LANGUAGE MANUAL
Sections Completed
Part One: Components of the language
Words and their Work 1
- Sounds that mean something and become words
- Different jobs for different words – parts of speech
Words and their Work 2
- How words become expressions, phrases, clauses and sentences
- Subject and predicate – What a sentence is about
- How we pick up words – learning from reading
Punctuation 1
- Capital letters, full stops, dashes, hyphens, colons, semi-colons, brackets and apostrophes
Punctuation 2
- Commas
- Pauses
- Direct speech, inverted commas/speech marks and reported speech
- Lists
- Phrases and clauses used in apposition – repeating information to make it clearer
- Non-defining clauses and defining clauses – organising information clearly
Part Two: Assembling the components – Understanding, analysis and effects
Sentences – composed
- Simple, compound and complex – how sentences are put together
- Balanced, loose and periodic – getting the message across
Clauses
- Analysis – see how groups of words work together
- Subject and predicate again – more work on an the importance of knowing what it is that we are talking about and what we are saying about it
Key ideas
- Précis, summary – getting to the point, to the heart of the matter
Questions
- Different kinds of questions. Key words and ideas. Relevant answers. and answers – introduce the uses to which a sentence can be put (v. next section)
Sentences – functioning
- Indicative/interrogative/imperative/ – statements, questions, instructions, exclamation – implicit and explicit – passive and active voices – fact and opinion. The subjunctive mood
Sections Planned
Sentences – assembled
- Application and purpose, paragraphs. Essays, discussion, persuasion, letters, instructions, reports and articles
Bogey-men
- Grammar – easier than you think – used in punctuation. Spelling Handwriting Redundant words
Part Three
Effective expression – communicating ideas (Reinforcing Sections One and Two)
- Uses to which the language is put: formal and informal (official or unofficial), poetic and informative, functional and imaginative
- Diction – denotation and connotation (choice of words)
- Syntax (word order), breaking the rules, emphasis, suggestion and assertion
- Registers (levels) of formality