Books

Books - Language Development

"By far the best book on children's language at school age" 
Katharine Perera, Children's Writing and Reading. Analysing Classroom Language. (Blackwell, 1984)
(from Dick Hudson. UCL) `

Mercer, Neil & Joan Swann (eds). 1996. Learning English: development and diversity. London & New York: Routledge / Open University (from Anthea Fraser Gupta, Leeds). Another book about the language of school-age children.

"Learning about Writing" by Pam Czerniewska, published by Blackwell, 1992, ISBN: 0 631 16963 6. I have found it really helpful on children's writing development. (from Steve Harrington, St Aelred's Catholic College)

Sheffield University produced a photocopiable book called 'More Things to Do With English' which has a really useful section on Editorial Writing. Contact Sheffield Hallam University, PAVIC Publications, Collegiate Crescent Campus, Sheffield S10 2BP Short exercises for Editorial Writing practice (from Christine Sweeney, Lord Lawson of Beamish, Gateshead) 

Language disabilities in children: Beveridge, Michael & Gina Conti-Ramsden. 1987. Children withlanguage disabilities. Milton Keynes / Philadelphia: Open University Press. (Anthea Fraser Gupta)

Howard Jackson is good - his Introduction to the Nature and Functions of Language (with Peter Stockwell) is much the best course book I've seen (despite the clunky title). (Andrew Moore)

Books - Grammar

Grammar: a Student's Guide by James R. Hurford (Paperback - Cambridge University Press; ISBN: 0521456274 (Anonymous poster)

Introductions to the study of Language - useful for AQA Module 1. This is the Amazon search list for Angela Goddard. (Steve Campsall)

Books - Writing, stylistics

The Living Language series text on Editorial Writing (Ed. George Keith & John Shuttleworth, Hodder & Stoughton ISBN 0340730846) (from Christine Sweeney, Lord Lawson of Beamish, Gateshead) - short exercises for Editorial Writing practice

'The Writing School Guide to...Writing for TV & Radio' ISBN0-906486130 is very useful - It was £9.95 back in 1982. The Writing School Comprehensive Course - 'Blueprints' - Chapter 13 is all about writing for the radio.  Both books/courses are published by Nationwide Studies Limited 29 Turnpike Lane, London N8 0EP. (Anonymous poster)

'TALK TO YOU SOON': LITERACY, LETTER-WRITING AND THE LANGUAGE OF ELECTRONIC MAIL - Brenda Danet: probably the definitive exploration (Harry) Goes well with Lewis Carroll on letter-writing

Researching IT- using ICT to investigate language - a big bibliography, looks useful. (Harry) Worth looking at the parent site, too - Investigating the Language of New Communication Technologies

Links

Frequently mentioned sites, all run by teachers

Andrew Moore' Teaching Resource Site - masses of content, mostly aimed at AQA / NEAB, but full of generic material as well

Steve Campsall's Englishbiz - again AQA /NEAB focus. Steve is very generous with his own teaching notes. Student - friendly.

Duncan Grey - a useful OCR-biased AS / A2 site, from Hinchingbrooke School

Harry Dodds - English Teaching in the United Kingdom - more a portal site than a content source - over 3,000 links for English teachers, and growing.

BYTE - worth keeping an eye on these pages. English sites, but also media / communications.

Does anyone know of sites aimed at WJEC and Edexcel specifications?

General

AQA Examiners' Reports

"A brief look at the history of English'. Merriam-Webster. Clear, accessible, OK as an introduction for any level, KS2 upwards. (Anonymous poster)

BBC AS Guru (Anonymous poster)

Dictionary.com More dictionaries of all kinds - soecialised, foreign... than you can throw a stick at. (Anonymous poster)

Englishresources - contributory site - some useful AS materials here. (Anonymous poster)

The Evolution of Communication - language change, media impact. Could be very useful. Has the neatest menu bar ever - worth visiting just for that. (Anonymous poster)

Roget's Thesaurus

Alec Gill's pages. Hull - based. Language history and much more. 

National Literacy Strategy site Alan Thomas Greenhead College

Vocabula - odds and ends about language. (Tracy Young)

The MIT Media Lab. "The Media Laboratory provides a unique environment for exploring basic research and applications at the intersection of computation and the arts. Areas of research include: software agents; machine understanding; how children learn; human and machine vision; audition; speech interfaces; wearable computers; affective computing (a new branch of computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions); advanced interface design; tangible media, object-oriented video; interactive cinema; work in various forms of digital expression, from text, to graphics, to sound; and new approaches to spatial imaging, nanomedia, and nanoscale sensing." (Massachusetts, not Manchester) (Tracy Young)

Search on `speech' here - George Washington University.

Style, stylistics

The Elements of Style William Strunk, Jr. (1918) (Anonymous poster)

Linguistics / Language variety

Dick Hudson's Home Page
(Richard Hudson - keen to promote the study of Linguistics in schools)
Grammar Teaching and Writing Skills (Dick Hudson)

Anthea Fraser Gupta's Home Page. "Anthea Fraser Gupta is a sociolinguist with research interests in child language in a social context, World Englishes, Singapore English, and language disorder in bilingual children and in children who speak non-standard varieties of English."

