Wednesday 25 September 2013

2 transcripts for cla

Kids unhappy to find out Mums pregnant. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVBgmu2h_HY Mum: we have a surprise for you (.) mummy and daddy have a surprise to tell you Boy: what Mum: well (1) you know how you were talking about your baby sister (1) Boy: what baby sister Mum: well what would you think if we had another baby in our house Boy: no your not having one (.) no your not pregnant uh uh uh no your not no your not Girl: yes have one have one I wanna have one Mum: yes we are gunna have another baby Boy: no your not (.) you don’t look like it (1) no your not youre joking Mum: I am not joking Boy: you’re kidding Mum: next august were gunna have a baby Boy: na uh uh uh uh uh uh uh Girl: mum can I (inaudible) Mum: I have no fingers crossed no toes crossed im telling you the truth this is not a joke (.) mummy and daddy are gunna have another baby Boy: tell me youre not Girl: I don’t want another baby Mum: well you did want one til he started crying Girl: (inaudiable) Mum: why are you so upset Boy: please just tell me youre not (inaudiable) (1) daddy tell me youre joking Dad: its for real Girl: I don’t wanna have another baby Mum: why are you Boy: am I supposed to believe this Dad: congratulations mummy I love you Boy: youre pregnant Mum: im not joking I really am Mum: youre supposed to be happy Im gunna kick his ass - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFN1-uqt2WA Mum: and tell mummy again what you said you were gunna do to him if he came here Girl: I said im gunna kick his ass Mum: oh (.) that’s not nice Girl: if he gunna come in here he gunna kick my ass Mum: he will Girl: yeah (2) hell come out like in a movie hell come out he would come out and kick my ass Mum: oh ok Girl: and I can kick his ass Mum: ok (.) but that’s not a nice word (.) you should say kick his butt Girl: oh

Thursday 19 September 2013

Khadem, Kirby, Cla theories, Skinner, Vygotsky, Paiget, Virtuous error, Zone of proximal development

Vargha Khadem: -30 family members, 15 affected -Speech is not clear -give impression that they are deaf -'speech 1' -chromosone 7 -unconnected child(chromosone 7 broken off) -Fox p2 -Nature Pagel: -Having the right genetics in place -divide up tasks -need language to regulate that Kirby: - Blind, unconscious process -words that describe made up fruit -we structure the language The cla debate moved beyone nature v's nurture to nature and nurture. CLA THEORIES Behaviourists - imitating others language Social interactionsists - influenced and improved by adults Strongest nativists - language is innate Cognitiv theorists - language grows when ideas develop Nativism - Chomsky: All children have an built LAD - extract the rules of language from words ans structures they hear. Universal grammar: All languages share similar grammatical structure under the surface. Critical period: Childrens LAD must be activated before they age of 12 or the acquistion will be impaired. B.F. Skinner: 'Skinner box' - tested positive and negative reinforcements with rats and pigeons, however did not focus on humans. Social interaction theory (A system that states that the interaction helps supporta childs language acquistition (scaffolding)). Vygotsky: The difference between what a child can do without guidance and what a child can do with help. Piaget: Egocentric view of the child before they can empathise, the world revolves around them. The zone of proximal development: Object permanence.. Vygotsky believed collaborative play is essential to childrens learning. He believed that "what a child can do in co - operation today, he can do alone tomorrow". Virtuous error: A logical mistake made by children based on the rules they already know. (mouses or forgeted).

Thursday 12 September 2013

Deb roy - experiment cla. on average.

DEB ROY (Most modern child language acquisition reseach) Horizon - why do we talk? Language - defines us, distinquishes us, how we learn to talk remains a mystery. Experiment - filmed his first child 24/7 learning to speak from moment born until 3 years old. 'speech home project' Babbling...single words... two word stage... complex. Trait of parent = unconsciously simplified speech Parent mirrors childs development cooing and babbling is essential to language development children understand more than they can say On average; children know 5000 words by the age of 5. They learn 3000 new words a year from there. Adults speak roughly 5000 words per day.

Definitions/terminology of cla

Phoneme = The smallest contrastice unit in the sound system of a language. Semantics = The study of meaning. (sometimes the meaning is known, but how to pronounce is unknown) Lexis - The vocabuarly of a language. Childrens semantic awareness outwighes its phonological ability. Morphology = Area of language study that deals with the formation of words from smaller units called morphemes. Syntax = The way words are arranged in sentences. Phonology = How things sound (children understand internation before the word. Discourse = A stretch of communication. Pragmatics = The factors that influence the choices that speakers make in their use of language. Children; learn vowel sounds first, learn high frequency lexis, childrens first few words are monosalabic, children take things literally.

Wednesday 11 September 2013

AS style models coursework reviews

Metro Homeland was a masterclass in mixed emotions as Carrie confronted Brody TV review: Homeland's recent change of course has worked a treat, given that the show is strongest when Carrie and Brody circle each other like wounded animals. Homeland season 2 There was a worry when the credits rolled on last week’s Homeland (C4). After Carrie’s explosion at Brody – ‘you’re a traitor and a terrorist and now it’s time you paid for that’ – where did we have left to go? Surely a show that had been fuelled by knife-edge tension had fatally blown its cover. It felt like a finale though we were only four episodes in. Unmasking Brody and watching him squirm might have appeased America’s patriot lobby but there was a danger it would take the wind out of Homeland’s dramatic sails. Amazingly, though I’d have happily tagged along with Brody’s rise through the political ranks for several more episodes, the change of course worked a treat. Homeland is strongest when Carrie and Brody (Claire Danes and Damian Lewis) are circling each other like wounded animals and to have them squaring off in an interrogation room, a confrontation that took the lion’s share of the action, was a masterclass in mixed emotions. ‘You broke my heart you know,’ she told him. ‘Was that easy for you, was that fun?’ If we weren’t sure whether to believe her or not, what hope did Brody have? Yet even though he’s in the tightest spot he’s ever wriggled into – including the hell-hole cave where it all started – it’s impossible to shake the feeling that Brody still has more skins to shed before we get to the sinew and bone of where he’s really at. That’s the hope and the hook of Homeland. What did Downton Abbey have? A cricket match. By Keith Watson - 5th November. 2012 The Gurardian Rewind TV: Brazil with Michael Palin; Rich Hall's Inventing the Indian; Top Gear: 50 Years of Bond Cars; Exposure: Banaz – An Honour Killing – review They've got an awful lot of cliches in Michael Palin's Brazil, but there's nothing cosy about Rich Hall's Native American tale Brazil with Michael Palin (BBC1) | iPlayer Rich Hall's Inventing the Indian (BBC4) | iPlayer Top Gear: 50 Years of Bond Cars (BBC2) | iPlayer Exposure: Banaz – An Honour Killing (ITV1) | ITV Player Were a contest held for the most genial man on television, only the most vain and foolhardy would dare to go up against Michael Palin. The former Python is so nice that he can make even that saintly knight David Attenborough look like a professional grouch. No matter where he goes in the world, he unfailingly packs his diffident smile and self-effacing banter. You can understand why members of remote mountain tribes who have never seen the cheese shop sketch still feel an instinctive warmth toward this engaging Englishman with his awkward decency and gentle quips. He appears utterly accepting of everyone he encounters. This is his strength as a traveller, but also the weakness of his popular travelogues, and never more glaringly than in his latest series, Brazil With Michael Palin. As he states in the credit sequence, although he's roamed the globe for 25 years, he had never previously been to the world's fifth largest country. Yet now he's made the effort, you wonder why he bothered. The first two shows have been a whistlestop tour of cultural cliches whose rehashing in no way required his presence. In the first episode, he visited north-east Brazil, where he discovered that Brazilians are obsessed with festivals and dancing. Not even the most unpromising neighbourhood shindig was safe from his jolly attendance as he crisscrossed the region's vast terrain in search of anywhere with colourful costumes and a rhythmic beat. Like the affable bobby at the Notting Hill carnival, he was only too happy to perform the role of clumsy white foil to uninhibited dark sensuousness. But in best travel guide tradition, Brazil is a nation of contrasts, so last week Palin took off into the Amazon rainforest to visit indigenous tribespeople, whose way of life, he told us, is very different from that of their countrymen in the big cities. For, deep in the jungle, they are obsessed with... festivals and dancing. Like some middle-class Prince Philip in chinos, Palin watched one ceremony after another, heroically maintaining a face of good-humoured interest. Who knows what he really thought, but any curiosity this viewer may previously have harboured about Amazonian tribal rituals in honour of the spirits of river fish is now comprehensively satisfied. The truth is that, whether prancing around in warpaint or waiting for modernity to swallow them up, the tribespeople were just walk-on exotics – literally in the case of one old naked man who wandered into shot wearing what looked like either a codpiece in the shape of an erection or simply an erection with no codpiece. As though in surreal homage to Monty