Glossary: content word

Sub-topics

Explanation

A word with a full meaning content which can be stated separately, such as strawberry, chatter or green. Also called a lexical word. This type of word contrasts with a grammatical word, whose role is mainly to express grammatical relationships or meanings, e.g. of, and or the. Content words are usually open-class words, while grammatical words are usually closed-class words.

Expanding headlines

Exploring the grammar of newspaper headlines

Newspaper headlines are often not full sentences, but they are nevertheless quite easy to make sense of. In this starter, students will use their implicit knowledge of grammar to expand newspaper headlines into complete sentences, and then explicitly analyse what they've done. The Activity slide show appears in the menu entitled 'This Unit' in the upper right corner of this page. In the Activity slide show, five example headlines are presented. Students should do the following:

Expanding headlines: Activity

  1. Lorry driver cut free after crash
  2. Pakistani PM guilty of contempt
  3. Calls to block £14bn EU bill
  4. Time called on noisy church bells
  5. Australian billionaire to build Titanic II
  6. Chef throws his heart into helping feed needy
  7. Cops halt doughnut shop robbery

 

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