ENGA2 English Language resource sharing

Framework for ENGA2 analysis

2011-02-08T02:55:00.000-08:00

I've posted this to the SFX Language blog and it could be good for anyone teaching/analysing texts for the Investigating Representation bit of the coursework.

Cheryl Cole and Wayne Rooney - backlash

2010-10-22T03:52:00.000-07:00

This piece in today's Independent takes a close look at how the media represent celebrities like Wayne Rooney and Cheryl Cole when the backlash kicks in. Good stuff for ENGA2 Investigating Representations?

Representation of young people

2009-11-06T06:54:00.000-08:00

(I've taken this straight from the SFX English Language blog as I thought it might be helpful for ENGA2 teachers.)

Hoodies, thugs, yobs, feral youths, louts and scum. That's what many readers of this blog are, if you subscribe to the popular view that all young people (particularly if they're from the inner city and/or black and/or working class) are unruly troublemakers.

Jane Graham writing in today's Guardian, in a piece mainly about the new Michael Caine film, Harry Brown*, points out that the hooded youth or "hoodie" has now become a kind of visual or linguistic shorthand for a new kind of folk devil, a new bogeyman for the twenty first century. As Graham points out, hoodies are "defined by their class (perceived as being bottom of the heap) and their social standing (their relationship to society is always seen as being oppositional). Hoodies aren't "kids" or "youngsters" or even "rebels" – in fact, recent research by Women in Journalism on regional and national newspaper reporting of hoodies shows that the word is most commonly interchanged with (in order of popularity) "yob", "thug", "lout" and "scum"".

And the research by Women in Journalism referred to above makes for some fascinating reading. The headline statistics that they use in the report "Hoodies or Altar Boys?" are as follows:

* 85% of teen boys said newspapers portray them in a bad light
* Reality TV was seen as portraying teen boys most fairly
* Media stories about yobs and hoodies are the main reason why teen
boys are wary of other teenagers
* 80% of teen boys think adults are more wary of them now than they were a year ago.
* Terms used in newspaper stories about teen boys included thugs, yobs, hoodies, feral, evil, lout, monsters, brutes, scum, menace, heartless, sick, menacing and inhuman
* Over the past year, there were more newspaper stories about teens and crime (as victims or offenders) than about teens and all other subjects put together

* Even on subjects other than crime, few newspaper stories show teen boys in a good light: only 24% of stories about teens and sport were positive about teenage boys; only 16% of stories about teens and entertainment were positive.
Fiona Bawdon, the WiJ committee member who will be presenting the research, says: “When a photo of a group of perfectly ordinary lads standing around wearing hooded tops has become visual shorthand for urban menace, or even the breakdown of society, it's clear that teenage boys have a serious image problem. The teen boys' "brand" has become toxic. Media coverage of boys is unrelentingly negative, focusing almost entirely on them as victims or perpetrators of crime - and our research shows that the media is helping make teenage boys fearful of each other.”

So, as students of English Language, particularly if you're doing ENGA2 work on the representation of young people, this is fertile ground to investigate. The links on the Women in Journalism site are really helpful too, as they point us towards some particularly relevant articles such as Suzanne Moore's thoughtful piece in The Daily Mail here and The Labour MP David Lammy's excellent comment column here.

And just to remind you of how very similar students to yourselves are referred to in the national press and by members of the public, why not have a read of this appalling tripe from the Daily Mail and some of the deranged comments of its readers on a recent unpleasant incident linked to Orpington College, a "scum magnet" according to an equally unpleasant article in The Sun.

*set in Elephant and Castle, south London fact fans

Knife crime campaigns

2009-10-01T22:30:00.000-07:00

Some useful stuff about knife crime and campaigns to cut it.

BBC news site
2008 story on knife searches and fear of knife crime
It Doesn't Have To Happen Campaign on Bebo

Charlie Brooker on apple

2009-09-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

Representation of techology and the people who love it - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/charlie-brooker-microsoft-mac-windows

Bunty, Jackie etc

2009-09-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

Today's freebie is Tammy ( don't remember it myself) but some of the material might be usefully compared with Jacqueline Wilson (a story about a girl who looks after her family since the death of her mum). 'The Slaves of War Orphan Farm' (seriously) could be used in conjunction with some misery lit - but I'm not volunteering to read that.

Bunty and Jackie

2009-09-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

The Guardian's running reprints of 1970s comics in every edition this week. The Jackie and Bunty ones are class for analysing representation of gender (if a bit embarrassing to be seen reading on the train). I'll try to scan a few pages in and add them this weekend.