Python, Palin continued talking about suspended hammocks. Palin noted that there are now only a fraction of the 5 million indigenous people in Brazil that were there when Europeans first arrived. By some accounts, the death count in North America was even worse. In Rich Hall's Inventing the Indian, the word "genocide" was used by at least one contributor. While that may not have been the explicit aim of American expansion, it was too often the result, if only as a consequence of the spread of European infectious diseases. As an exercise in sociopolitical anthropology, Inventing the Indian was the kind of sharply droll essay we have come to expect from Hall, following the irregular QI guest's equally rousing forays into American history, How the West Was Lost and The Dirty South. But as an appreciation of cinema, it lacked the depth and richness of the former, for the very good reason that the cinematic depiction of Native Americans has, with few exceptions, been a travesty of concocted stereotypes. As sometime-comedian presenters go, Hall is the anti-Palin: opinionated, provocative and about as cosy as a wire-wool jockstrap. Although his set expression – a sort of stoic alarm – puts me in mind of Steve McQueen, he doesn't subscribe to his fellow American's taciturnity. Throughout some of his lengthier and more splenetic diatribes, Hall demonstrated no discernible desire or need to breathe. And when (accurately) describing James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans as a "bloated, turgid orotund work of spectacular historical misrepresentation", he sounded in danger of his own bloated orotundity. But then self-critical parody was a playful theme in a serious film. Hall tore into the way that white people, such as Kevin Costner, insisted on becoming spokespeople for the pain of Native Americans. As the impassioned and conspicuously white Hall repeated the same sin, Dallas Goldtooth, an activist-comedian from the Dakota tribe, shook his head with mock disapproval. The unstated part of the joke was that Hall is said to be part Cherokee. During an appearance on Top Gear, Hall once made up a song about the mundane Rover 25. Top Gear: 50 Years of Bond Cars could have done with that brand of inventiveness. Instead, there was Richard Hammond working himself into paroxysms of pleasure over the many cars 007 has driven across 50 years of the film franchise. As Hammond is permanently situated on or around the trigger point of auto-climax, there was nothing particularly novel about that. There were a couple of good anecdotes about the impecunious early days of the film series, when the budget was pushed to the limit to hire a Sunbeam Alpine for 12 shillings a day and Aston Martin repeatedly refused to loan the film-makers one of its cars. But the effect of multiple spectacular stunts and crashes all slammed together threatened to do the impossible and dampen my appetite for the new Bond film. Nor was Hammond helped by his interviews with Roger Moore, who was always too camp to appreciate the Bond iconography (he claimed his favourite Bond car was a 2CV), and the director Guy Hamilton, who was responsible for guiding the series into its 1970s slump. Filmed against sunny backdrops of yacht-filled marinas, the octogenarian Moore and nonagenarian Hamilton might be said to be living the Bond dream. Except dreams, like Bond himself, are never meant to age. It's the privilege of each generation to look back at its predecessor and pronounce with bewildered relief that it was a different time back then. We've heard that conclusion a lot in relation to Jimmy Savile's recently revealed activities. Let's hope the next generation will say the same thing about the forced marriages and so-called honour killings of which countless young women continue to be silent victims. Exposure: Banaz – An Honour Killing was a powerful indictment of the misogynistic control that menaces some communities, and the misplaced cultural sensitivity that allows it to go unchallenged. This told the story of Banaz Mahmod, a Londoner who fled an arranged marriage to a violent rapist and brought a death sentence upon herself by falling in love with a man from a different Kurdish clan. Her family arranged her garroting, then many in the Kurdish community tried to subvert the police inquiry. The police estimate that more than 50 people were involved. What made it all the more shocking was that Mahmod had been to the police several times to warn them that she was about to be murdered. Nothing was done. This excellent film reminded us that "honour killings" are often collective crimes committed by individuals who are supported by extended networks. When the day arrives that such murders bring not honour but only shame, the killers will face the communal rejection they most fear. Unfortunately, as things stand, the people in hiding are those who stood by Mahmod. By Andrew Anthony

