A-level in Linguistics
[NB This page is no longer maintained. It froze in 2009.]
A working group of the Subject Centre in Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies
Contacts
- Convenor of the working group: Graeme Trousdale
- Offers of help, and comments on modules: Dick Hudson
Some key documents
- The background to the project and the agreed overall structure of the proposed A-level course.
- Descriptions of the four modules.
- An article about the proposed course written for English teachers.
Pilot units
- 2008-9: A term’s lessons by Gabrielle Jones preparing students at Leyton Sixth Form College for the OCR Extended Project.
- 2009: A term’s lessons by Babette Newsome as work towards the Advanced Extension Award in English
- 2008: A lesson by Kim Ballard to an AS English language group.
- 2008: A series of lunchtime talks piloted by Lynda Griffin
Unpiloted draft units
- Unit 1. Phonology: sounds and letters
- A powerpoint presentation of this unit (by Graeme Trousdale) for use with a group of gifted and talented students.
Some relevant links
- A course of powerpoints for 12 lessons about accent and dialect, trialled with year 10 pupils, by Emma Moore, a sociolinguist at Sheffield University.
- An excellent collection of material used in USA schools (K-12) for teaching linguistics
- The Linguistics Olympiad for high-school students:
- Some facts and figures about the A-level English Language
- An Australian exam closely modelled on the UK’s A-level English Language
- A page on the linguistics of French, German and Spanish
The educational context
‘A-level‘ means ‘Advanced Level’. Typically, more academic students in England and Wales spend their last two years at school, before university, taking three A-level courses. (Some take one or even two more, some take fewer.) Consequently our proposed course would occupy about a third of the teaching over two years.
