AO4 Context for Valerie Martin's "Property" (The Making of America, Episode 3)

Student produced Wordle on Valerie Martin's "Property"

Great website on Language

Great Blog. You can learn "tons" year.  It gives clear, useful examples that helps understanding.

i love english language

Study Techniques: speed notes

Absolutely perfect for summarising what you have learned, i.e. key points and ideas at the end of a lesson. You should spend no more than 7-10 minutes doing so.

Evernote - the best way for students to record and organise their notes digitally

Have you ever wondered about using an anadiplosis?

Listen to the podcast here and you'll know. They also investigate anachronisms (speech which would not have been used in the period set)  in TV series set in the past.
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2012/06/lexicon_valley_anachronisms_in_mad_men_downton_abbey_and_edith_wharton_.html

Podcasts to help you become an expert in English

SLATE magazine's podcast series could help you become an exceptional student in the English language!

http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html

Do you need to make your prose ( writing ) easier to read?

Two easy secrets for more readable prose

Workshop instructor Ann Wylie says your readers don't comprehend your writing as well as you may think. Here's how to remedy that.

By Matt Wilson | Posted: June 28, 2012

Ann Wylie has good news and bad news to share with communicators.

First, the bad: People don't read as well as you or your bosses think they do.

"Executives and the people who approve our copy believe that readers will wade through whatever we put down on paper," said Wylie of Wylie Communications, in addressing attendees of her session at the International Association of Business Communicators World Conference on Wednesday. "We all know that's not true."

The good news? Communicators can access lots of free online tools—StoryToolz, for example—to improve the readability of what they write. They just have to know what to look for.

"If we make our copy easier to read—this is such a shock—more people will read it," Wylie said.

Grim realities

Communicators often think that hitting the "publish" button means they've done their job, but publishing something that isn't easily understandable means you aren't actually communicating. And Wylie pointed out that for many readers "understandable" means something pretty basic.

"Literacy is way worse than you think, all over the world," she said.

Around four out of 10 Americans have below-basic reading skills, Wylie said. They have trouble finding an intersection on a map, picking out opposing viewpoints, or finding information that's pertinent to them in catalogs. In other developed countries, anywhere between one-fourth (Sweden) and three-fourths (Chile) of people have reading problems that make it tough to get through the day.

"This is our audience," Wylie said. "The real challenge is, are we smart enough to write for fifth-graders?"

There are other factors, too. For instance, older employees are less likely to have attended college, and reading material on mobile devices can substantially hinder one's understanding of complex writing.

"Reading your press release on an iPhone is like reading 'War and Peace' through a keyhole," Wylie joked.

Executives not only have less time to read things, many also have attention deficit disorder (which actually helps them to be more productive). Some prominent executives, such as Charles Schwab and Steve Jobs, have struggled with dyslexia.

"We can't assume that all of these people, just because of their status, have super-high levels of literacy," she said.

Plus, people want to read material that's welcoming.

"Even if you're writing for brain surgeons and rocket scientists, you need to make it easier to read," Wylie said.

Shorter is better

According to Joseph Kimble's book, "Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please," FedEx estimated it would save $400,000 by rewriting one manual. There's a payoff in being aware of readability, and Wylie said the two biggest areas to improve are word lengths and sentence lengths.

"The problem with long words isn't that it's hard for people to understand them," she said. "The problem is they take longer to read."

Longer words also don't get shared. The average length of words in tweets that get retweeted is 1.62 syllables, Wylie said. You should aim for an average around that number of syllables and at about five letters. The Wall Street Journal's average word length is 4.8 letters, she said.

Long words seem dishonest, Wylie pointed out. "If organizations are not doing well, they bury the truth in an avalanche of syllables."

It should be relatively easy to keep words short. The most-used English words are one syllable each, all the way up through No. 54. And No. 55 is "about."

Sentences are a little different.

"The problem with sentence length, unlike word length, is that people have trouble understanding long sentences," Wylie said. "If you add a word, you reduce comprehension."

She showed a chart depicting a direct correlation between sentence length and comprehension. For 100 percent comprehension, sentences should be eight words long. When sentences stretch out to 44 words, comprehension drops to about 10 percent.

Wylie said to aim for sentences of 14 words, which garner about 90 percent reader comprehension.

Six writing tips

Wylie offered these tips for making your writing even easier to read:

1. Check reading levels. One index that's really good is the Flesch Reading Ease index, Wylie says, which marks the easiest-to-read text at the top, 90 to 100. "We want to hit 60 or 70. That's standard."

2. Evaluate the piece as a whole. "People will stop reading sooner if your story is longer," Wylie said.

3. Break up paragraphs. "People look at your copy and, based on paragraph length, think it looks hard to read," Wylie said. "The longer your paragraph, the sloggier your piece looks." She said to keep paragraphs to three sentences in print and to one or two online.

