or decline, diminish

cultures or enrich them?In this unit, we will consider how English is spoken around the world. We will discuss why some countries are keen to speak British or American English whereas other countries adopt English and develop it with more local influences. We will also consider the future of English as a global language.

Listen to the following BBC Sounds radio programme:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csxgbb

BBC SoundsThe Compass

The Future of EnglishToo Much English?

The presenter of this radio programme travels the world to find out if English is set to dominate or decline. Listen to the programme and answer the comprehension questions below.

Will English continue to dominate or decline, diminish cultures or enrich them?

The series ends with Robin Lustig asking if you can have too much English. From India he hears how English can divide people as powerfully as it brings them together. In the US he meets speakers of Native American languages who want to keep their linguistic traditions alive. And in East Africa Robin asks whether a requirement to speak good English prevents millions from accessing the best jobs and universities. Some see English as a 'killer language' which threatens the existence of less widely-spoken languages. But not everyone sees English as a linguistic thug. To a Shanghai entrepreneur, it is the glue in the global economy, for others a ladder of opportunity, while some claim English may soon be in retreat. In an age of linguistic giants including Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic, Robin concludes by looking to the future to ask whether English will continue to dominate or decline, diminish lives and cultures or enrich them.

21

Quiz: Will English continue to dominate or decline, diminish cultures or enrich them?

1. Why are minority languages often second languages?

2. What are some limitations of the English language?

3. Is it inevitable that the world will become monolinguist?

4. What are some of the benefits of language change?

5. Is not being an English speaker a disadvantage?

22

6. How are class and education both factors in determining who speaks English?

7. What does it mean to have parallel languages and what is the threat to regional languages?

8. Could having a global language threaten identity?

9. Why do we have so many languages?

10. Why might Mandarin Chinese challenge English as a global language?

23