hey everybody and welcome to this the first video in the brand-new series on a level English language everything that I go through in this video series comes from mr. Bruce guide to a level English language written by Lindsay dire and available at mr. Bluff common amazon code at UK for just four pounds ninety-nine and absolutely amazing guide the things I go through in this video will be almost a sort of introduction to the subject but the e-book contains everything you need to know and what I love about this ebook is that it contains examples of exam answers and coursework answers which i think is so important for students who sometimes understand the theory but then think okay what do I do with that theory so what I want to do in these early videos is look at the assessment objectives I think a lot of students misunderstands the importance of assessment objectives they think that they're just for teachers for marking the work but actually if you know the assessment objectives and when they're assessed and what they mean and how to do well in demonstrating your expertise in those objectives it really will make all the difference so in today's video I just want to start looking at assessment objective one to apply appropriate methods of language analysis using associated terminology and coherent written expression now what does this mean well the first thing we can look at is this word methods the way in which you analyze and understand the text will determine which terminology you believe is most relevant to the text the question and the response now you're not expected to use all the terminology you'd learn in your answer but you are expected to understand it all in order to make informed linguistic choices there's basically a lot of terminology to learn and that takes us onto this next bit terminology now the exam boards provide guidance on the terminology they expect you to learn and we're going to look at that in more detail in future videos but the guidance is only scratching the surface of what the examiners and your teachers will want to use or want you to use in your analysis so the guidance includes the following this is just an out we're going to go through these in a lot more detail but we have Lexus the vocabulary of English including the changes over time both socially and historically semantics the analysis of word meanings the relationship between words grammar when you probably recognize from GCSE that's the set of rules that govern the structure and creation of language and you probably if your first language is English you probably apply these rules without even thinking about it you know a Apple or an Apple you don't have to think oh should I use a or an you just know pragmatics the way in which language is used socially informed by the context and it's the meaning that cannot be found at surface level phonetics and phonology which is the study of the sounds of speech prosodic features the features that appear when we put speech together a pitch tone intonation volume pace graphology the visual aspect of a text the design and choices of style and we've got discourse whether a text is written or spoken communication register the way you speak depending on your audience purpose or social situation idiolect which is an individual's way of speaking that is unique to them so their vocabulary their grammar their pronunciation dialect a form of language that people speak depending on social or geographical influence and social act slightly cut off on the screen there but the way in which a particular social group speaks so ethnic groups or teenagers that kind of thing we're going to go through these in a lot more detail so don't panic but you can see this is a subject where there's a lot to learn in terms of terminology and if you did a spoken language study at GCSE that will help prepare you towards this but it really is one of those subjects where you're learning so much new information I think the difference between English language and English literature at a level is that English literature naturally leads on from the GCSE of English literature but English language for the most part is very much a different subject what about coherent written expression then well accurate written communication and expression of course is really important there's an expectation that you spell words accurately and they particularly know how to spell the key terminology that you punctuate appropriately that you can understand the rules of language in order to write clearly and you might have thought of that at GCSE is spag spelling punctuation and grammar now something that's interesting here though is how do I know that I'm using the correct method and this is something that I think a lot of students will struggle with early in the course so you've got to pay close attention to the context of the text and ensure that you fully analyze the genre the audience and the purpose a good starting point for any linguist is to have a basic generic list of ingredients for the most commonly appearing gaps genre audience purposes and contexts so an easy example for you to remember is that you would not usually expect to explore and analyze the graph illogical features of a chapter of a novel because there's not likely to be anything interesting or relevant to comment on now how do I use this terminology in a sentence well do you remember P paragraphs from GCSE the idea of point evidence explained well this method is still very useful as you'll need to structure your answer in a clear and logical way the examiner is like you to signpost which would be the P in the P paragraph the point there are two recommended ways of signposting and if we look at the term Alexis as an example one way to you know structure your paragraph is to say lexically the writer has chosen to use and then the quote too and then explain or you could say in terms of lexis quote is used to explain you know that sort of thing doesn't really matter