King Edward VI School English Department: Year 9 Scheme of Work
KS3: Year 9
10.1 Exploring language variation and development according to time, place, culture, society and technology
KS4: Year 10 Preparation
 consider how and why spoken English varies in a range of regions and cultural contexts analyse how and why spoken English varies locally and
globally
ASSESSED OUTCOMES (please use the new specification GCSE criteria to assess):
GROUP DISCUSSION AND GROUP PRESENTATION (INFORMAL CONTEXT)
CONTROLLED ASSESSMENT WRITING TASK: Reflect on some of your own personal talk (idiolect) including perhaps some criticisms made of it by adults.
Session
1
Learning Objective
To recap and
consolidate group work
and speaking and
listening skills
To explore how you use
your own language.
To understand your
own language identity
and the term ‘idiolect’.
Suggested Activities
Starter: Group Work Game Tick Tock – from Teacher’s Toolkit. This is one of the games we used with year 9 at the
start of the year. The rationale is to see how much the group has remembered about successful group work and
discussion skills. See Teacher’s Toolkit for the rules for the game.





Debrief the game by asking the following questions:
What have you learned from the game?
What does this game teach us about team-work?
Which behaviours helped this game to be successful?
Which behaviours prevented this game from being successful?
How can we ensure successful team-work?
Everyday Talk. Ask students to think about their day so far then complete the following task. Write down as many
examples as you can of the spoken language that you have experienced. Be prepared to share these with the whole
class. Use the following questions to help you:
 Did you speak to anyone at home?
 Did you listen to the radio before school?
 Did you talk to a bus or taxi driver on your way here?
 Did you chat to a friend?
 Have you spoken to any teachers today?
 Did you overhear anyone else’s conversation?
(session 1 continued overleaf)
Resources
Teacher’s
Toolkit
King Edward VI School English Department: Year 9 Scheme of Work
Group Discussion-Everyday Talk. Put students into 3s for the following activity. The way you communicate will vary
from situation to situation. Why do you think you might speak differently in different situations? Work is groups of
3 to come up with a few examples of times when you use different language.
Eg
chatting with your friends
talking to the headteacher
Which of these are more formal / informal? When are you more likely to use slang? When are you more likely to
use full sentences?
Get students to present their ideas to the rest of the class. Remind students of the characteristics of good speaking
presentation skills and listening skills.
My Language Identity Map
Explain the term idiolect (our own individual language variety unique to each person). Ask students to create their
own language identity maps to help answer the following question – what has influenced the way you use
language? You may want to preface this activity with a short class discussion about what some of the main
influences are on our own language varieties or even outline your own influences on your language!
How to create the map. Get students to draw themselves in the centre of their exercise books. Around this selfportrait ask students to note down all of the different influences on the way they use language – friends, family
members, tv shows, films, texting, where they have lived, languages they have learned in school, books etc. Ask
students to include as much detail as possible by including specific examples of words / phrases they have gained.
Plenary
Ask students to share their Language Identity Maps with 3 other people and compare similarities and differences.
Ask students to consider why the influences are similar – age group, location, interests etc.
Homework – collect examples of teenspeak – facebook, text messages, words and phrases used by friendship
groups. Make sure you ask permission from individuals.
King Edward VI School English Department: Year 9 Scheme of Work
2
To consolidate group
work skills.
To understand the
terms ‘accent’, ‘dialect’
and ‘sociolect’
To explore attitudes to
accents in the media.
Starter: Group Work Game Giants, Dwarfs and Wizards – from Teacher’s Toolkit. This is one of the games we used
with year 9 at the start of the year. The rationale is to see how much the group has remembered about
successful group work and discussion skills. See Teacher’s Toolkit for the rules of the game.
Teacher’s
Toolkit
News Articles






Debrief the game by asking the following questions:
What have you learned from the game?
What does this game teach us about team-work?
Which behaviours helped this game to be successful?
Which behaviours prevented this game from being successful?
What does this game tell us about the importance of decision making and leadership?
How can we make sure everybody in the group is included? Why is this important (for the game and for
group work)?
Teenspeak
Look at the examples of ‘teenspeak’ language collected for homework (you may wish to have some of your own
examples to show students – these can be taken from the year 10 SOW or ask me for further examples). Ask
students to identify some of the features of ‘teeenspeak’.
Get students to question how appropriate the use of this language variety is. You may wish to introduce the term
’Standard English’ at this point.
