Lesson 9 Thursday 23rd May

Today was the last formal lesson, but I shall be in Aula 10 VC next Thursday (30th May) from 3 to 5pm for at least one person from each group to come to have details about the form of the Presentation, which we haven't had time to cover in the lessons.

I gave back the 10 things about tea Homework and I collected in your Homework on the places visited on the National Trust or English Heritage websites. I'll give these back to you next week  or when you come to do the Presentations.

I added some last points with respect to language and history, considering English past tenses and lack of future tenses, which seems to reflect the interest in history (the past) - especially through the present perfect which is used to talk about the past with respect to the present - and the uncertainty about the future, since there is no future tense in English, it has to be constructed with various modals which originally expressed intention.

We did the first, last topic: School and University, looking at the National Curriculum, the division into Key Stages and Core and Foundation subjects, the time spent at school (hours and weeks), school uniform, teachers' age, gender, ethnicity and pay. We also looked at words and phrases from the world of school which have entered general language use before looking at University. We covered numbers of universities and students, tuition fees, maintenance grants, student loans and application procedure.

We then did the last, last topic, Children and Other Animals, which concerns the relative status and attention of these two categories in Britain which is not what might be thought, since animals (particularly pets) have a higher status than children. Animals both substitute and enable interaction and relations between people which is so difficult for the British. British people can express affection and feelings to animals which they are inhibited in expressing to other people and they can carry out social interaction with other people if one of them has a dog which, like the weather, is a considered to be a valid (permitted) topic of conversation between strangers. Children, on the other hand, are tolerated rather than enjoyed and their behavour is more severely regulated than that of pets. There are almost as many pets as people in Britain. We looked briefly at the two charitable organizations the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (no royal warrant!), which receives less donations than the RSPCA. There are more children in Britain than there are in Italy (approx. 20% of the population as opposed to 13.7%), so this could be a reason for their lesser importance.

The Choice option for choosing your Presentation date is now open in our Section of the page.

Homework

Imagine you are a young British person in your final year of school who wants to go to university. Find out how to apply for a university course, find out which Universities offer the course you are interested in and what the entry requirements are for that course. 

Write up what you find (full sentences! Not cut and paste!) and either hand in a copy to me next week, or when you come to do the Presentation or leave me a copy in my pigeon-hole in VSR.

Lesson 8  Thursday 18th May

I gave back your scones homework and told you that the powder used to combine with flour to make cakes, etc, rise in called Baking Powder (GB) or Baking Soda (US) whereas the organism which is used to make flour rise for bread is called yeast.

We finished off the material on Drink from last week, i.e. pubs and types of beer. For Beer we again did a brief history on how and where it is drunk talking about the rise of the large commercial breweries and the reaction to these made by enthusiasts for more traditional types of beer (CAMRA) and the recent development of many Artisan or Craft Breweries which stem both from this reaction and from the recent Food Revolution looking for healthier, more natural kinds of food and drink. We talked also about the role of the pub and how recently this role seems to have been abandoned as British people prefer to take advantage of cheap alcohol prices in supermarkets and the availability of electronic forms of home entertainment - meaning that the very important role of social bonding which the pub performed is now being lost.

We went through this week's material which was History and Heritage.  History has a very important role in British culture and the concept of 'heritage', cultural possessions belonging to the whole Nation which are to be preserved and handed down to future generations, is particularly interesting.  The strong link which is perceived between the past of history and the present of life today is also important as is the idea of experiencing and re-living history rather than merely observing or describing it. We made a brief investigation of the two national bodies which 'manage' heritage, English Heritage and the National Trust. We also looked at the re-living and direct experience of history, where the link between the past and the present is emphasied again. We looked at two museums in York, the Castle Museum (Kirkgate and Rowntree Snicket) and the Jorvik Centre which offer recreations of life in York in previous periods (late-19th Century; 10th Century) for visitors to experience directly. This re-living history theme is present in the language used for tourist material about historical places which also goes against the British reflex of Moderation and value of Modesty (Kate Fox), since it is characterised by superlatives and direct address.

Next lesson will be our last formal lesson, but the following week (Thursday 30th May) I shall be available in Aula 10 at the usual lesson time for you to come to talk to me in your groups about proposed topics for your Presentations if you wish. I know that many of you will be involved with John Gilbert's Translation exam at that time, but anyone else who is free could take advantage of this opportunity. Remember that you must have your topic approved by me before you can present it as the End-of-Semester test. Each group should send at least one member also because I shall be going through details of how to deliver your Presentation, prepare slides, etc.

With respect to the End-of-Semester Test (i.e. your Presentations), it's time to start thinking also about when to do it. There would be a possibility for those interested in doing it early to do so on the afternoon of Tuesday June 4th (time and place to be determined). I shall organize some other times and put up a Choice file in our Section of the page for each group to choose their time.

I have set times for the Presentations:

June 14th 3-5 pm

June 18th 3-6 pm

June 20th 9 am - 1 pm

June 25th 3-6 pm

Think about your choice carefully and the Choice file for booking your time is now open. One person from each group should book the time, after having consulted very thoroughly with the other members of the group!

Homework for the next lesson (23.05.19)

Visit the National Trust Website or the English Heritage Website and make a virtual visit of one of the places on it. Write up a description of your visit, including comments on the kind of language used and any details of living-history events or activities which are listed on the site about the place in question, to hand in next week.

Lesson 7  Thursday 9th May

I checked your Scones Making homework by admiring one material manifestation of them and looking at your photographic evidence. I also collected in your written notes on the experience. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed the experience, although there was some variety in the shape of the finished products!. I gave back your celebrity chef Presentation notes and pointed out the precise date of birth of the chef was not really essential information for a presentation, simply the year of birth (if that) would be sufficient. I also reminded you that you should have notes for a Presentation, not a formal text in sentences and paragraphs. I told you yet again not to cut and paste from Internet, but to make notes from material on the Web and then use your notes, rearranging, selecting points and absolutely using your own words.

We finished off the material on Food which we hadn't had time to do last week, dealing with traditional Sunday lunch, fish and Chips, the identification the British feel with chips, food from other culinary traditions, especially Chinese and Indian as well as Italian, French and the most recent arrivals, Thai and Mexican. There as been a 'Food Revolution' in Britain in the last twenty years with a new-found interest in food of which these different types of food as well as TV shows on food, celebrity chefs and newspaper supplements all form part. 

The official material for this week was Drink, concentrating on the two iconic British beverages, Tea and Beer. We covered a brief history of tea in Britain, how and how often it is drunk and pointed out its role as a remedy for all kinds of physical and emotional stress, as well as providing a means of overcoming the social dis-ease felt when visitors come to a British home: "I'll put the kettle on!". We'll deal with Beer and Pubs next week and also with History and Heritage.

Homework for next lesson (16.05.19)

Look at the tea websites I have put links to in our section of the Moodle page and list 10 things which you didn't previously know about tea that you have found on them. Write your list on a piece of paper to hand in next week. 

Lesson 6 Thursday 2nd May

I gave back lots of Homework, the Chavs homework  I had forgotten to give back last week and the films using dialects homework which you handed in last lesson. I pointed out that the definitions of Chavs taken from the Urban Dictionary were offensive and subjective and should only have been used for Homework with specific quotation of the source and  your comment saying that some negative opinions about chavs exist, such as those expressed by the Urban Dictionary. I also pointed out that with respect to the films, it is not appropriate to say where the actors playing the characters come from and thus their accent is from that region, since actors assume particular accents for their parts in films or plays, it's part of their job! They thus use the accent appropriate to the character they are playing, not their natural accent.

We talked briefly about your groups for the Presentations and I encouraged you to do the preliminary work of making contact, working out when to  meet, etc. now as the time to do the Presentations will be here really soon. I also stressed again that you should make sure each individual part of the Presentation follows the same format as the others so that the whole thing seems to be a unit and not five short Presentations stuck together and that you should allow yourselves plenty of time to practise and provide helpful feedback for each other. It is important to remember that the topic you choose (and will have to be approved by me) should relate to what we have done in the lessons, and should also make links to the aspects of "Englishness" which the topic illustrates.

We then went through your Celebrity Chef Presentations, having a volunteer for each Chef and the rest of the class listening, taking notes, asking questions and adding more information from their own research. Almost everyone talked too fast and not loudly enough which was a useful experience for everyone as this is something which always happens when you begin to work on Presentations and needs a lot of work on.The whole lesson passed on the Chefs Presentations and we didn't have time for the intended material which was the end of Food and Drink, so that has to be put off until next week.

I have just discovered that I had not opened the Celebrity Chefs Choice option for this semester, so you had not been able to use it. Sorry! Old age is obviously catching up with me!.

Homework for next lesson (09-05.19)

Make scones, following the recipe given in our section of Moodle page:  Scones Recipe 

Write down on a piece of paper to hand in at next week's lesson: 

a) how you got on during this experience 

b) any culture specific terms, i.e. ingredients or terminology,  which caused you problems (or at least to stop and think)

c) the reactions of the people (family, friends) you invited to sample your scones 

d) your own opinions of the taste of this British food. 

Take a photograph of you and your scones to show me during the next lesson (as proof that you made them).

Lesson 5 Thursday 18th April

I forgot to give back your homework (si I'll do it next lesson) but we did go over your viewing of films featuring regional accents that you had done for homework and identified the accents used in each of them:

Geordie in 'Billie Elliott' (with RP from the Ballet School audition panel);

South Yorkshire in 'The Full Monty' (specifically Sheffield);

Welsh in 'Pride' for the miners with English southern accents for other characters, except one North Welsh character.

It's a shame that nobody had been able to watch 'Brassed Off' and 'Made in Dagenham' as these are two other interesting examples of British films focussing on the socio-economic situation of Britain in the last decades of the 20th century. Do watch them if you ever get the chance. I would be prepared to lend my DVDs of them to anyone interested (if they swear to treat them gently!). I took in your notes. We then looked at this week's topic: Food. We looked at the parallels between British attitudes to food and sex, the relationship between the landscape, climate and food eaten in Britain, the names of meals (including the associations with social class) and investigated the field of Pudding and puddings, dispelling the Italian conviction that pudding means budino!  We shall continue with Food and do Drink next week.

We made an absolutely random choice of members for Groups for the Presentations for the End-of-Semester Test. Those who were at the lesson know which Group they are in and those who weren't should be contacted by the other members any time now.

Homework for next lesson (02.05.19)

(i) Choose two of the  figures on the Choice file Homework for Lesson 6 Presentation People and research them in preparation for a brief oral presentation on them at next week's lesson. Use English (preferably British) sources for your research, but do not simply cut and paste bits from Wikipedia! Prepare notes to hand in.

(ii) Arrange a social meeting with the members of your Presentation group set to know each other so that you can get  to know each other before you have to start working on the Presentation.

Lesson 4 Thursday 4th April

We talked about the dates of the next lessons (11.04; 18.04; 02.05; 09.05; 16.05) UPDATE: NO LESSON ON THURSDAY 11TH APRIL and the need to divide you into groups soon for the collective Presentation which will be the Assessment for this course. I stressed the fact that the topic for the Presentation must be approved by me and that it must be linked carefully to the aspects of British culture which it reveals.

I gave back the Fair and Fuss homework and stressed the point that both of these related very strongly to aspects of Englishness: fairplay, negative politeness and  - fuss - moderation.We then went over what you had found out about 'chavs'. There is now a link to an interview with a British linguist about 'chavs' on our section of the page.

I forgot to ask you about the Bake Off contestants' and judges' accents, so we''l talk about that at the beginning of next week's lesson.

The material in today's lesson was Accents. Accents are an essential part of identity and though everyone thinks their own accent is best, there is a ranking of the different regional accents which sees some as attractive (Edinburgh), some as unattractive (Birmingham) and some as very difficult to understand (Northern Irish and Geordie). We covered the particular British connection of accent with social class and talked about standardisation and the adoption of the South Eastern variant of English as the 'standard' dialect ('standard English') and pronunciation ('Received Pronunciation)  due to the power bases of politics, learning and trade being in the South East of the country. We also looked at how attitudes to regional accents and dialects have changed in the last thirty or so years and at the rise of Estuary English as a potential new RP. At the end of the lesson I played some recordings of various regional accents. There is the link to the recordings from the BBC Voices project on accents in our section of the Moodle page.

Homework for next lesson (18.04.19)

^{(i) Look at the Linguist on 'chavs' via the link in our section of the page;
(ii)  Watch one of the following films:} 

^{'Billy Elliott'} 

^{'The Full Monty'}

^'Pride'

^{'Brassed Off'} 

^{'Made in Dagenham'}

Note the characteristics of the regional accents used, checking with the Dialect blog  (http://dialectblog.com/british-accents/ - link in our section of the page) to identify them and the social class of the characters who use regional accents. Write down your observations to hand in at next week's lesson.

