Primary English: Knowledge and Understanding - Medwell Jane A. 2014

Answers to self-assessment questions

Chapter 2 — Spoken English and Standard English

1. Standard English is largely a matter of using certain grammar, vocabulary and, when written, spelling. It can be spoken in most English accents and does not have a correct pronunciation.

2. Historical, regional and individual variations affect spoken English.

3. In regional variation:

a) Dialect is the grammar and vocabulary of language spoken in a particular region.

b) Accent is the way in which words are pronounced.

4. ’Language register’ is the way in which speakers/writers use different words and grammatical formations depending on the situation in which they are communicating.

5. Children can be helped to recognise and practise the use of Standard English and other dialects through speaking and listening tasks about texts in pairs, groups, whole-class activities and drama sessions.

Chapter 3 — The acquisition of language

1. The three main theories of language acquisition are the behaviourist account, the generative/innatist approach and the social/interactive approach.

2. The behaviourist view is based on the work of B.F. Skinner.

3. The three-part sequence underpinning the behaviourist approach is the stimulus-response-reward sequence.

4. The generative/innatist approach was based on Noam Chomsky’s theory.

5. The main criticism of the behaviourist approach was that children could produce novel utterances that they had never heard adults say.

6. ’Motherese’ is a term used to describe the non-standard ways in which adults talk to children.

7. The social/interactive approach suggests that human beings are programmed to communicate and that children communicate with their carers from birth. They learn language through using it in interaction with others to achieve particular ends.

8. The LAD is the Language Acquisition Device and it supports the generative/innatist theory.

9. The LASS is the Language Acquisition Support System and it is part of the social/interactive approach.

10. It is important that children have opportunities to experiment with language/be wrong sometimes because these are critical elements in the learning of language in the context of real dialogue.

Chapter 4 — Representing sound in writing

1. Phonological awareness is the explicit awareness of units of sound and how they work in speech.

2.

a) A syllable is a group of sounds that act as a unit of rhythm in speech and that is usually made up of a combination of consonants and vowels.

b) Onset is the consonant(s) at the beginning of a syllable.

c) Rime is the remaining part of a syllable, including a vowel or vowel-like sound and possibly one or more consonants.

d) A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word.

3. There are approximately 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds in most accents of English.

4. The IPA is the International Phonetic Alphabet that is used to write sounds precisely, including in some dictionaries.

5. Phonics teaching is teaching children sound-symbol correspondence, i.e. to match sounds with letters and letter combinations and to blend and segment these to create words.

6. Three common consonant digraphs are ’ch’, ’th’ and ’sh’.

7. The visual strategy for learning spellings that was suggested by Margaret Peters is ’Look, Cover, Write, Check’.

8. It is important to teach fluent letter formation early in the teaching of handwriting because poor letter formation inhibits the correct joining of letters and bad habits in letter formation are hard to change.

Chapter 5 — Words, vocabulary and morphology

1. Five languages that have influenced English following invasion and settlement of the British Isles are Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse (Viking), French, Latin and Greek.

2. The main reason for the standardisation of written English between 1400 and 1800 was the invention of the printing press — the ability to print literature meant that printers had to make decisions about language, including spelling, word choice and expression.

3. What do the following prefixes mean? Give an example of their use.

4. Etymology is the study of the origins of words.

5. Three of the six processes that have caused new words to enter English are (any three from) back formation, folk etymology, function-shift, acronyms, blending and clipping.

6. Morphology is the study of the structure of words and it is important for children to study it because they need to be able to break down and assemble words in order to be able to understand the grammar of sentences.

7. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a word. Free morphemes can stand alone, e.g. ’cat’. Bound morphemes cannot exist alone but are attached to other words, e.g. -s, -ed and -ing.

8. The two types of affix are prefixes, which go before the root/stem of a word, and suffixes, which go after it.

9. Give an example of an inflexional suffix for each of the following:

a) A noun: -s (either to mark a plural or the possessive)

b) An adjective: -er or -est

c) The past participle of a regular verb: -d or -ed

d) The present participle of a regular verb: -ing

Chapter 6 — The grammar of the sentence in Standard English

1. Three benefits of teaching children about grammar are that having grammatical knowledge can help to put them more in control of their use of language; it can help them in their attempts to communicate and it makes them more effective language users.

2. A sentence is a group of words containing a subject and a predicate that should express a thought that can stand by itself. The simplest definition often used with young children is that ’A sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop’.