but you're using a very sort of simple P power graph structure all the way through the e book this idea of how do I get the grade is focused on because it's not enough to just learn the main terminology in the guidance grid that we've just looked at you've got to demonstrate an accurate a perceptive knowledge of the key terms within the main terminology and this will take your answer from the Lord to the specific the expected to the impressive the plain of boring to the wow factor so we're going to have a little look at each term again more detail in the e-book lexis and semantics no Lexus is not the luxury car there's always somebody makes that joke it's actually translated from the ancient Greek origin of the word which means the vocabulary of a language in other words Lexus is a posh word for word now lexicon is the collection of lexemes several words that forms a person's vocabulary semantics is the study of meaning the best students will analyze the subtlety of meaning in words phrases sentences and whole texts and how writers influence a manipulator reader and their thoughts and actions now writers will carefully consider semantics in order to suit a specific audience purpose genre or context for maximum effect so let's give you an example of what you might write in the exam might be something like this elevated Lexus such as irrevocably and endeavours connote sophistication and elegance which gratifies the reader furthermore colloquialisms of taboo language scumbags create a sarcastic tone linking to the primary purpose to entertain and humor that's the kind of way that you're going to you know put your ideas for Lexus and semantics into an answer the next one I want to have a look at is semantic field now do you ever read a text and the words seem to have been borrowed from somewhere else or the words hint at another meaning now this is because the text will have a semantic field which is the relationship that exists between some of the words or phrases used in a text let's use colors as an example red blue yellow black or all colors but can also be a semantic field of emotions angry upset happy depressed and a writer will deliberately use words to create a semantic field often to subtly hint at something lots of key terms I'm not going to talk through all of them some of them you'll recognize from GCSE many of them you'll have to and you can pause the video if you want to have a detailed look at these what would you write in the exam where you would write something like this the text contains a semantic field of love with lexical choices such as flowers heart and passion used throughout but there is also a semantic field of war and conflict running through the piece with choices such as fight hate and conquer to reflect the instability of the relationship between the two characters so one more for this video and then I'll continue the rest in the next video so do make sure that you subscribe to the channel if you haven't already done so and also give the video a thumbs up to show me how many of you want these language videos so the next one is grammar now I'm not going to go through this in a lot of detail here because I've got a playlist on grammar and of course there is mr. brush guy to grammar also available at mr. Brooke Carmen on Amazon but you need to know about word classes syntax morphology the grammar of speech and writing sentence form sentence functions this kind of thing and this is really you know if you ever cringed in a misplaced apostrophe have you ever written to a supermarket to question the accuracy of its advertisements or got excited when you find a typo no me neither but the rules of grammar tend to be internalized from a very young age and it's likely that most of us when questioned would struggle to recall how that we acquired the rules of grammar many linguists believe we learn the information implicitly rather than through any formal teaching and this may justify its lack of popularity after all how often do we stop to analyze how we say what we say and the order that we say it in but you do need to know about grammar you need to know about clauses sentence structures and phrases word classes all of this kind of thing there are and as well as the grammar guide also in the a-level English language guide there's detail on that with examples again of what you might write in the exam okay one more why not we're on a roll pragmatics now have you ever considered why it's acceptable to directly tell somebody you know well to shut the door yet you would feel the need to say it's cold in here to somebody you might not know as well well that's pragmatics the meaning of an utterance is often influenced by social and sometimes historical context you can ask yourself the following question how has the context here had an impact on or influenced the creation and/or reception of the utterance or text it's also important to consider the impact of power gender occupation attitudes values ideologies culture and relationships etc on a text and a reader key terms here well we can look at politeness implicature Dex's inference irony positive and negative face cooperative principles all of these things if you're starting the course you might look at them and think what are these but that's the beauty of English language I personally did English language and English literature for my degree and the English literature was very much the same as what I'd done at a level but English language which I didn't do at a level was amazing it was like a whole new world opening up before me and don't be put off by all of these terms by the e-book work through the chapters you'll find that you learn something really important what would you write in the exam something like this pragmatically stereotypical ideas about gender appear to have influenced the speaker's decision to overuse politeness strategies when conversing with the opposite sex hope you found it useful guys more videos soon do subscribe