AS coursework review

Come Dine With Me, Gavin and Stacey, Eastenders and Doctor Who. Come Dine With Me (Channel 4, Documentary) Gavin and Stacey (BBC ONE, Comedy) Eastenders( BBC ONE, Drama) Doctor Who(BBC ONE, Sci – Fi) There won’t be a bat of an eyelid when Come Dine with Me producers finally decide enough is enough. The final straw for me was 2 weeks ago when the show produced a ‘Halloween special’ of the outdated, uninteresting and simply dreary TV series where the public all over the country sat anxiously waiting for something relatively entertaining to creep in. The show is normally made up of 4 or 5 ‘celebrities ’whom the public may or may not know one or two of. The episodes without celebrities are a lot more amusing! They all host dinner parties and rate each other’s. At the end the winner receives £1,000 cash. This particular night, the show involved the Nightmare on Elm Street horror films actor Robert Englund, psychic medium Sally Morgan, cross – dressing cage fighter Alex Reid and English glamour model, Nicola Mclean. So at least the show managed to live up to its theme of ‘Halloween’. The atmosphere could have been cut with Freddie Kruegers (Robert Englund’s) razors. Especially when Nicola told Robert ‘You’re literally my worst nightmare.’ She also accused Alex of being ‘self-indulgent’. To which he then just shrugged his shoulders. Yes, the costumes, cutlery and company looked relatively frightening like intended… But the food did too. It seems to be as more and more episodes are created, more and more questions are being asked as to what is the point? What does the show even aim to do? It’s the biggest waste of TV time and also about as hopeless as a plant without water. Come dine with me is a pathetic excuse to dress up stupidly and tear pieces out of each other. However BBC ONE’s comedy, Gavin and Stacey has the reverse effect. It just keeps on getting better and stronger. So, Gavin and Stacey relates to a wide audience with characters of all ages. The program revolves around Gavin and Stacey’s families getting together for different events such as birthdays, Christmas’ and weddings. However, the show’s creators James Cordon and Ruth Jones, who play Smithy and Nessa, Gavin and Stacey’s best friends, steal the show every time. The series is fun, family - friendly and simply hysterical. The characters play off each other and are likeable whilst using each other’s flaw to create complete comedy. Time after time I’m drawn in. In series 3, episode 1, Gavin from Essex, played by Matthew Horne and Stacey from Wales, played by Joanna Page move to Barry Island after their wedding and by now Nessa and Smithy have had a drunken night and created baby Neil whose christening is in this episode. Of course this is another opportunity for the families to reunite and celebrate. In the christening scene, there are lots of laugh out loud moments and even a chance to sing along to ‘Strong’ by Labi Siffre as this is what Uncle Bryn, (Rob Brydon) as the godfather chooses to sing at baby Neil’s christening as if this is the most suitable song. Like in this scene, Uncle Bryn constantly creeps in and hits the viewers with the best bits along with Smithy and Nessa. The parents of Gavin are Pam and Mick Shipman (Alison Steadman and Larry Lamb). Pam adores her only son and is continuously calling him her ‘little prince’ so it’s extremely entertaining when Gavin first tells her he will be moving to Barry with Stacey. Whereas Mick is a fairly laid back and calm character who is happy for Pam to wear the trousers, unlike his controlling role in Eastenders back in 2010 as Archie Mitchell. In the episode on the 9th of November 2012, Award winning Shane Ritchie who plays a Alfie Moon, forgets he has arranged a poker night at his place, above the pub and through guilt lets the brothers Max, Jack and Derek, (Jamie Foreman, Scott Maslen and Jake Wood) who are all known for various crimes stay at his to play whilst he’s goes out on a surprise date with his wife Kat moon. It has been hinted to the audience that Kat is having an affair with one of the brothers but we are still clueless to which one. This creates great tension. Whilst on their date at the local b and b Alfie finds a mouse, but this surprisingly doesn’t put him off. Instead he chases Kat with it saying he’s playing ‘cat and mouse’. However much that makes us cringe, it does bring a few cackles into the living room. When being asked by Kat if she made him happy, Alfie just replied with hmm’s, if’s and ah’s but quickly recovered from this by saying she was ‘different, interesting and fun’. Maybe a little bit like ‘Dimensions in Time’. ‘Dimension’s in Time’ was created back in the early nineties when Eastenders joined forces with Doctor Who. This was for Children in need and involved elements of both programmes. ‘Dimensions in time’ did its job and provided great entertainment because it was very ‘different, interesting and fun’. However, Doctor Who doesn’t manage to provide that. In fact, one thing that it does provide is the complete opposite. Tediousness. One the 5th October, 2012, episode 5, series 7 showed on BBC ONE. The episode was called ‘The Angels Take Manhattan.’ The storyline was so basic; it insulted the average adult’s intelligence and simply consisted of a 1930’s New York setting with lots of random monsters running about needlessly. Rory Williams (Arthur) is a companion of the doctor and dating Amelia Pond (Karen Gillian) who is an even closer companion of the Doctors. Rory is sent back to the 30’s by the ‘weeping angels’. There, he finds Manhattan has become their hunting grounds and the Doctor (Matt Smith) and Amelia must find Rory before time runs out. However, they realise that it is not always possible to change time which results in the Doctor having to say goodbye to Amelia, the thing he had been dreading the most. The episode was simply the most mind numbing yet and is battling for successful rivalry against Come Dine with me for most Monotonous programme on TV to this day.