3. Which of the following are sentence fragments and which are run-on sentences?

a) Many of the women running in the fun-run last week. (Fragment)

b) In Yorkshire, the cheese made in Wensleydale. (Fragment)

c) The window catch is broken, it needs mending. (Run-on sentence)

d) Working far too late for his own good. (Fragment)

e) The snow is falling, put on your boots. (Run-on sentence)

f) They shouldn’t need help, it is easy to find. (Run-on sentence)

4. Four different possible functions of a sentence are a statement, a question, a command and an exclamation.

5. Define these parts of a sentence:

a) A subject — what or whom the sentence is about

b) A predicate — tells us something about the subject and always includes the verb

c) An object — may be needed to complete a verb’s meaning and can be direct or indirect

6. The difference between a transitive and an intransitive verb is that a transitive verb takes an object but an intransitive verb does not.

7. A clause is a group of related words containing a subject and a verb. They can be independent (i.e. they could stand by themselves as discrete sentences) or dependent (i.e. they cannot make sense by themselves).

8. A phrase is different from a clause because it is a group of related words but does not contain a subject and a verb.

9. Four types of phrase are noun phrase, prepositional phrase, adjectival phrase and adverbial phrase.

Chapter 7 — The components of sentences

1. The eight main word classes or ’parts of speech’ that are components of a sentence are nouns, pronouns, determiners, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions.

2. The four types of common noun are concrete, abstract, countable and uncountable.

3. Proper nouns should be indicated by the use of initial capital letters.

4.

5. Which kind of determiner are the following words:

a) the — definite article

b) a — indefinite article

c) an — indefinite article

d) every — determiner expressing quantity

e) several — determiner expressing quantity

f) twenty — cardinal numeral expressing quantity

g) third — ordinal numeral expressing quantity

6. Use the general rules for formation of comparative and superlative adjectives to complete the table:

7. Which form of regular verbs are the following?

8. Which form of this irregular verb are the following?

9. The three types of conjunction are co-ordinating, correlative and subordinating.

10. Are the following words adjectives, adverbs or prepositions?

Chapter 8 — Punctuation

1. Punctuation is used to make clear the grammatical structure of a sentence and to clarify its meaning.

2.

a) Indicates omissions by marking the places where letters are missed out — apostrophe

b) Links statements that are closely related — semicolon

c) Used at the end of a sentence that asks a direct question — question mark

d) Mark off additional information in a stronger way than commas or dashes — brackets

e) Used to create a new noun from two other words — hyphen

f) Used to indicate a proper noun — capital letter

g) Indicates a hesitation or dramatic pause — dash

h) Marks off phrases beginning with participles — comma

i) Used to introduce a list — colon

j) Indicates direct speech — inverted commas/speech or quotation marks

k) Used to indicate certain abbreviations — full stop

l) Signifies a sentence where a special note of urgency is required — exclamation mark

Chapter 9 — Cohesion: grammar at the level of the text

1. The two ways in which cohesive references can be made to other parts of the text are:

✵ Anaphorical references — these refer readers back to something already mentioned.

✵ Cataphorical references — these point the reader forwards and are often used for dramatic effect/to heighten suspense.

2. The three types of reference tie are personal, demonstrative and comparative.

3. Substitution is where a word, phrase or clause is substituted in a following sentence for one with a similar grammatical function rather than repeating the original.

4. Ellipsis is where words are omitted rather than having an inelegant repetition — the reader supplies these to make sense of the sentence.

5. The four types of conjunction are:

✵ Additive conjunctions — these add on a clause/sentence as if it were additional information or an afterthought.

✵ Adversative conjunctions — these draw a contrast between the clause/sentence that they introduce/are contained in and the preceding clause/sentence.

✵ Causal conjunctions — these make a link of cause or consequence between two clauses or sentences.

✵ Temporal conjunctions — these make a time link, usually of a sequential nature.

6. Lexical cohesion is where two words in a text are semantically related in terms of their meaning, either by reiteration or collocation.

Chapter 10 — The qualities of stories

1. Explain the rationale for the following reasons why stories are so important for children:

a) To satisfy their curiosity — this builds on children’s desire to know what happens next by stimulating their interest.

b) To help them make sense of the world — everyone, including children, tries to impose order in their lives by telling stories about them.

c) To experience the world vicariously — stories can provide opportunities to learn from the experiences of others.

d) To put them in touch with a common culture — children learn much about their own cultural heritage and that of the wider world by reading stories.

e) To improve their literacy — stories give children opportunities to learn about language at word, sentence and text levels and enable them to develop an understanding of phonics and grammar.

f) To extend their knowledge and experience of language forms — reading a wide range of stories helps children to learn about the structures and conventions of written language.

g) To give them pleasure — children need to read for their own enjoyment and not just to develop their language skills.

2. The different genres of children’s stories include (any three from): folk and fairy tales; myths and legends; adventure stories; detective stories; school-based stories; love stories; historical stories; magical tales or any others from the many references to different genres across the chapter.

3. Put the main stages of story structure into the right order:

✵ The opening — establishing time, setting and characters.

✵ The inciting moment — where the state of equilibrium is threatened or normality is changed.

