Lesson 9 Thursday 14^th May

This was a live video lesson on Meet. 

Today was the last formal lesson, but I shall be available on Meet next Thursday (21st May) from 3 to 5 pm for you to come to talk to me about your proposed topic for the Presentation and have your topic approved or receive suggestions for modifications, alternatives, etc. Not all members of the Group need come (although they are welcome to do so), but at least 2, if not 3 should come for the appointment, if you have not already spoken to me during my office hours.

We went through this week's material which was Children and Other Animals. We dealt with 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 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 perhaps this could be a reason for their lesser importance?

We talked about your Presentations. I reminded you again that the topic must be approved by me and should relate to something we have done during the course and include an analytical element which relates the information presented to aspects of Englishness (or not!). It would be useful to have a second choice of topic already agreed upon in the group in case your first choice is not approved by me. I warned you that Presentations should be all your own work and not simply cut and paste from Wikipedia or other sources. I warned you sternly about plagiarism. We went rather quickly over acknowledging sources in the References section for for presentations. For Presentations, each individual section should last approx. 4 minutes and one member of the group should also act a Coordinator and introduce the whole presentation and the other members of the group and make transitions between each section and an overall conclusion to the whole Presentation, including asking if there are any questions and thanking the audience for their attention. All this information is available on a page in our Section of the Moodle page.

We also talked about possible dates, but these have yet to be confirmed.

Homework for next week (21.05.20)

Visit the RSPCA websie or the NSPCC website and discover ten things you didn’t know about either animals or children (depending on the site you choose!) in Britain. Write up the points and upload them to the BC Homework Lesson 9: Animals and Children file.

Lesson 8 Thursday 7^th May

This was a live video lesson on Meet. Unfortunately the sound quality was not too good for some of the lesson which may have impeded your absorption of all the material.

We went through this week's material which was History and Heritage and Gardens and Gardening. Next week will be the last formal lessons. The week after that (Thursday 21st May), I shall organize a Meet appointment from 3 to 5pm in order for you to come to consult about the proposed Topic for your Group Presentation. Remember that your Topic must be approved by me before you begin to prepare your Presentation.

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 investigated 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, which 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.

Gardens and Gardening is another element which is very important in British culture. British people have a love for and interest in gardens, both their own and other people's. The rise of the individual garden for all social classes was in the early 20th century, whereas before this gardens were a privilege of the upper and middle classes. We noticed the strange phenomenon of the front garden which is not actively used by the owners, but is considered to be for other people to look at, whereas the back garden is a more private place and for personal use. We also looked at Allotments, and Other People's Gardens, a perhaps surprising interest which seems to contradict the Britishness value of modesty and reserve. 

Homework for next lesson (14.05.20):

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 on the site about the place in question and upload it to the BC Lesson 8 Homework History & Heritage file in our Section of the Moodle page.

Lesson 7 Thursday 30^th April 2020

This was a video lesson held on the Meet system.

This week’s topic was School and University, looking briefly at the history of compulsory education in England and Wales and the ages it applied to in various periods and then at the contemporary situation focussing on 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 (all in direct contrast with the Italian situation). We talked about written and oral (none”) exams and about the lack of interrogazioni (thank goodness!). 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 went over some of the things you had discovered by looking at the ta websites for last week's homework, including the fact that 21st May is National Tea Day - which I din't know either!

Homework for the next lesson (07.05.20)

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!) to upload to the University Lesson 7 Homework file in our Section of the Moodle page.

..

Lesson 6  Thursday 23rd April

This was an online lesson held via Meet.

We talked about your Scones Making homework and noted the difficulty of find flour in this period and the very stickiness of the dough and the tendency of the scones to burn on their bottoms. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed the experience. We tried to go through your celebrity chef Presentations and encountered some difficulties (especially me!) with the Meet system, but we need to practise as this will be the way you will be doing your End-of-Semester Test, a Group Presentation online. I 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 tea which we hadn't had time to do last week: both Kate Fox on the usefulness of tea for any situations of social awkwardness (i.e. all the time!)as well as for a soothing cure for physical and mental problems and an invigorating beverage and the evidence of this quasi miraculous effect even on Hagrid (Prisoner of Askerban). We also went through some idiomatic phrases in English which use elements of food-

We then moved on to the material on Drink from last lesson, 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.

I showed you your Groups for the End-of-Semester Presentations (copy in Presentation Groups (II Sem.) in our Section of the page). I encouraged you to do the preliminary work of making contact, working out how to  "meet", etc. now as the time to do the Presentations will be here really soon. Remember 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.

Homework for next lesson (30.04.20)

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 and upload it to the Homework link in our Section of the Moodle page.. 

Lesson 5 Thursday 2nd April 

This was an online lesson held via Meet.

We went briefly over your viewing of films featuring regional accents and identified the accents used in each of them:

Geordie in 'Billy 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 and one Northern Irish character.

'Made in Dagenham' - London, Cockney Set in the 1960s, so too early for Estuary English).

It's a shame that nobody had been able to watch 'Brassed Off' as this , like the other films is an interesting example of British films focussing on the socio-economic situation of Britain in the last decades of the 20th century. Do watch all of them if you ever get the chance. 

The material for this week was Food and (the beginning of) Drink. 