Kim Clijsters

2009-09-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

Sit down before you read this. A woman who has had a baby (yes, a mum) has managed to do something else as well - in this case win a tennis tournament.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/14/kim-clijsters-motherhood

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/parenting/2636817/Mums-the-word-for-sport-glory.htm

Social workers

2009-09-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

There's a new recruitment campaign on to persuade people to become social workers... just as well after last year's Baby P and this year's Edlington media maulings.

It's called Give Them a Voice and it's here.
The Daily Mail appears surprised that social workers can't be recruited here

Pass Notes

2009-09-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

Great news - Guardian Pass Notes is back. Possible model for part of the intervention in ENGA4. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/08/pass-notes-return-g2

Second World War

2009-09-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

The latest series of Guardian booklets contains short extracts from The Manchester Guardian from the period of the Second World War. Could be useful...

Representation of female tennis players

2009-09-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

Stumbled across this excellent feminist take on how female tennis players are represented through language while looking for something else. There's also some very good stuff in Lia Litosseliti's Gender and Language: Theory and Practice, a text that I came across last year and used successfully with AS ENGA2 students.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/02/hadley-freeman-jayceee-lee-dugard

2009-09-03T12:04:00.000-07:00

Hadley Freeman on Jaycee Lee Dugard

Women beware women

2009-06-02T05:26:00.000-07:00

Joanna Bourke takes a look at coverage of women's violence and asks why it's not reported in the same ways as men's violence.

Women Beware Women

Charlie Brooker on men

2009-06-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

It's typical Charlie Brooker style - opinionated, rude, a bit surreal - but lots of fun for taking a look at gender from a different perspective.

Charlie Brooker in The Guardian

Encouraging understanding of difference

2009-02-27T22:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a piece from today's BBC website about attempts to offer positive representations and increased understanding of mental health problems to teenagers.

We used The Curious Incident... as an example of a text that makes an intervention into how disability and mental health (or just perceived "weirdness") might be represented, and this article could be a helpful complementary text.

Positive representations of young people

2009-01-10T00:05:00.000-08:00

Article in this week's Guardian about the "happiness league" for young people. This could be a useful counterpoint to the scaremongering of other, less flattering representations elsewhere on the blog.

More friends and emotional security...

Karen Matthews and single mothers

2008-12-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

Some more stuff on single mothers, linked to the Shannon Matthews' case.

Daily Telegraph article defending single mothers (and lots of comments attacking the article).

Barbara Ellen in The Guardian on "why Karen Matthews really offended the middle classes".

News of the World "Evil Karen Matthews two-timed pervert lover with sick kidnapper" (or something like that)

Social workers and children's services

2008-12-02T22:04:00.000-08:00

Following the horrific Baby P story, the papers have been full of vitriolic attacks on social workers in Haringey (and in general). Here's a taste of some of the ways in which this social group and individuals such as Sharon Shoesmith have been represented comments on The Sun's message boards.

Sun letters and texts

Daily Mirror - view from a social worker

Daily Mail - "bungling social workers put children at risk"

Daily Mail - social workers criticised for "flimsy abuse claim"

You can't win with the Daily Mail, can you?

As an ENGA1 mode exercise, you might find the comparisons between Sun letters and text messages useful too.

Single mothers

2008-12-02T03:53:00.000-08:00

I've encouraged my students to google a phrase to get texts on a more specific topic. Demonstrating it with "single mother", some of the first-page hits I got were: this Guardian piece on J K Rowling and her rags-to-riches story (from July 1997); this Independent comment by Kate Saunders on her own experience (from Apr 2007) and this wonderful example from the Daily Mail about a single Nigerian mother who lives in a big house that - guess what - we the taxpayers are funding (from Nov 2008). There's clearly enough here for an investigation, but any of the texts could also be used as part of an 'institution' investigation into the idea of Family, or further texts about J K Rowling or Omowunmi Odia could be found for a piece on individuals.

Gordon Ramsay is a "lying, cheating, hypocritical scumbag"

2008-11-30T11:38:00.000-08:00

No, don't beat about the bush: tell us what you really think.

Here's the News of the World's Carole Malone telling us what she thinks of the f-word chef (presumably that f-word is now fidelity). Nice use of premodifiers there...

Obituaries

2008-11-27T13:26:00.000-08:00

[caption id="attachment_38" align="alignleft" width="123" caption="elliott smith"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_39" align="alignright" width="86" caption="richey edwards"][/caption]

Representation of individuals in obituaries? Here's one from this week's Guardian which has a bit of a twist: no one is really sure if he's dead or not. And then a couple of others of musicians who've met untimely deaths...

