The new way to avoid checking your emails every ten minutes...

Welcome to my blog! On it I'm going to post all the things we cover in class (handouts, youtube vids, useful stuff in the library, revision notes....) so it'll be in one easy to find spot. If you want to ask me anything direct (and that incluldes you, parents) then don't bother emailing me at my gmail address, but do drop me a line at my school address.
Cheers!


Monday 13 May 2013

I am a sad case hexagon addict

Here's a nice homework for you - cut out all of the hexagons that I have emailed you and bring them to the lesson on Wednesday (13D) or Thursday (13C).

Feel free to change (colour code it according to the different subheadings) as much as you like. If you aren't sure what the subheadings are, then simply check out the terminology list that I posted a few weeks ago - the subheadings are in column B.

Next lesson, you'll be given a text and then asked which ideas are applicable. Once you've got all those, then we'll organise them into logical sequences that we can then turn in to an essay. Honestly, it'll be amazing; like teaching off of Waterloo Road.

Once you've done all that, feel free to sort out your summer viewing, and talk to me not of Lost or someother somesuch nonsense - the only thing you should be watching is this - and here's Charlie Brooker to tell you all I'm right.

Any probs, etc etc, send them my way.

Thursday 9 May 2013

Overly prescriptive prescriptivists who are dead inside

When the only answer you've got to someone who argues with you is to point out the flaws in their grammar, then you've lost the argument. This piece in the Guardian looks at the winner of the inaugural 'Bad Grammar' award; a letter written to Michael Gove disagreeing with his plans for curriculum reform.
Check out what sentence parsing superhero Nevile Gwynne had to say on the phrase 'too much too young':

"Presumably they mean something like 'demands too much when children are too young to be ready for so much', but, as worded, it simply is not English," he said. "In that sentence as worded, 'too young' can only be two adverbs, 'too' qualifying the adverb 'young', and 'young' qualifying the verb 'demands', as would, for instance, 'soon' or 'early'. But 'young' is an adjective, and cannot ever be an adverb. And it certainly is not doing the work of an adjective in that sentence, because there is no noun that could be 'understood' and which would turn that sentence into English."

Not English? Please. This is nothing more than petulant error spotting, and tells us more about the people doing the spotting than the quality of the original argument.