We covered the importance of Food as the part of any national culture, the influence of moderation of British attitudes to Food, 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 dealt with Sunday Lunch, School meals and fish and Chips. We then began to look at Tea ,one of the two icons of British Drink. We covered a brief history of tea, discovering surprising parallels between tea in the 17th and early 18th century and the present day drug trade! We also looked at how and how much tea is drunk in Britain today and what is often eaten with it: teacakes and scones. We shall continue with the other icon, Beer, next lesson, as well as going over how Food has entered the Language, which we didn't have time for today..

NB Next lesson is Thursday 23rd April, in order to give us (especially me!) time to relax and catch our breath ready for the final lessons of the course.

Homework for next lesson  (23.04.20)

(i) Choose two of the  figures on the Choice file "Homework Lesson 5 Presentation People to choose from" (NB for some reason the links won't work from here, find the link in our section of the page!) and research them in preparation for a brief (2 mins) oral presentation on them at the next lesson. Use English (preferably British) sources for your research, but do not simply cut and paste bits from Wikipedia! Prepare notes to hand in via the BC Homework Lesson 5 (a) (Presentation notes) link. 

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

Write down on a piece of paper to upload to the  Homework BC Lesson 5 (b) (Scones)    link: 

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) 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 upload together with your notes to the Homework BC Lesson 5 (b) (Scones) link (as proof that you made them)

Lesson 4 Thursday 26th March

This was our first online lesson. All lessons will be in this format from now on, until further notice...

I gave back the Fair and Fuss homework and we 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.

For the Bake Off homework, It now seems that it is impossible to find episodes on any of the streaming sites, without paying but there are some older episodes on Youtube. I went over the judges' and presetners' accents. Paul Hollywood, the male judge has a north-western  accent, Scouse, or Liverpudlian, characterised by no differentiation between  /ʌ/ and /ʊ/, the short /a/ as opposed to RP /a:/, occasional /h/ dropping and the pronunciation of 'ing' as /ŋg/. Prue Leith, the current female judge (and Mary Berry, the former female judge), has a classic RP accent. The male presenter (Noel Fielding) has an Estuary English accent and the femnale presenter Sandi Toksvig is originally Danish but has been living in the UK for many years and now has a modern  RP accent with hardly any trace of her original accent. 

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. There is the link to the recordings from the BBC Voices project on accents in our section of the Moodle page.

My plan is to have a lesson (via Meet) next week (2nd April) and then miss two weeks and start again on Thursday 23rd April. I'll confirm this at next week's lesson.

Homework for next lesson (02.04.20)

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

'Billy Elliott'

^{'The Full Monty'}

^'Pride'

^{'Brassed Off'} 

'Made in Dagenham'

Do try to find 'Pride', 'Brassed Off' and 'Made in Dagenham' to watch. 'Billy Elliot' and 'The Full Monty' are usually very easy to find. 

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 and upload them to the Homework: regional accents in films (Lesson 4) link in our section of the page.

I forgot to tell you during the lesson, but during the Distance Learning period, you can book an appointment for office hours (usual time) via email and I'll send you the access code link.

Lesson 3 Thursday 19th March

This was our second online lesson and it took a tremendous amount of time and effort to get it recorded and put it up here on the Moodle page. Because of this and since it seems as thought Distance learning is going to be with us for some time to come, next week's lesson (Lesson 4, Thursday 26th March) will be a video lesson held at the lesson time via the Meet facility. You will receive an "invitation" via your unifi email address to attend the lesson. Please reply to this (in the affirmative!) and then use the code link it contains to join the virtual lesson at 3 pm on Thursday.

Today's lesson concerned one of the Outlooks of Englishness: class-consciousness. We went over some contemporary theories of class in the UK,and then 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. 

The material for Lesson 3 is available in our Section of the page in 3 files of slides and 3 audio files.

I went over some of the examples of Fair and Fuss and linked them to the aspects of Englishness they reveal: 'fair' the Value of fair-play and the Reflex of Moderation and 'fuss' the Reflex of Moderation and the Value of Modesty.

Homework for the next lesson (Thursday 26.03.20 - live via Meet!)

(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 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 12th February

This was our first online lesson and it took a tremendous amount of time and effort to get it recorded and put it up here on the Moodle page. 

The lesson is in 3 parts, two files for each part: one slides and one audio commentary on the slides.

British Culture Lesson 2 Part 1

British Culture Lesson 2 Part 1 Audio

British Culture Lesson 2 Part 2

British Culture Lesson 2 Part 2 Audio

British Culture Lesson 2 Part 3

British Culture Lesson 2 Part 3 Audio

I hope they are effective. Please let me know if you can't follow/download/whatever them.

The lesson 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 also looked at Queueing and how this relates to aspects of Englishness, (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 19.03.20)

(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 via email.

(ii) Observe queues (if you can, though the present situation seems to have changed Italian queueing habits!) or else remember queues you have seen or been in.  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 27th February

First of all we had a little talk about the current situation re the Virus and I stressed what had been transmitted on the University Information Session on it yesterday (Wednesday 26th, 12-13, live streaming on University site, link on University homepage), that only people with previous serious health conditions which would make possible infection very serious for them, or who had been in contact with people already infected, should not come to lessons and that alternative sources of teaching would be made available to them. Everyone else should continue to come unless a directive from the Ministry of Health, via the Ministry of Education and University, imposes a suspension of teaching.

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).  I stressed that no photographs of slides are allowed since what you read on the slides and make notes on goes into your head, what you photograph goes into your 'phone!

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 05.30.20)

(i) 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

(ii) Try to count the number of "tazze di té/caffe" you hear in dubbed US or UK TV serials or films during the week.