Welcome to A Level English Language at Gower College Swansea! What does an A Level in English Language involve and what does it mean to be a great student of English Language?
To find out more about the study of English Language, click the link below and select the video clip of Graeme Trousdale (Professor of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh) discussing why he loves to study language. You might be in for a surprise or two along the way…
Here’s a quick summary of the points raised in the video:
Studying language is a very individual thing; every individual has a unique linguistic experience.
What are the relationships between language and community and why do groups of speakers sound and use language differently to other groups?
What is the difference between spoken and written language; why is there more flexibility in spoken language compared to written language?
How is language used to convey power, emotion and politeness and how are visual devices such as emoticons used to display what we mean?
You already know a huge amount about language; studying it allows you to talk about it in an ordered and rational way.
Video
Key Events in Language History
One of the most interesting parts of any A Level English Language course is exploring how the language we use today came to be. From its earliest origins in the 5th Century CE, English has gone through many changes. Even now, the language is changing
all the time and is used by people in the UK and around the globe in many varied ways.
Watch the following video clip to discover a little about the history and development of the English Language:
Summary
Here’s a quick summary of the things covered:
The Romans left Britain in 410 AD and left very little of their Latin language behind.
Anglo-Saxon vocabulary gave us words for everyday things such as ‘house’ and gave us the names of four of our days of the week.
Latin started to enter the English language in 597 AD with the rise of Christianity.
The Vikings added around 2000 words to the English language.
William the Conqueror and the Normans added 10,000 Norman French words to the English language, mostly related to business, law, architecture, and cooking.
William Shakespeare added around 2000 new words.
In 1611, the King James Bible contributed many famous phrases still used today.
Dr Johnson published his dictionary of the English Language in 1755. Science and the British Empire added more new words borrowed from other cultures.
The Oxford English Dictionary was finally published in 1928.
Americanisms and the internet have contributed even more new words to the language which continues to grow richer every day.
Thank you for completing this short course. We hope you enjoyed it! We look forward to seeing you when you join us for in A Level English Language at Gower College Swansea.
Quiz
Just for fun have a go at this quiz. It looks at the forensic investigation of language i.e. the analysis of language to solve crimes. Can you identify the language clues to work out who might have sent an abusive social media message to a local politician?
Thank you for completing this short course. We hope you enjoyed it! We look forward to seeing you when you join us at Gower College Swansea. If you would like to learn more about A Level English Language, have a look at some of these:
Deborah Cameron’s A feminist guide to language blog. Deborah Cameron is one of the country’s leading experts on language and gender and her blog is funny, thought-provoking and insightful: https://debuk.wordpress.com/