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Y6 GPaS Test: Pronoun or preposition?

In each of the following examples, indicate whether the highlighted word is a pronoun or a preposition:

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Y6 GPaS Test: Question, command, statement or exclamation

Identify the type of clause below. The punctuation has been removed to make the answers less obvious.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Question, command, statement or exclamation: Advanced

Identify the type of clause highlighted in each multi-clause sentence below.

The punctuation has been removed to make the answers less obvious.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Select the pronouns

In each of the following examples, select the pair of pronouns that correctly fills the blanks:

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Y6 GPaS Test: Select the verb form

Select the correct verb form for each example.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Spelling plurals

Select the correct plural form:

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Y6 GPaS Test: Subordinate clause?

Select whether the example sentence contains a subordinate clause or not.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Synonyms

Select the synonym of a given word, from a multiple choice list.

One of the words is a (near) synonym of the example word. Select it. Struggling? Try putting the given word and the options in a sentence, to explore their different meanings.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Word families

Select the correct word for the blank:

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Investigating language: project ideas

This page includes a numbers of ideas and suggestions for your students' independent language study. We have categorised them by 'language levels', but only for navigation purposes - don't let the categories limit your students' creativity! 

Meaning

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Keeping a Language Log

Introduction

Most of the time, students' work in English is assessed by things that they write about things that they have read. For example, their exams may consist of writing about a Shakespeare play they have studied, or perhaps some non-fiction texts like advertisements or extracts of journalism from a newspaper or magazine.

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Language investigation ideas

Five language investigation ideas with suggestions for tackling AO1, AO2 and AO3

A good investigation will cover each of the Assessment Objectives.

To get a strong AO1 mark an investigation needs to use demanding terminology accurately and incisively, but the specifics will be different for different investigations - ideally cover a range of features and keep an eye open for surprising or unanticipated features in your data.

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Language investigation ideas: Accent and dialect

After Labov’s New York department stores study

Does shop assistants’ speech converge with the speech style of their customers?

A version of Labov’s study can easily be done anywhere there are a variety of similar shops (or publicly accessible institutions like sports centres or libraries).

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Language investigation ideas: Ethnicity and social networks

Do second and third generations of immigrant families converge less with local Anglo English dialects?

Research by Sharma and Sankaran measured the use of non-standard British Asian and Cockney features in the speech of two generations of British Asian people. They found that the older generation were converging much more dramatically with people they spoke with.

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Language investigation ideas: Language and gender

Do female MMA fighters use ‘masculine’ speech features?  

Given combat sports are a violent and competitive environment, they might be thought of as a stereotypically masculine environment. An investigation could look at whether female participants use features that researchers have claimed are more commonly used by men.

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Language investigation ideas: Social networks, ethnicity and brokers

Do different social networks adopt new features at different rates? (or: Are specific individuals spreading novel features through their social networks?)

To work well, this idea would need a sharp ear for new features and access to specific sorts of social networks. 

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Language investigation ideas: World Englishes and gender

If genderlects exist, do people who learn English as a second language display features that have been identified as gendered? 

If men and women speak in distinct ways (as has been claimed by Lakoff, Tannen and others), it would be interesting to see whether people who have learned English as a second language display these traits – presumably if the (claimed) difference is primarily due to biological factors (e.g.

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Language of spam

Introduction

If you’ve got an email account, inevitably you’ll have received spam. Whether it’s adverts for vicodine or Viagra, single Russian women looking for fun (and your sort code), appeals for money from the daughters of deposed Nigerian generals, or requests to update your details from a bank that you don’t have an account with, spam is all around us.

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Martian grammar

This is a unit about the grammar of an invented language, ‘Martian’. It uses students’ (often subconscious) understanding of morphology to help them uncover the ‘rules’ of a made-up language. To ‘crack’ the language, they will need to break down the words into meaningful parts.

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Martian grammar: Activity 1

Aliens have landed on Earth, but don’t worry: they come in peace. Or at least, we think they do, but we can’t quite understand what they’re talking about.

Their language is not familiar and even highly trained experts are struggling to work out what they are saying. Your job is to work with the Martian examples that they have translated and work out some of the rules of their language. In doing so, you might even learn something about your own language.

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Martian grammar: Activity 2

Aliens have landed on Earth, but don’t worry: they come in peace. Or at least, we think they do, but we can’t quite understand what they’re talking about.

Their language is not familiar and even highly trained experts are struggling to work out what they are saying. Your job is to work with the Martian examples that they have translated and work out some of the rules of their language. In doing so, you might even learn something about your own language.

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Martian grammar: teacher feedback

Once you have worked through the Martian grammar activities, you can look at some of the things you have discovered.

Let’s look at some elements of grammar that we have identified in the Martian grammar exercise:

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Metaphors of language

Exploring the way we think and talk about language

This project asks students to explore metaphors of the English language. If you need a quick refresher, it might be useful to revisit some of the introductory pages on metaphor here before completing the project work.

Metaphor is a highly pervasive feature of any language, not only reflecting the way that we understand the world, but constituting and shaping it. In linguistics, we use the X IS Y formula to indicate a metaphor - for example:

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Multicultural London English

Ghetto speak?

Attitudes to some varieties of English can often be quite hostile, especially when regional, racial and cultural prejudices are part of the mix. A case in point is the development of what some linguists call Multicultural London English (or MLE), but what some journalists refer to as ‘Jafaican’.

Have a look at the article 'Word on the street in London' from the London Evening Standard to see what you make of the changing varieties of London English.

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Englicious contains many resources for English language in schools, but the vast majority of them require you to register and log in first. For more information, see What is Englicious?

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