Topic: KS3

Relevant for UK National Curriculum Key Stage 3.

Restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses: Activity 2

Sort these examples of relative clauses from the ICE-GB corpus according to whether you think they are restrictive (identifying) or non-restrictive (adding). Were there any cases where you had difficulty deciding which reading to choose? What clues did you use to help you decide?

Restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses: Activity 1

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?

Restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses

In this lesson, we look at the difference between two kinds of relative clause. A relative clause is a special kind of subordinate clause, and like other subordinate clauses it is introduced by a subordinating conjunction. More specifically, the introduction of a relative clause can be carried out by a relative pronoun.

The two types of relative clauses we will be looking at are:

Form and function: Activity 2

Identify the grammatical form and the grammatical function

Now identify both the form and the function of the highlighted words in the following sentences.

Foregrounding

Foregrounding is a widely-used term in text analysis, literary linguistics and stylistics, referring to patterns of language that stand out in a text. The term itself is derived from art and film criticism, and is best understood by a visual analogy.

Goal

Noticing and exploring linguistic patterns in literary texts.

Here is a picture of San Francisco:

Form and function: Activity 1

Analysing the way that form and function are related

In the exercise you'll be asked to identify the function and the form of the highlighted words.

Identify the grammatical function

Identify the grammatical function of the highlighted words in the following sentences.

Clause types: advanced

In the National Curriculum no terminological distinction is made between the grammatical patterns of the clause types, and the way that these clause types are used. In linguistic studies different terminology is used for the former and latter. What follows is not statutory in the NC, but some readers may appreciate some more background on terminology.

In linguistics the terms declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamative are used to talk about grammatical patterns.

Form and function

A useful distinction in grammar is that of grammatical form and grammatical function. Grammatical form is concerned with the description of linguistic units in terms of what they are, and grammatical function is concerned with the description of what these linguistic units do. Note that we use capital letters at the beginning of function labels, but this is by no means standard practice everywhere.

Goal

Building characters: Activity

This extract is from later in the novel, where Mr. Hyde attacks a stranger in the street. Read it through, and think:

Building characters

Analysing the language of characters in a literary text

Goals

Understand some of the ways that writers use language to create characters
Analyse the use of language in a literary text

Lesson Plan

You could start by asking students to think about some of the ways that writers use language to create fictional characters. What makes a convincing character? What are some of their favourite characters from fiction, and why?
Next, talk students through the first passage from Jekyll & Hyde.

Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies