The English Miscellany

Are you still sharpening your use of academic language, or are you loosening the reins? The title of this blog points to the tensions involved in professional educational writing. In one sense the purely personal, original, pre-academic voice is a fiction. By joining the ranks of academe your voice has already begun to switch from a personal to a public voice. Taking the micky becomes parody or satire , for instance. Academic writing loses colloquial speech-like qualities and takes on the jargon of professional authenticity. And speech also tends to lose the accent and dialect of your class roots. Sadly, standard academic English is a rather middle-class business proposition. There is a gain but there is also a loss. But academic voice in the arts and the social sciences need not be the bleak accent of dry neutrality and emotionless abstraction. Surely there's an error in losing the individual idiosyncrasy of the human pulse in this domain of work? While it is true that

Media hype: (1) Recent media reports have mentioned that some "supertutors" earn as much as £300 per hour . Yes! that's per HOUR! Reality check: But private tutoring with an agency is not as lucrative as it might appear: (2) "A competitive salary - £21,000per annum (£22,000pa within the M25) plus £2880pa bonus potential based on your centre's performance." [Explore Learning Job Advert] The reality in most cases is that many tutors are undergraduates or recent postgraduates seeking to earn extra cash. Typically, they will be enthusiastic, well-informed and unqualified as teaching professionals. Rates of pay often range from £18 to £35 per hour, and that may include travel time and costs. In contrast to employing a trades person such as an electrician or a plumber on a standard £50 call out fee, it's quite poorly paid. Alternatively, some poorly-paid early career teachers supplement their earnings by offering private teaching. In some cas

From time to time PhDs are submitted and they are failed . Your 3 to 7 year investment does not come with any guarantee of a pass. Nor is it enough complain that the supervisory team did not tell you that you might fail, or that you are at risk. While failure is very uncommon, there are no guarantees of success. Most examiners are looking for positive evidence of success, but they are also required to identify weaknesses and errors. Both roles comprise the work of critical scrutiny and the professional process of examination. On one occasion when I was serving as a PhD examiner we required major corrections with a 24 month timetable as that seemed to be the alternative to a failure. But the alarm bells ought to have been clear well before submission. Multiple errors and weaknesses may result in protracted re-submission or even outright failure. Examiners often spot weaknesses that your supervisors may not have identified or scrupulously checked. It is not uncommon for

In the exam you are typically provided with a short extract from one of Shakespeare plays. This blog provides a checklist of the key points that you will need to write about. This exercise is an opportunity to show off your understanding and your critical vocabulary, and to demonstrate your awareness of how literary and rhetorical techniques contribute to effective dramatic writing. Finding your bearings Keywords: conflict, drama, character, theme Who are the main protagonists, and who are the subsidiary speakers? Which characters prompt or lead the discussion? Who dominates? Think about the context for the action, the sense of conflict or rapport and dramatic situation how the extract helps to develop a character/psychology/motivation/emotion ... or to advance a theme. Think about what has happened before , and what will happen after the selected scene/extract Is there an emotional high point or specific dramatic moments that have more emphasis t

Are you locked in the Library? It's the exam season again! Here are 16 practical tips and strategies to support study and revision work for exams: Short blocks of time for work A balanced workload between all subjects means variety  Days off work for leisure Writing down a list of reasons to be motivated Rewarding yourself for doing the hours planned Not starting to revise too late Summarising your notes Creating Mindmaps or other visualizations  Devising your own mnemonics or memory games Reading past exam papers Ensuring that you know what the examiners are looking for Doing timed answers and exercies Trying out model opening and closing paragraphs for essays Learning about 50 impressive words to use in discussions, arguments, or concepts Working with your teachers to explain what's not clear  Working with friends collaboratively in teams Dr Ian McCormick is the author of The Art of Connection: the Social Life of Sentences (Quibble Academic

Why not create your own league table of writers with your class? This is a great opportunity for critical thinking and collaborative decision-making. Start by constructing a long or short list of writers/poets/novels/poems. Then discuss your key criteria for evaluation. Perhaps your scores will change over time? Poet and playwright Oliver Goldsmith’s “poetical scale” was originally published in The Literary Magazine in January, 1758. Genius        Judgement        Learning           Versification Chaucer                       16                    12                    10                    14 Spenser                        1 8                   12                    14                    18 Shakespeare                19                    14                    14                    19 Jonson                         1 6                   1 8                   17                    8 Cowley                        17                    17                

Summary of the AQA Exam Board Guidance on language work for A level (16-18 years).  For AS and A level, learners can analyse texts by exploring four functions of language: the expressive function – how a text represents its writer or producer and conveys their attitudes and values the experiential function – how a text represents people, institutions and events the relational function – how a text creates an ideal audience position, creating a power relation between producer and audience, and shaping the audience’s response the textual function – how texts create coherence and cohesion Linguistic Frameworks Phonological: alliteration, assonance, rhythm, rhyme the forms and functions of non-verbal aspects of speech Lexical-semantic: denotational and connotational meaning, figurative language, structural semantics (semantic fields, synonyms, antonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms), jargon, levels of formality Gram