The Linguist List - enormous, American, potentially very useful. Who was looking for support for an investigation into pitch? There might be something here. (Tracy Young)

The Linguistics Department at the University of Victoria - strong on IPA (phonetics) (Tracy Young)

Estuary English, from UCL - very comprehensive introduction. (Tracy Young)

Interesting insights into non-standard English - English slang and colloquialisms used in the United Kingdom

Strange site -aims to teach computers to understand English. However, it may have some potential for teaching. "students can get a practical feel for word meanings, word senses, how sentences can influence them, and the issues that come in lexical semantics and natural language processing" (Tracy Young)

Highly academic on-line journal  - ICAME JOURNAL Computers in English Linguistics (pdf) University of Bergen (Tracy Young)

Peter Trudgill's scholarly explanation of the phonology of “Estuary English”. (Andrew Moore)

Mobility, meritocracy and dialect levelling: the fading (and phasing) out of Received Pronunciation - Paul Kerswill (Andrew Moore)

Lots of Linguistics exercises and quizzes (Anonymous poster)

The Language Construction Kit  A good starting point for thinking about how language works.(Harry)

The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (Anthea Fraser Gupta)

Language and Gender

Gender Styles in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) - Susan Githens (Andrew Moore)

Filmscripts, Media, Scriptwriting, Transcripts

Scripts from Drew's Script-O-Rama - film, television, scripts and transcripts. A goldmine. Serious US bias. (from Andrew Moore)

"I found some excellent stuff on the BBC Radio 4 website". (from Janet Nixon, Preston College). Possibly here - this page links to advice and has a downloadable scriptwriting tool for Word - takes care of layout - the creative bit is still up to you.

... and from Andrew Moore 

"At the Dailywav, if you go to the Archives and look under P for President, you can get sound files of some famous speeches - including George W's September 11 message. No individual page URLs (it's in frames) so start at the home page." (Andrew Moore)

Kennedy speeches (Andrew Moore)

An archive of advertisements and other ephemera (Alan Thomas)

Grammar

Grammar site - The Internet Grammar of English is an online course in English grammar written primarily for university undergraduates. However, we hope that it will be useful to everyone who is interested in the English language. IGE does not assume any prior knowledge of grammar. (from Steve Campsall,  Beauchamp College)

Guide to Grammar and Writing  a comprehensive and authoritative list of definitions and the workings of English grammar. Maintained by Charles Darling Capital Community College, Hartford, Connecticut. (Anonymous poster)

Jack Lynch's `Guide to Grammar and Style'. American, again, but sound. (Anonymous poster)

Plain English Commercial, but inexpensive publications. Not to be confused with the Plain English Campaign, which is the `Crystal Mark' awarding outfit. Good guides. (Anonymous poster)

The Virtual Presentation Assistant Good for Public Speaking. University of Kansas. (Anonymous poster)

The Phrase Finder. This site contains free access to:
A list of the meanings and origins of over a thousand phrases, sayings, quotes and calicoes in English.
A Discussion Forum. Discuss the meaning or origin of a phrase or saying with the people who know. Use the current forum to ask a question or search the archives of more then 15,000 posting

The Word Detective on the Web is the online version of The Word Detective, a newspaper column answering readers' questions about words and language. The Word Detective is written by Evan Morris and appears in finer newspapers in the U.S., Mexico and Japan.

World Wide Words - investigating international English from a British viewpoint. Very good for enthusing students about etymologies - who could resist ZENZIZENZIZENZIC, for one? (Tracy Young)

Language Acquisition

Language Acquisition - 10 lectures from Lancaster. (Tracy Young)

Language History

Regia Anglorum - Old English (Anonymous poster)
Page of Old English resources at http://www.english1.org.uk/asres.htm (Harry)

English and its History - quick tour, with samples of Old and Middle English (Anonymous poster)

TEAMS Middle English Texts - stunning collection. (Anonymous poster)

Use of facsimile texts for Module 6. I've been thoroughly enjoying a really wonderful book full of facsimile resources by Dennis Freeborn, From Old English to Standard English. Amazon ref. (Susan Wilde)

Facsimile texts, including Shakespeare (Christine LLOB and, possibly, Susan Wilde))

Speeches

From Bush's Inaugural Speech (Andrew Moore)
Extracts from political speeches (Andrew Moore)
Analysis of speeches (Andrew Moore)

"To get videos, use broadcasts of parliament and party conferences  on BBC TV - usually BBC2. One of your students should have access to digital TV (e.g. Sky, OnDigital) and will be able to get stuff from the free-to-air BBC Parliament Channel, which has non-stop political speaking, not just the Lords and Commons, but select committees and enquiries. You can match these to the official transcripts at Hansard "(Andrew Moore)

Great Speeches---Presented by Elycia's Real Audio and the Chicago Law Network (Harry)
The History Place - Great Speeches Collection (Harry)
Lex Scripta: Literary Library: Great Speeches (Harry)
History Channel (Harry)

Kennedy - Inaugural Address (Harry)
Earl Spencer's Eulogy to his sister Diana (Harry)
and, on a lighter note – with an interesting excursion into the relationship between speech and music –
Baz Luhrmann - wear sunscreen (Harry)