✵ The development — the largest section, including further complications, disruptions or events.

✵ The denouement — a turning point or event that signals the upcoming ending.

✵ The ending — where complications are resolved and issues redressed.

4. List the alternative names for:

a) The story opening — orientation, exposition or the state of equilibrium.

b) The inciting moment — breach, disruption or complicating action.

c) The denouement — resolution.

d) The ending — redress, reinstatement, coda or conclusion.

5. The suggested criteria for evaluating and making judgements about stories are:

✵ Appropriateness

✵ Social/political awareness

✵ Plot and themes

✵ Characters

✵ Language

✵ Illustrations

✵ The properties of the book as an object

✵ Teacher interest

Chapter 11 — The qualities of poetry

1. The poetic devices used in John Agard’s poem Poetry Jump Up are metaphor, simile, rhyme at the ends of lines and within lines and personification.

2. In Masefield’s classic poem Cargoes:

a) The structure is organised into stanzas with the same rhyming pattern and a very similar rhythmical pattern.

b) Masefield uses assonance to give the lines a lightness and delicacy of tone through a prevailing set of vowel sounds.

c) Masefield also uses associations and onomatopoeia.

3. From the definitions given, decide which poetry forms are listed:

a) A poem where the size and shape of the letters, the fonts used, their boldness and their effects support its meaning — a calligram

b) Two consecutive lines linked by rhythm and rhyme — a couplet

c) A poem where the appearance on the page reflects its theme — a shape poem

d) A poem that tells a story, sometimes in ballad form — a narrative poem

e) A Japanese verse with 17 syllables distributed over three lines — a haiku

f) A poem that is written to be acted out — a performance poem

Chapter 12 — The qualities of drama

1. In examining why drama is important, the four main functions of drama in primary classrooms are:

✵ Drama as story;

✵ Drama as an aid to learning;

✵ Drama as a resource for moral education;

✵ Drama as an aid to language and literacy development.

2. Describe how the following drama activities can make a contribution to children’s language and range of experience:

a) Puppets — can be used to perform an improvised or scripted story.

b) Hot seating — can be used to explain characters’ motives and behaviour.

c) Improvisation — can lead to presenting devised dialogue as a drama script.

d) Simulation — requires more pre-planning and research than an improvisation.

e) Tableaux/thought tracking — using a frozen moment allows children to explore the thoughts of a particular character and the significance of that moment to their character.

3. The key elements that must be made clear in the layout of play scripts are setting, stage directions, character names and dialogue.

4. Iambic pentameter is a rhythmical pattern with five metrical beats to the line — Shakespeare’s plays are largely written in iambic pentameter.

5. The main elements that should be considered when analysing play scripts are: appropriateness for the children’s maturity, skills and interests (and the teacher’s interest); plot and themes; characters; dialogue; use of language; and the overall attractiveness of the book as an object.

Chapter 13 — Looking at information books

1. Stories should not be overused as a major experience in the primary years because children may become over-reliant on fiction-based strategies and mistakenly try to apply rules of fiction to non-fiction.

2. The criteria that can be used to look critically at information books are:

✵ How they use facts;

✵ Whether they are accurate/biased;

✵ How concise they are;

✵ How they present specialised vocabulary;

✵ Their use of illustration;

✵ How they are organised.

3. Match the correct definitions to the following genres/text types and give an example of each:

a) Records feelings/events as they occur — a record (diary or log-book)

b) Puts forward an argument in favour of a particular point of view — a persuasive text (a pamphlet or leaflet supporting a specific point of view)

c) Retells in narrative form a sequence of events — a recount (biography, autobiography or newspaper report)

d) Guides the carrying out of a set of actions — instructions (recipe book or instruction leaflet)

e) Describes/explains particular phenomena — a report (explanations, scientific accounts, descriptions)

f) Presents arguments and information from differing viewpoints before reaching a conclusion based on the evidence — a discussion (an issue book)

g) Presents information in an ordered, easily retrievable way — a reference text (encyclopaedias or identification guides)

Chapter 14 — Electronic texts

1. Examples of everyday situations in which you may need to read an electronic text include:

a) Reading a web page;

b) Reading a pdf document;

c) Reading a text message on your mobile phone or the instructions on an ATM screen.

2. Examples of everyday situations in which you may need to write an electronic text include:

a) Writing an assignment or presentation;

b) Sending an email, text message, twitter or tweet;

c) Having an instant messaging conversation.

3. The three main characteristics that make electronic texts different from traditional print-media texts are:

a) They are interactive;

b) They have different structures;

c) They employ special symbols (icons/features).

4. The implications these differences have for the teaching of literacy are that teachers must ensure that children have access to both paper-based and electronic texts in order to develop their reading skills and digital literacy, and that they have opportunities to write in both media for a range of purposes and audiences.