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Topic: KS3

Relevant for UK National Curriculum Key Stage 3.

Word frequency

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

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Word salads (secondary): Activity 1

Sentence 1

sometimes
her
I
hate

Sentence 2

water
of
can
a
I
glass
have
please

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Baby Sentences

Goals

  • Use implicit grammatical knowledge to translate examples of infant speech into complete sentences.
  • (For older students) use explicit grammatical knowledge to identify the types of changes that have been made in translating from the original examples.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will look at some real examples of English spoken by infants, and translate it into adult speech.

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Clause types in context

Exploring how different clause types help to construct social meaning

The four clause types are a central part of English grammar. An understanding of declarative, imperative, interrogative and exclamative clause types can help students recognise how writers use these structures to create meaning in different ways, and can help them develop a better repertoire of structures in their own writing.

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Nouning verbs

A quick activity looking at how some words can be both nouns and verbs

This is a simple starter activity that will help your students see how some words can function as both nouns and verbs. The activity is designed to be carried out in pairs around the class. One student be the noun and the other will be the verb. Each will need the same word list (which you can download and print below) or you can just use the word list on the screen.

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Phrase types: Snap

This is a simple game based on the idea of ‘Snap!’ in which you have to match up phrases with other phrases of the same type. The game can be played in class with cards. To print off your own sheet of snap cards to play in class, click on the downloadable handout below. Then print and cut out the cards. Pairs of students turn over one card at a time, and if they each put down a phrase of the same type, they call 'Snap'. The first to call 'Snap' wins the pile of cards. Play continues until one player holds all the cards.

Noun endings

Exploring suffixes and how they affect word class

In this activity we will look at suffixes which change verbs and adjectives into nouns. This process is a part of derivational morphology. 

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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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Pragmatics and turn-taking: Activity 1

Stacey Solomon TV interview

Comparing different modes

Students compare examples of English in use, including various written and spoken examples, and analyse them according to a scale.

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Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies