english blog

Advertorial The gorgeous sakura... So beautiful when it blossoms, that it was one of my dearest wishes to see it at least once before I die.... Many others also have the same wish unfortunately, which makes springtime flight tickets to Japan extra expensive due to Sakura season. Lying on a bed of sakura Luckily for me, I fulfilled my wish last year when I flew to Kyoto. I will never forget my first sakura experience. Bunches of countless flowers, so delicate and multi petaled, decked out in my favourite baby pink colour gently swaying in the breeze. As it was nearing the end of sakura season, the petals were falling from the trees like snowflakes, and the ground was littered with hundreds of thousands of soft petals. It was too pretty for words. Other than just being beautiful, sakura also has many uses... Have you tried sakura flavoured ice cream or chocolate? Not only in food, sakura is also used in skincare. Because we all want glowy, radiant skin with a rosy sheen,  as if flowe...

Colleagues at two universities have asked this blog to publicise a couple of things that might either be of interest to you, or that they need help with. The first is a job opportunity at UCL, which involves working on the new Primary English part of the Englicious project. You can find more info on it here . The second is from Sue Fox and Jenny Cheshire at QMUL. They would like feedback from students and teachers who have used their English Language Teaching Resources and  Linguistics Research Digest and just need a few quick responses to this survey.

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It's Summer here for our family - our kids finished their school years yesterday. I am missing blogging so very much. Need to get back here, but don't exactly see it happening immediately. Hopefully soon though. In the meantime, I joined the Index Card a Day Challenge today - participants are decorating one 3x5 index card everyday - no pressure, no overthinking...you (I) just do it. More soon! xo

With the exam coming up on Monday, I've collected together a few of the revision tips from 2012, 2011 and 2010 here. Hopefully, they'll help you target your last day or two of revision: Tips from 2011 Revision tips from 2012 (BTW World Englishes has cropped up now as a discourses question in Jan 2013) General ENGA3 exam advice from 2012 I'll add a few more bits and pieces on Sunday, if I get a chance.

ENGA3 is assessed using three AOs - 1,2 & 3 - but AO2 is the chunkiest of these on this paper, accounting for 40 of the 90 marks available. While you should still be using the close textual analysis skills you've been learning throughout the course (i.e. the linguistic labelling with clear examples for AO1 and the discussion of meanings, effects and representations created for AO3), it does mean that you need to think carefully about addressing the wider issues of change, variation and discourses that usually appear as part of the 2nd bullet point in each question. What exactly is AO2, though? The AQA spec says "AO2: demonstrate critical understanding of a range of concepts and issues related to the construction and analysis of meanings in spoken and written language". I've generally taken the first part of this as the most important, namely the concepts and issues part. In the top band for AO2, you can see what they're after each year from the non-italicised ...

       We ate our first strawberry today. And by "we" I mean, "I". And it was delicious! Today is Mother's Day. And it's May. A month when our kids' schedules are crazy - even according to them. I'm feeling spread a little thin and like I'd like my world to be a little smaller. And our family is in the season where our children's worlds are only getting bigger - and that is exactly right. So I am wishing for the blessing of a little balance and giving thanks always for the abundance in our days. Happy May! xo