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Showing posts with the label vocabulary

Shuffled sentences

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This practice book will help you to explore the strange world of shuffled sentences and how your brain solves them.  A shuffled sentence is a string of words that have been jumbled up. The words are in the wrong order. Can you unscramble the words to make a sentence?  • An excellent INTRODUCTION to the art and science of solving these linguistic challenges.  • TWENTY techniques that could help you to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your exam tactics and strategy.  • FIVE levels of difficulty, which makes it ideal for exam preparation for various kinds of school entrance exams such as 11+ and other employment proficiency tests.  • 595 shuffled sentences to use for your exam practice.  • Some of the tests involve deciding on a word that is not needed in the sentence. This is called a REDUNDANT word.  • Some of the tests ask you to find the LAST WORD in the sentence.  • The tests are designed to practise VOCABULARY and GRAMMAR (different types of sentence, different types of w

The Discourse of Literature Reviews and Critical Evaluation

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A Traditional Card Catalogue Critical evaluations and literature reviews employ an academic discourse. I've started to compose a list of the most frequently used words and phrases : Accentuated differences Acclaimed authors According to Account Acknowledge the issue Addresses Addresses the contradictions Adequate Adopts Advances the idea Almost all Analyses Arbitrary categories Argues Argument Assesses Attempts to challenge Bogged down Bold Breaks new ground Brief discussion Brings together By ignoring this Care with which Centres on Certain types of Challenges Charts Cited Combines analyses of Comments on Compelling argument Comprehensive Conceptual framework Concise Confesses Confides Connects Considered Contains Contradictions Contributors Trinity Library Dublin Conveys the sense Convincing Covers a range of topics Critics Debates about Dense literature Describes the

Persuasive Writing and a Letter of Complaint

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The Rep Theatre and the Library of Birmingham This blog briefly shares parts of a recent exercise with students. The first aim was to undertake reading and writing exercises in order to gain a better understanding of techniques of persuasion . The second aim was to turn the exercise upside down by writing a highly critical review , or a letter of complaint . We also deployed speaking exercises in the form of  radio-style interviews, a phone-in, and social media interactive engagement such as short text and tweet responses. The underlying aims were vocabulary building and confident use of language. Our first task was to study the vocabulary used in advertisements and marketing/advertising material. These were drawn from a Children's Guide to Leisure Activities in the Black Country (West Midlands, UK);  Rewriting the Book - Discovery Season - Library of Birmingham; and What's On at the beacon Arts centre, Greenock, Scotland. Initially students were asked to s

Thinking about Speech in Shakespeare and Jane Austen

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The witty banter and rivalry that we encounter in the plays of William Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde, or the novels of Jane Austen, often presents difficulties for students who are unsure how to write about it. It's not enough just to say that a speech is funny or humorous. Even 'witty' is at times quite vague given the complexity of rhetoric and style that characters had available to them. First, there are the professed attitudes to love and relationships. Typical roles taken up by characters include the scorner of love, and the woman who rejects her suitors. Whether the underlying motivation is authentic, realistic, or psychologically coherent and credible often matters less than the sheer pleasure to be had from the verbal battles that ensue. Second, audiences are expected to enjoy the 'badinage' of witty courtiers. This is an opportunity for malicious sentiments to be expressed with wit. Communication shifts in mood and tone from shrewdness and wisdom to ext