Exploring Language Language Under the Microscope 6 2

Exploring Language: Language Under the Microscope 6. 2 Thursday 14 th January 2021

Today: 1. Last week’s Analysis the text ‘Nitty Gritty Nit. Free Comb’. 2. Try to find more features in this text using the list provided. 3. Look at the mark scheme, distinguishing between lexical and grammatical features. 4. Produce a written analysis of the text ‘Students don’t do so well in exams. . ’ from The Guardian (2008) 5. Send your response to me (Mr Harper) when finished.

Nitty Gritty Nit. Free Comb Here is a list of linguistic features that were used effectively in the text that was set last week: 1. Lots of noun phrases, with very extended pre-modification 12. Modals 2. Mix of high and low frequency lexis 13. Imperatives 3. Exclamatives (for excitement) 14. Interrogatives 4. Relative clauses 15. Minor sentences 5. Conjunction fronting 16. Short simple sentences 6. Superlatives 17. Adverbs of minimal extent 7. Synthetic personalisation 18. Intensifiers 8. Elision (facilitates synthetic personalisation) 19. Process adverbs 9. Colloquial (eg. mums) (facilitates synthetic personalisation) 20. Negation 10. Second person pronouns, first person pronouns, reflexive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns 21. Mixture of dynamic and stative verbs 11. Conditionals 22. Present and future tense verbs 23. Passive voice

Task – exploring a wider range of features Look at the text again (on the next slide) and identify any features on the list (from the previous slide) in the text that you didn’t analyse in your response last week. Consider the effects that are produced by each of these features and why the writer has used them in this context. (you don’t need to send this to me)

Nitty Gritty Nit. Free Comb This text has been taken from a previous AS ‘Exploring Language’ exam paper. At AS level, students are not required to write a two-part response (lexis and grammar). However, it is useful to look at the mark scheme to see which language features the exam board consider to be important. Task: Read through the mark scheme and decide which points are lexical and which are grammatical.

‘Students don’t do so well in exams when it’s hot’from The Guardian (2018)