1. How to Write About Language
Gaining marks for AO1

2. Learning Objectives
Write about language to gain AO1 marks in the AS and A Level exams.
Explore: register, narrative voice, structure, lexis choice, literariness/poetic language and the phonetic impact of language.

3. Task: match the formal and informal equivalents.
To assist
To receive
To regret
To check
Needs
To help
To be sorry
Requirements
To be put off
More
Further
To request
To get
To get in touch with
To ask for
To contact
To verify
To postpone

4. Register Formal Informal
Business/ official language
Often Latin root words
Full sentences
Colloquial language
Slang
Abbreviations
Note forms
Phrasal verbs
With a partner, find examples of formal and informal language in texts from
AQA Anthology Paris. Which words showed the register? Why was this register used?

5. Narrative Voice
First person narrative: storytelling from a character’s perspective, convention of memoir/autobiography
Second person narrative: direct address
Third person narrative: omniscient narrator: more formal or literary language
Consider alternating narrative voice

6. Which narrative voice is used in the following texts and why?
French Milk by Lucy Knisley
Paris for Children, “The Rough Guide to Paris”, Rough Guides
“Cruise the Carousels”, NOT-FOR-PARENTS-PARIS – Everything you ever wanted to know, by Klay Campbell

7. Structure Simple or complex sentence structure
Short or long paragraph structure
Other aspects of modality
What can you say about the structure of the texts we just looked at? What is the effect?
French Milk by Lucy Knisley
Paris for Children, “The Rough Guide to Paris”, Rough Guides
“Cruise the Carousels”, NOT-FOR- PARENTS-PARIS – Everything you ever wanted to know, by Klay Campbell

8. Lexis choice
Positive and Negative connotations in word choice to create a particular tone or style of writing
Selectivity of content
Know your grammar to describe the words. Revise Unit 6 of the course book.
What does Nancy Miller select to focus on in “Breathless: An American Girl in Paris”, Waiting for Goddard? What adjectives, adverbs and other lexical choices enable her to present the information to create a particular effect?

9. Temporal language
Verb tenses
Time phrases
Analepsis or prolepsis to interrupt/change chronological order
Find examples in Understanding Chic by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni and explain why they have been used in this text.

10. Literariness (poetic language)
Personification/ anthropomorphism
Simile
Metaphor
hyperbole

11. Task:
Find examples of literary language in Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor there: Travels in Europe, from line 199 to the end.

12. Phonetics
Phonetics: the actual sounds produced and how they are produced.
The IPA (International phonetic Alphabet)

13. The music of speech
Consider the sound of languages. What mood or emotion might a foreigner hear in German, French or Italian? Why?
Does the sound of a language match the stereotype of the country it comes from?

14. Homophones and Heterophones

15. Prosodics
It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it! Pay attention to sound in spoken texts.
Consider how meaning is affected by changes in volume, speed, pitch and intonation
Puns

16. Task: Listen to “Stories Are Waiting in Paris”, Eurostar.
Make note of the following and discuss the effect of it:
The narrator’s accent
The narrator’s voice quality and tone
Repetition of words and sounds
Rhythm

17. Literary sound patterns: Match the words to the definition
Onomatopoeia
Alliteration
Consonance
Assonance
Sibilance
A repeated first letter in words
Vowel sounds in succession
Frictive sounds (like s, f, z) in succession
Words that sound like the sound they describe
Consonant sounds in succession

18. Task:
Look at “Encore Une Fois” Just Another American In Paris. Find examples of sound patterns and explain what effect they have.