Topic: KS3

Some things I can remember without writing them down. → AnswerI can remember some things without writing them down.

Hardbacks I wouldn’t lend to anyone. → AnswerI wouldn't lend hardbacks to anyone.

Returning to the area after the War, Pissaro largely retained the same fiction about Louveciennes. →

AnswerPissaro returned to the area after the War. He largely retained the same fiction about Louveciennes.

Having fallen completely from view since May, he finds another window suddenly beckoning. →

This activity is based on the idea of register and how language choices are often linked closely to context.

At its simplest level, this could mean that if you are talking to small children you might adopt a more straightforward register, choosing sentence structures that don't involve too much complicated information delivered in one go.

In what situation would somebody use the clause the car which is yellow?

For example:

• The car which is yellow is mine, the car which is blue is yours, and the car which is red is John’s.

If I say the car which is yellow, am I giving you more information about a particular car we were already talking about by telling you its colour, or am I helping you to identify the car by telling you that it is the yellow one I want to discuss, rather than a red or blue one?

Non-restrictive relative clauses are often – although not always – surrounded by commas, which separate the additional information that the relative clause contains. In the following examples, see if you can put the commas in the right place to separate out the restrictive relative.

Students get a sense of how spoken and written language vary by looking at short extracts of each, on various topics. 

Goals

• Identify features of speech and writing.
• Compare and contrast speech and writing.
• Recognise the importance of genre in anlaysing language.

Lesson Plan

This lesson includes 3 handouts, which can be downloaded below and printed for distribution to students.

Activity 1: Tense consistency

Look at the following short passages. For each one, identify where the tense changes incorrectly, and then write a correct version which continues with the tense used at the start of the passage.

Warmer

1. What is an Adverbial? 
2. What kind of grammatical units (structures) can function as Adverbial?
3. What is a 'fronted Adverbial'? 
4. Why do writers use Adverbials? Why do they move them around in sentences? 

An adverbial:

He played cricket with Charlie.

Is played a verb?

• Is it a doing word?
• Can it show tense? Can you say Yesterday, I ____ed, for example?
• Does it add -s to agree with a Subject like he or she, as in He ___s.
• Can it take an -ing ending?

He played cricket with Charlie.

Is cricket a verb?

The girls are rehearsing a song.

Several boys were playing football.

Sally has studied French for three years.

John has been studying French for one hour.

Activity 1

Identify the modal verbs in this extract by clicking on them, then check your score at the end.

Read this extract from a novel and think about the ways in which the writer has chosen specific words to convey his description.

_{From Michael Morpurgo, Warhorse}

Here is the outline sequence of events (don’t forget that you can add more):