4. Avoid passive voice. "If you can add the phrase, 'by my grandma' to the end of a sentence, it's passive," Wylie said.

5. Watch sentence structures. Starting sentences with pronouns, articles, or interrogative pronouns is good, Wylie said, because that means you're starting with the subject. Conjunctions are also good, because that means you're writing short sentences. Avoid prepositional phrases and subordinating conjunctions.

6. Use clear, strong words. "Don't commit verbicide," Wylie said. Try to remove "ing" from your verbs, because auxiliary verbs weaken sentences. Keep out prepositional phrases. Be careful with pronouns, which can create ambiguity.

How readable is YOUR writing?

Who can read what you write? Storytoolz have a great "tool" for checking the grade level and language stats in your writing. You can reach an even bigger audience by simplifying your writing. To check US/UK/AUS/NZ grades/ages click on this chart:

storytoolz.com/readability/index

Students could check extracts from their essays, stories, notes, transactional writing, etc.

This blog post could be read by US grade 4 and above. The word usage is highlighted below:


Readability Statistics of Entered Text

Reading Levels

Sentence Information

Word Usage

Number of to be verbs	0
Number of auxiliary verbs	2
Number of conjunctions	1 (2% of words)
Number of pronouns	6 (13% of words)
Number of prepositions	4 (9% of words)
Number of nominalizations	1

Sentence Beginnings

Myths of Digital Literacy

Why does 'literacy' mean today?

Andrea Lunsford: "Young people are writing more than any point in the history of the world." 

Andrea Lunsford on the Myths of Digital Literacy

New literacy and the literacy revolution

Andrea's points on purpose and audience are very interesting.


Does anyone agree or disagree with the points she makes?

How to ace exams!

How to boost your grades with great note taking skills

The video explains three types of note taking and what you need to do with your notes to get  the best out of them. If you did just half the things suggested here, you could not fail to improve your grades!

David Crystal on "It's Only a Theory": he debunks several myths on texting, spelling, reading and writing

Brilliantly argued!

A New Literacy: Making Connections in Electronic Environments

Most young people today are reading and writing more than any point before the invention of the telephone, perhaps ever!

Professor David Crystal on Texts and Tweets: myths and realities

Brilliant stuff by the world's greatest living expert on the English language! He debunks many myths here on texting, tweets, spelling, reading and writing.

Cuddywifters, cack-handers and coochies (A panel of experts discuss the ever changing English language)

From The British Library

Curator Jonnie Robinson presents recordings that explore the ever-changing regional contrasts of the English language. With discussion from a panel of experts.

A podcast on the ever changing English Language - panel discussion

CAAP (Context, Attitude, Audience and Purpose) for analysing texts

Click the image to enlarge

The Bitch Manifesto by Joreen Freeman (1968)

http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/bitch.htm

The passage from George Orwell's 1984 from Section A of the ELLA 3 January Exam

The passage from George Orwell's  1984. The B text from the ELLA3 Section A part of the exam for January 2012.

For added context I've added a little bit more at the end of the passage. Winston Smith is in Room 101 and being threatened with torture.

O'Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the nearer table. He set it down carefully on the baize cloth. Winston could hear the blood singing in his ears. He had the feeling of sitting in utter loneliness. He was in the middle of a great empty plain, a flat desert drenched with sunlight, across which all sounds came to him out of immense distances. Yet the cage with the rats was not two metres away from him. They were enormous rats. They were at the age when a rat's muzzle grows blunt and fierce and his fur brown instead of grey.

'The rat,' said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible audience, 'although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of that. You will have heard of the things that happen in the poor quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare not leave her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they will strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dying people. They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless.'

There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they were trying to get at each other through the partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come from outside himself.

O'Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed something in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made a frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair. It was hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held immovably. O'Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a metre from Winston's face.

'I have pressed the first lever,' said O'Brien. 'You understand the construction of this cage. The mask will fit over your head, leaving no exit. When I press this other lever, the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap through the air? They will leap on to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue.'

The cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston heard a succession of shrill cries which appeared to be occurring in the air above his head. But he fought furiously against his panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left -- to think was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of the brutes struck his nostrils. There was a violent convulsion of nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Everything had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a screaming animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutching an idea. There was one and only one way to save himself. He must interpose another human being, the body of another human being, between himself and the rats.

The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.

'It was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said O'Brien as didactically as ever.

The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then -- no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment -- one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.

'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!' 

http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/21.html

"The Great Debaters" - Key Debates from the film

Two speeches from The Great Debaters (2007)

Film extracts and transcripts of these scenes are included. Of course, the scenes would have been edited versions of real debates. The second scene is with Harvard, which was a piece of fiction as the real debate was with UCLA in 1935.

