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Topic: Vocabulary

These resources relate to the nature of words and word choice, and move towards building student vocabularies in systematic ways.

Verbs in persuasive language: Activity 3

Activity 3

Write your own charity appeal, using the source material below. It is a statement from a charity about their aims and methods. Make use of a range of persuasive devices, including modal verbs.

The "Live Not Exist" charity has been set up with the following key aims:

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Word choice

Why do writers use some words and not others? This lesson looks at word choice options, both grammatical and semantic.

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Word choice: Activity 1

What word would you place in the blank slot?

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Word choice: Activity 2

Read this extract from a novel and think about the ways in which the writer has chosen specific words to convey his description.

My earliest memories are a confusion of hilly fields and dark, damp stables, and rats that scampered along the beams above my head. But I remember well enough the day of the horse sale. The terror of it stayed with me all my life.

From Michael Morpurgo, Warhorse

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Word clouds in action

Goals

  • Examine a poem as a corpus, like a body of linguistic data.
  • Linguistically analyse the words used in a poem.
  • Create a word list based on a poem.
  • Present linguistic findings visually using Wordle.

Lesson Plan

Wordle is a simple corpus tool which allows you to paste in text and create a ‘word cloud’ that displays the frequency of words by their relative size in a cloud.

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Word frequency

What are the most frequently used words in English? And could we do without them?

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Word frequency: Activity

The 10 most common English words are:

the

of

and

a

in

to

it

is/was

I

for

Can you answer the following questions without using these 10 words?

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Words

Lesson

Objective

To explore the meaning of simple, everyday words and how they relate to your experience of the world.

There are many kinds of words.

Do you know the words for what you see in the picture? Talk to a partner and write down as many words as you can.

Can you describe what you do in the morning before you go to school? Here is a list of what you might do, but the order in which you do things has been mixed up:

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Words

Plan

Activity 1

Show learners the image in the first slide. Ask them to work with a partner and write down as many words as they can see. Share back with the whole class and accept any valid answers. 

Activity 2

Show learners the list of activities. Ask them to put the letters a-f in the appropriate order. Circulate and accept any reasonable answers. On the next slide, disucss possible solutions as a whole class. 

Activity 3

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Compounds: Break apart the words

Break down each of the following words into its meaningful parts. Label each part as either a prefix, a suffix, or a lexical base (a part which can typically be used as a word on its own).

Example: unkindness: un- (prefix) + kind (lexical base) + -ness (suffix)

You can check your work by pressing the buttons to see the answers.

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Identify the word formation process

Identify the word formation process by clicking the correct answer.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Antonyms

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

One of these words is an (near) antonym to the given word. Select it. Struggling? Try putting the words in a sentence to explore their various meanings.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Spelling plurals

Select the correct plural form:

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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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Prepared speech

Using corpora to investigate prepared speeches

One very simple approach to using corpora in English lessons is to pull apart a speech using the programme Wordle, which can be found here. Wordle creates simple but beautiful images made up of words in a text that you can input.

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Vocabulary and semantic change

Words change meaning over time. Some terms that used to have one meaning fifty years ago have developed very different meanings now. Often, slang terms are among those quickest to change, and we can see this in examples such as sick, wicked and gay, all of which have undergone fairly substantial shifts in meaning over relatively short periods of time.

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Phrasal verbs

What is a phrasal verb? Phrasal verbs consist of a combination of a verb and another word, which we’ll call a preposition. Some examples are come over, look (something) up. The first word in a verb-preposition combination can be just about any verb. The verbs that most commonly appear in such combinations are listed below:

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Phrasal verbs: New phrasal verbs

There are many phrasal verbs that you won’t find in any dictionary. This is because we commonly create new phrasal verbs based on the meanings of existing phrasal verbs. Usually, new phrasal verbs are either transparent or aspectual – new idiomatic phrasal verbs would usually be too difficult for listeners to decode. Perhaps you’ve heard examples like the following:

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Phrasal verbs: Three categories

Non-native speakers are often told that their only option is to memorise each phrasal verb individually. Is it really necessary to do all that work? No. Not only is it unnecessary, it’s inefficient. And it’s inefficient for three reasons:

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Register

We all use different forms of language in different situations. At the most extreme, you’ll probably know that in casual conversation with friends you will use very different language from that which you’d use at a job interview.

The kinds of differences will relate to vocabulary (the word choices you make) but also to grammar (the structures, the complexity, the patterns of words).

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Tag questions

Questions like ...isn’t it?, ...haven’t they? and ...wouldn’t you? that sit on the end of a statement are called tag questions in linguistics. There’s a range of different tag questions most people call on, varying by verb, tense, person and whether the tag is positive or negative.

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Word structure: Compounds

Compounds are combinations of root words, i.e. words that can occur on their own, to form a new established combination. They are sometimes spelt as one word, but also with a hyphen or as two words.

In English compound nouns, e.g. bookcase, laptop, smartphone, and compound adjectives, e.g. dripping wet, tax-free, are very common.

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English Grammar Day 2016

'Grammar is cool, and it is cool to know your grammar'.

A video about the Third English Grammar Day held at the British Library in 2016.

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