Thursday 5 September 2013

English Language AS theorists

Geoffrey Beattie. Geoffrey Beattie found that men and women interrupted with more or less equal frequency. Men 34.1 and women 33.8. Therefore men interrupted more although there’s not really a significant difference. When it comes to Zimmerman and Wests findings Beattie points out that “The problem with this is that you might simply have one very chatty man in the study which has a disproportionate effect on the total.” Beattie then goes on to say that “Interruptions don’t necessarily reflect dominance. Some interruptions reflect interest and involvement.” Deborah Tannen and difference. Tannen has summarised her you ‘you just don’t understand’ in an article in which she represents male and female language use in six contrasts; • Status vs support • Independence vs intimacy • Advice vs understanding • Information vs feelings • Orders vs proposals • Conflict vs compromise Status vs support. In a man’s world, conversation is competitive, they want to achieve the upper hand and prevent others from dominating them. Although, for women it’s a way to gain confirmation and support for their ideas. Men see the whole world as a place to gain status and try to keep it where as women see it as “a network of connections seeking support and consensus.” Independence vs intimacy. Women often think in terms of closeness and support and struggle to preserve intimacy whereas men tend to focus more on independence. This leads men and women to completely different views on the same situation. Advice vs understanding. Tannen claims that to many men, a complaint is a challenge to find a solution; “When my mother tells my father she doesn’t feel well, he invariably offers to take her to the doctor. Invariably, she is disappointed with this reaction. Like many men, he is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.” Information vs feelings. A young man makes a quick phone call. His mum overhears it as a series of grunts. She then asks him about it. He has arranged to go to a specific place, where he will play football with various people and has to take the ball. A young woman makes a phone call, for about half an hour or more. The mum then asks about it, it emerges that she has been talking “you know” “about stuff”. Most of the talk has been on feelings. Historically, men’s concerns were seen as more important than women’s, but this has reversed today. The giving of information is considered less value than sharing of emotions and elaboration. Orders vs proposals. Women’s often suggest that people do things like... “Why don’t we?” men tend to use and prefer to hear a direct imperative. Conflict vs compromise. “In trying to prevent fights” writes Tannen, “some women refuse to oppose the will of others openly. But sometimes it’s far more effective for a woman to assert herself, even at the risk of conflict.” Tannen concludes, rather bathetically with a hint of an allusion to Neal Armstrong that, “Learning the others ways of talking is a leap across the communication gap between man and woman, and a giant step towards genuine understanding.”

Tuesday 3 September 2013


Summer Language Project Proposal

Proposed Title of Investigation

Is there a significant difference between the complexity of vocabulary and accurateness of grammar between a year 6 child with a minor learning difficulty and a typically developing year 6 child?’

A Description of the Data I Intend to Collect

I intend to collect 3 recordings and turn them into transcripts from both of the children and 2 written pieces of work from both of the children. 1 recording from each child will be of them talking to their teacher (same teacher), 1 will be of them talking to me and the final 1 will be of them talking to each other, so will share 1 transcript. The 2 each written pieces of work will be of similar subject and purpose – quite important to make sure that the teacher and the children and I make the two conversations with the two different children as similar as possible.

How I will collect the Data

I will collect the data by going into the school and asking permission from both children, both sets of parents, their school and any teacher that I record talking to the children. I will also ask not only is it okay for me to record the children and make transcripts from their conversation, but also to photocopy some of their work.

My Linguistic Interests in this Data

I am interested in this data linguistically as I am really interested in finding out the differences in vocabulary and grammar between different types of children.

My Hypothesis / What I Expect to Find

I’m expecting to find that the child with a minor learning difficulty will have significantly less complex vocabulary and difference in length of turns and (discourse)

 

Language- Focused Issues –

This is one of the most important sections of this sheet.  You need to identify specific areas of the language that you will look closely at.  It might help to select a relevant framework and then identify aspects that would be interesting (e.g. Pragmatics – Politeness – To what extent do males and females differ in their levels of directness & politeness/ indirectness?)

I want to look at the complexity of the children’s vocabulary, length of turns ( and discourse).

Predictions

1)    Discourse and fluency – What differences will there be? False starts…Fillers…Pauses and Repairs…

Making an assumption that these are signs of intelligence. When maybe, they aren’t?

2)    Typically developing child will have a more complex vocabulary than other child.

3)    Child who’s typically developing will use much more indirect politeness strategies.