Lesson 3 Thursday 28th March

We began by looking at the material which we hadn't had time to complete at last week's lesson on Queuing. I  asked you about your queuing experiences and observations. and we discovered that there is a very different attitude to queuing in Italy and in India, although there seemed to be some similarities to Berlin and Hungary. Queuing relates to the aspects of Fair play, Courtesy (negative politeness) and Moderation. British people believe strongly in the fairness of queuing, but negative politeness and moderation prevents them from reacting or protesting directly if anyone breaks the rules of Queuing. Se thought that perhaps attitudes to time and the importance given to the collective rather than the individual could explain many of the differences in Queue behaviour in Britain and in Italy.

I gave back the Homework handed in last week. I shall try to mark 5 or 6 pieces of Homework each week, so that everyone should have a couple of pieces marked by the end of the course, but you never know when it will be your turn! Remember that there will be two extra marks to be awarded for attendance and homework (if you come and if you do it!), just to encourage you. 

We went through some of the examples you had found for the words 'fair' and 'fuss'  At the end of the lesson I collected in your examples.

We then began to look at one of the Outlooks identified by Kate Fox in her Diagram of Englishness: Class consciousness. After going through some contemporary theories of class in the UK, we also looked at Kate Fox's comments on class and discovered that though Kate Fox's view was more traditional, nonetheless, both she and Mike Savage identified seven classes.  We then looked at language identifiers of class, particularly the "Seven Deadly Sins" (Kate Fox's classification): 'toilet', 'pardon', 'serviette' 'settee', 'dinner' (for the midday meal) 'lounge' and 'sweet'; as well as the other terms for toilet and names for parents. 

Homework for the next lesson (Thursday 04.04.19)

(i) Investigate the word 'chav' (using only English-language sources -GB -)

(ii) Look at the site on dialects. Link in our section of the page. 

(iii) Watch the television! Find and watch a recent episode of 'The Great British Bake Off'. It's usually possible to find one in streaming or on Youtube. Compare and contrast the accents used by the various contestants and the Presenters and Judges and note how they relate to the social class of the speakers. 

Lesson 2 Thursday 21st March

I apolgised for being ill last week and having to miss the lesson (I promise I won't do it again, if that's not tempting fate too much!). Keep an eye on the Moodle page each week, just in case.

We listened to a sample Presentation for each of the topics you could choose from to prepare as Homework last lesson and then in groups of 4 you all had a go at giving your Presentation to the others and listening to (and learning from) the Presentations of the other members of your group. I collected in your notes on the topics.

We then went over the component parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and then went through Kate Fox's Diagram of Englishness, looking at the core (dis-ease), the Reflexes (humour, moderation, hypocrisy), the Outlooks  (empiricism, Eeyorishness, class-consciousness) and Values (fair play, courtesy, modesty). We didn't have time to look at Queueing and how this relates to aspects of Englishness, so we shall do this next week. (I have put the Diagram in our section of the Moodle page under the title Kate Fox's Diagram of Englishness).

Homework for the next lesson (Thursday 28.03.19)

(i) Investigate the words 'fair' and 'fuss': see how many phrases you can find which use them; see if you can find them in texts you are reading or listening to. How do they relate to Englishness? I expect you to write down notes on these two words, to hand in at next week's lesson.

(ii) Observe queues.  See if you can perceive any rules governing queues in Italy. Think about any experience you might have had with queues in other countries.

Lesson 1 Thursday 7th March

We went over the structure of the course and the Assessment (Homework to be done and handed in for each lesson and End of Semester test in the form of a cooperative Group Presentation (many more details about this will be given later on in the course).  

After some quick questions on elements of British Culture which proved unknown to most of the group as a taste of things to come, we went over the basic concepts underlying the course, coming from Culture Studies and Cultural Anthropology. Although I gave you the titles of the two core books which I am using for the material, I want to stress that these are not books required for the course. Do not buy them (unless you are passionately interested in Culture Studies and Cultural Anthropology and want to, of course!). I shall be providing you with what you need to know from these books in the slides. 

We then did a sample Life in the UK test (used since 2007 as part of the procedure for foreign nationals to acquire UK nationality. The Pass score is 75%). You can try another sample test (with the full 45 minutes allowed) via the link I have put on the section.

Homework for the next lesson (Thursday 14.03.19)

Choose one of people or places listed below and prepare a brief Presentation on them/it.  Use internet sources found on google.co.uk, not Italian or US sources. Use the material you find to make notes for your Presentation but do not simply copy and paste from them! The notes will be handed in at next week's lesson.

a) The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham

b) Stuart Hall

c) Raymond Williams

d) Richard Hoggart

e) Kate Fox