Attitudes to ‘teen’ language
Read some of the articles arguing for and against the use of text message language – particularly focused around
young people. Set up a debate such as ‘This house would ban text message language’ or ‘This house would allow
students to write essays in text speak’.
Language in the Media
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxB1gB6K-2A Catherine Tate and David Tennant.
Show the clip of Catherine Tate sketch. Discuss what this reveals about our attitudes towards accents.
Read the article about Cheryl Cole’s recent departure from the US X-Factor then play the clip below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X7_Jt8Vvj0 Cheryl Cole accent clip from interview with Piers Morgan
Discuss whether the US X Factor were right to remove Cheryl Cole from the judging panel because of her
accent.
(session 2 continued overleaf)
Youtube
King Edward VI School English Department: Year 9 Scheme of Work
Plenary
Write an article arguing for or against teen language OR write an article for or against celebrity presenters’ accents.
Homework
Ask students to create a poster for display of accents and dialects. These posters could include a map with dialect
words labelled, some photos of celebrities with notable accents, clippings from newspaper articles, family words,
words used amongst friends etc.
King Edward VI School English Department: Year 9 Scheme of Work
3
To consolidate group
work skills.
Starter: Group Work Game Caterpillar – from Teacher’s Toolkit. This is one of the games we used with year
9 at the start of the year. The rationale is to see how much the group has remembered about successful
group work and discussion skills. See Teacher’s Toolkit for rules of the game.






Debrief the game by asking the following questions:
What have you learned from the game?
What does this game teach us about team-work?
Which behaviours helped this game to be successful?
Which behaviours prevented this game from being successful?
How does it feel to be the person in the middle?
How can we make sure everybody in the group is included? Why is this important (for the game and for
group work)?
Teacher’s
Toolkit
Copies of
Unrelated
Incidents
Websites:
British Library
BBC Voices
Computers (if
you wish o book
these for the
Unrelated Incidents
In groups of 3 read the poem Unrelated Incidents and try to work out what it is about. Explore this poem and what it questionnaires
tells us about accent. Discuss as a class. Please feel free to use any activities you may have on this poem. The idea is activity)
to explore Leonard’s attitude rather than the specifics of the poem’s techniques.
Reactions to accents – prejudices.
Define ‘accent’ – the way the words and grammar are pronounced. Define ‘dialect’ – the words and grammar
people use – these are often connected to geographical location or sociolect (a social group’s language identity).
Ask students to share their experiences of accents. Ask students to decide whether they think they have an accent.
Get students to list their favourite accents and the accents they don’t like. Perhaps get students to think about the
stereotyped characteristics of different accents.
Listen to various accents on the British Library http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/ or BBC Voices
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/recordings/index.shtml websites and ask students to react to these accents. If you
decide to use the British Library website, there are a number of ‘Activities’
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/activities/ you may wish to dip into and use for this part of the lesson.
You will need to click on the tabs for the different activities e.g. grammatical variation, lexical variation etc.
(session 3 continued overleaf)
King Edward VI School English Department: Year 9 Scheme of Work
Questionnaires
Discuss what makes a good questionnaire – what types of questions work well and what types of questions to avoid.
There should be a balance between closed questions/ratings questions – easy to analyse and open questions
which help to give more qualitative data about people’s reactions. You may also wish to discuss ‘experiment’
type questions too.
In groups of 3-4 ask students to formulate questionnaires to find out about people’s reactions to accents, dialects
and language use such as text-speak. You may wish to book some computers for students to type up
questionnaires. You may want to encourage students to make their questionnaire interactive by using the
British Library website / BBC Voices website to find out about people’s reactions to different accents.
Plenary – whole class discussion followed by students consolidating their own ideas in writing in exercise books
to answer the following questions:
What does spoken language tell us about a person? - age, gender, educational background, geographical
background. Should we judge people by the way they speak? Why?
Homework
Collect responses to questionnaires for next lesson.
King Edward VI School English Department: Year 9 Scheme of Work
4
To analyse the findings
of the questionnaires
and draw conclusions
from the data collected
regarding people’s
attitudes to accents,
dialects and language
use.
To consolidate group
work skills.
To be able to
communicate
information effectively
through a visual
presentation.
Starter: Group Work Game Control Tower – from Teacher’s Toolkit. This is one of the games we used with year 9 at
the start of the year. The rationale is to see how much the group has remembered about successful group work
and discussion skills. See Teacher’s Toolkit for the rules for the game.