"Resolved" means the proposition for the debated. It is traditionally placed in the past tense by the speakers for the "affirmative" as if the debate has been won.

Resolved: Negroes Should be Admitted to State Universities

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechthegreatdebaterswileyvsoklahomacitycollege.html

Resolved: Civil Disobedience is a Moral Weapon in the Fight for Justice

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechthegreatdebaterswileycollegevsharvarduniversity.html

Wiley College did beat Harvard the 1930s . . . and also a touring debate team from Oxford University.

Why do some Americanisms irritate people?

This is a very interesting article on lexis, especially words we use today which once outraged people long ago!

Why do some Americanisms irritate people?

The Art of Persuasive Debate - Logos, Ethos and Pathos

Logos, Ethos and Pathos Whenever you read an argument you must ask yourself, "is this persuasive? And if so, to whom?"  There are seveal ways to appeal to an audience.  Among them are appealing to logos, ethos and pathos.  These appeals are prevalent in almost all arguments. To Appeal to Logic (logos) To Develop Ethos To Appeal to Emotion (pathos) Theoretical, abstract  language Literal and historical analogies Definitions Factual data and  statistics Quotations Citations from experts and authorities Informed opinions Language appropriate to audience and subject Restrained, sincere, fair minded presentation Appropriate level of vocabulary Correct grammar Vivid, concrete language Emotionally loaded language Connotative meanings Emotional examples Vivid descriptions Narratives of emotional events Emotional tone Figurative language Effect Evokes a cognitive, rationale response.   Demonstrates author's reliability, competence, and respect for the audience's ideas and values through reliable and appropriate use of support and general accuracy. Evokes an emotional response.     Definitions Logos: The Greek word logos is the basis for the English word logic.  Logos is a broader idea than formal logic--the highly sybolic and mathematical logic that you might study in a philosophy course.  Logos refers to any attempt to appeal to the intellect, the general meaning of "logical argument."  Everyday arguments rely heavily on ethos and pathos, but academic arguments rely more on logos.  Yes, these arguments will call upon the writers' credibility and try to touch the audience's emotions, but there will more often than not be logical chains of reasoning supporting all claims. Ethos:  Ethos is related to the English word ethics and refers to the trustworthiness of the speaker/writer.  Ethos is an effective persuasive strategy because when we believe that the speaker does not intend to do us harm, we are more willing to listen to what s/he has to say.  For example, when a trusted doctor gives you advice, you may not understand all of the medical reasoning behind the advice, but you nonetheless follow the directions because you believe that the doctor knows what s/he is talking about.  Likewise, when a judge comments on legal precedent audiences tend to listen because it is the job of a judge to know the nature of past legal cases. Pathos: Pathos is related to the words pathetic, sympathy and empathy.  Whenever you accept an claim based on how it makes you feel without fully analyzing the rationale behind the claim, you are acting on pathos.  They may be any emotions: love, fear, patriotism, guilt, hate or joy.  A majority of arguments in the popular press are heavily dependent on pathetic appeals.  The more people react without full consideration for the WHY, the more effective an argument can be.  Although the pathetic appeal can be manipulative, it is the cornerstone of moving people to action.  Many arguments are able to persuade people logically, but the apathetic audience may not follow through on the call to action.  Appeals to pathos touch a nerve and compel people to not only listen, but to also take the next step and act in the world. Examples of Logos, Ethos and PathosLogos Let us begin with a simple proposition:  What democracy requires is public debate, not information.  Of course it needs information too, but the kind of information it needs can be generated only by vigorous popular debate.  We do not know what we need to know until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our ideas about the world to the test of public controversy.  Information, usually seen as the precondition of debate, is beter understood as its by product.  When we get into arguments that focus and fully engage our attention, we become avid seekers of relevant information.  Otherwise, we take in information passively--if we take it in at all. Christopher Lasch, "The Lost Art of Political Argument" Ethos My Dear Fellow Clergymen: While confined here in Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely."...Since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable in terms.     I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in."...I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here.  I am here because I have organizational ties here.     But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.  Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.  Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" Pathos For me, commentary on war zones at home and abroad begins and ends with personal reflections.  A few years ago, while watching the news in Chicago, a local news story made a personal connection with me.  The report concerned a teenager who had been shot because he had angered a group of his male peers.  This act of violence caused me to recapture a memory from my own adolescence because of an instructive parallel in my own life with this boy who had been shot.  When I was a teenager some thirty-five years ago in the New York metropolitan area, I wrote a regular column for my high school newspaper.  One week, I wrote a colunm in which I made fun of the fraternities in my high school.  As a result, I elicited the anger of some of the most aggressive teenagers in my high school.  A couple of nights later, a car pulled up in front of my house, and the angry teenagers in the car dumped garbage on the lawn of my house as an act of revenge and intimidation. James Garbarino "Children in a Violent World: A Metaphysical Perspective"