One to watch

AS English Literature students who studied Graham Greene's Brighton Rock may be interested to know that BBC2 are showing Rowan Joffe's film adaptation on 4th February at 9pm.

A review of the film can be read here:
http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/89165/brighton-rock.html

Youth sociolect...'nuff said, innit?

From The Guardian's Radio & TV blog comes an interesting article about 'teen speak' and youth sociolect - from the perspective of the scriptwriters of E20 and Skins. Read it here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2012/jan/24/teens-tv-language

'Politics and the English Language': some "rules" to improve the accuracy of your writing

The Spring term marks the start of Unit 2 for AS courses, and Unit 4 for A2 courses - in other words: coursework time. English Literature courses will require you to write analytical academic essays and this can sometimes be daunting for A level students (the word count alone is scary for some of you at least!). A failsafe way of impressing the examiner - and your teacher - is to use appropriate language, and to make your writing clear and accurate.

In 1946, George Orwell wrote an essay entitled 'Politics and the English Language' in which he rallies against poor, inaccurate writing. AS/A2 English Literature students may wish to read this at it contains some helpful 'rules' when writing essays. AS English Language students may want to read it purely from the stance of the prescriptive v. descriptive debate surrounding language use.

You can read George Orwell's essay here. It makes for very interesting reading...

The Bible...in Jamaican patois

Can you read this? It's the Bible translated into Jamaican patois (Luke 1 verses 26-28). Read about its development here (link to BBC News Magazine page).

New words, or 'buzzwords' of 2011?

Neologisms and collocations ahoy! Read Charlie Brooker's article in The Guardian where he writes about the 'buzzwords' of 2011. It makes a for nice little revision reading for AS English Language students (morphology, semantics, lexis...need I say more?)

A festive article about language change

Sandi Toksvig has written an interesting article in The Telegraph about linguistics and language change - and throws in a little festive cheer as well. Read it here.

How to...study a novel (prose fiction)

English Literature students may find the following resource helpful for exam revision when studying prose texts. The Open University has designed a very accessible online course (it's free!) called 'Approaching Prose Fiction' and is useful for understanding the demands of AO2 - structure, form and language. I would advise you to pay particular attention to the following topics:

2.3 Narrative perspective

2.4 Setting

2.5 Characterisation

2.6 Genre

2.7 Style and language