Debrief the game by asking the following questions:
What have you learned from the game?
What does this game teach us about team-work?
Which behaviours helped this game to be successful?
Which behaviours prevented this game from being successful?
Why is listening and turn-taking so important?
Questionnaires – analysis and visual presentation of results/conclusions
Return to the groups of 3-4 from last lesson. Discuss how to go about analysing questionnaires. Analyse the
responses from the questionnaires – look or trends and patterns.
Present the results of your questionnaire in a visual way for the rest of the group. Consider how to present the
results – tables, bar graphs, pie charts etc might be helpful for the quantitative data questions. Consider how
best to present the qualitative data – could draw round a person and write ideas inside the outline or create a
poster with speech bubbles with quotations etc. Ask students to consider whether they can draw any
conclusions from the results – present these as part of the visual presentation.
Plenary (leave enough time in the lesson for students to circulate around all groups)
Get students to circulate around the different visual presentations of the questionnaire data. Students should make
notes on significant findings / trends / patterns they can identify from the results and conclusions.
Discuss the findings as a whole class. Were there any common trends? Can we draw any conclusions about people’s
attitudes? Evaluate how useful and reliable this data is?
Teacher’s
Toolkit
Materials for
creating visual
presentations
King Edward VI School English Department: Year 9 Scheme of Work
5
To reflect on some of
your own personal talk
(idiolect) including
perhaps some criticisms
made of it by adults
To consolidate and
demonstrate
understanding of what
makes a good group
discussion.
Starter: Help! How do we hold a group discussion – a recap of the skills required for a successful group speaking
and listening / group presentation. Using the ‘debriefs’ from the games that students have been playing at the
start of each English lesson, ask students to work in pairs to come up with 3 golden rules for holding a group
discussion. Snowball the pairs into 4s and ask students to compare and refine their rules so that they have 2
golden rules – this will mean students will have to listen to each other and negotiate the rules that are most
important.
Set homework: to write a plan for the controlled assessment task using the information and planning ideas from
today’s lesson (give as a reason for full participation in group work task and stress importance of listening to
each other in today’s lesson).
Part 1 of the lesson: Group Discussion and Essay Planning
Speaking and Listening:
Group Discussion
Assessment
In groups of 3-4 students:
From all of the research carried out over the previous lessons discuss and come up with an essay plan for the
following task:
Reflect on and write about some of your own personal talk (idiolect) including perhaps some criticisms
made of it by adults.
Possible questions to explore in this essay:
 Why do we make judgements about the way people talk?
 What does spoken language tell us about a person’s identity?
 Is the way we use language when texting, instant messaging or Facebooking incorrect?
 What do different generations think about the way language is used?
 Is there such a thing as ‘correct’ spoken language? Why?
 Do you think it is fair that adults criticise the way you speak/write/use language?
 Should people who appear in the media (on TV / Radio etc) speak in a specific ‘standard’ way? Why?
 Is it acceptable for comedians to make fun of accents / use accents as a way of stereotyping
characters?
 Does it really matter how we speak? Why?
 Would you change the way you speak? Why?
 Should we adapt the way we use language depending on the purpose and audience?
(session 5 continued overleaf)
Student notes
and
presentations
from previous
lessons
King Edward VI School English Department: Year 9 Scheme of Work
Part 2 of the lesson (plenary): Group Presentations of Plans
Each group should briefly present their plans and the key points of the discussion that took place in their group.
Encourage students to make their own notes in preparation for the homework task.
Homework reminder (from beginning of the lesson): for next lesson, write your own plan based on the plans you
have heard today.
King Edward VI School English Department: Year 9 Scheme of Work
6
To reflect on some of
your own personal talk
(idiolect) including
perhaps some criticisms
made of it by adults.
Controlled Assessment
Writing Task
Starter: generate the success criteria for this assessment by using the markscheme criteria for GCSE Unit 3c Spoken
Language Study.
Outline the principles of controlled assessment.
Discuss how to structure writing.
With a partner – compare the plans written for homework and refine plan ready for controlled assessment task.
1 hour controlled assessment of task: reflect on some of your own personal talk (idiolect) including perhaps some
criticisms made of it by adults.
Plenary: ask students to look back at their own writing against the success criteria. Ask students to make a comment
about What Went Well (WWW) and Even Better If (EBI) in this piece of writing.
Unit 3c Spoken
Language Study
Assessment
Criteria
Plans
Data