Welcome to all my Arnold bros

Just a quick post to say hello to all the Arnold language boffins who could well be looking at this for the first time. I thought I'd take a minute to recap what we covered in class this week, and point you in the direction of some interesting sites that will be of benefit to you in the coming weeks.

First up, we've looked at some of the ways to boost some of your AO2 understanding in your answers; we looked at the ideas of hierarchies within texts or attitudes, and how to spot them, and some of the pressures that push or pull language along the standard / non standard continuum. We finally looked at Cameron's ideas about prescriptivism, which are worthwhile keeping in mind as I'd hate you to fall into the trap that some 13s do (not ones I've taught, obvs) where prescriptivist views = bad, and descriptivist = good; it's often a little more complicated than that...

Just in case you've lost them already, here is the first story we looked at (all about the Twitterbot), and here is the second - Matthew Engel's hilarious, defeatist, whingey racist nonsense. You should know the jobs I've given you - get in touch if you aren't sure. (Oh, and if you're on the Mail website, you really ought to check out the comments section. Makes my day, every day).

Talking about getting in touch, whilst I'm a big fan of the email, if you have a question that is subject based, ask it in the comments section; often someone else has a similar question or misunderstanding, and it'll save me a bit of time to answer it just the once.

Finally, if you fancy some swotting up before the exam, head off to Dan Clayton's infinitely superior blog, where you'll find all sorts of useful material. Don't worry if it seems a little daunting at first; a good place to start for you monkeys would be the ENGA3 tag, but I'm sure you'll figure it out.

Any problems, questions, issues or Bell & Ross watches, send them along to the usual address.