Richey Edwards of Manic Street Preachers

Elliott Smith

Kurt Cobain of Nirvana

Arthur Lee of Love

Tupac Shakur

Article on Ian Curtis of Joy Division

Ideas for ENGA2 coursework projects - wikis

2008-11-21T02:44:00.000-08:00

We've spent about a month with 4 classes on the ENGA2 work so far. Our classes are all taught by 2 teachers with one doing ENGA1 and the other doing ENGA2, so it means we get 3 periods a week on coursework.

In my 2 classes we've done some early work on social groups and individuals, with students using our college VLE (Moodle) to track a celebrity/ individual in the news and post their links to a wiki. It's a pretty simple idea but if you've not come across a wiki before, it might need some explanation.

Basically, a wiki is a lo-fi website that allows students to create their own pages with text, images and links to other sites. We've got it set up so each student has their own wiki and we can, as teachers, access all their wikis to check on progress. The kinds of things they're posting are links to stories about their chosen individuals and celebs, so one student has been looking at how Jean Charles De Menezes has been represented in the press during the inquiry into his shooting, several have looked at Barack Obama in the run up to and afternmath of his election, some have looked at Madonna, Guy Ritchie, Kerry Katona, Sarah Palin, Lewis Hamilton, Gordon Brown...the list goes on. But they're posting the links to their wikis and keeping tabs on evolving news stories, so that's a start.

The difficult bit is getting them to then select the most useful stuff from these stories to analyse for representation. We've spent about 3 lessons so far selecting and analysing anything from 2-3 word noun phrases ("troubled Amy Winehouse", "former drug abuser Kerry Katona") to whole paragraphs of text where more complex discourses are presented.

They're now moving onto a 2nd tracking exercise on events, issues or institutions, before we do a third and final one at the end of term on social groups.

Alongside this, we've started getting them to do some analytical work to show them what kinds of frameworks are relevant, and for this I've used extracts on how young people are represented. I'll post up the links or files later this week.

Anyway, what's everyone else doing or planning to do? I can't claim that our approach is particularly original or successful (who knows what'll actually get written for the coursework) but it'd be good to hear of any other approaches from teachers of ENGA2.

More on representation of young people

2008-11-21T02:27:00.000-08:00

This follows on from the Barnardo's ads earlier in the week.

Martin Narey of Barnardo's in The Times

Most adults chink children are "feral and a danger to society"

Kids these days: are they all bad?

Marcel Berlins in The Guardian

They're people not animals

Representation of young people

2008-11-17T00:07:00.000-08:00

Some good stuff on the BBC website today linked to the new Barnardo's campaign "Children in Trouble".

BBC story

Barnardo's campaign

Could be a good investigation focus with a ready-made creative task in writing a charity ad to present a more positive representation?

Gordon Brown's speech to Labour Party conference

2008-09-24T14:18:00.000-07:00

I've blogged this at the SFX site if anyone wants to use the links there.

Knife Crime reporting

2008-09-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

Programme coming up on Monday night Radio 4 9pm which sounds good. I'm going to try to record it to use.

Binge drinking

2008-09-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

Now that term's properly begun, this is what I feel like doing every day. Here's a link to Terry Kirby in The Guardian looking at the background to binge drinking in Britain and its representation in the media.

Andy Murray coverage during Wimbledon 2008

2008-07-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

Here are a range of press extracts from this year's Wimbledon, all offering representations of an individual (Andy Murray) during the 10 days he was in the competition: The Sun 25/6/08, Daily Mirror 30/6/08 and 1/7/08, Daily Record 1/7/08, Daily Mail 2/7/08 and The Sun 3/7/08

Youth crime - an historical perspective

2008-07-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

Good article about moral panics over youth crime from Mick Hume in The Times.

Channel 4 Dispatches - press coverage of Muslims

2008-07-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

Channel 4's Dispatches programme on Monday 7th July looks at how Muslims have been represented in the British media, particularly since the July 7th bombings.

The very detailed Cardiff University report into media representations of Muslims is available here.

Disarming Britain

2008-06-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Site supporting Channel 4's season on gun and knife crime in Britain.

The programmes themselves could be good for use in class and might help with resources from other modes, plus there's a blog and sets of links to other sites focusing on the issue.

Welcome to new contributors

2008-06-13T11:43:00.000-07:00

There are quite a few new contributors joining and what I've done so far is to make everyone an "editor" which means you can all post new material to the blog without it going through the site administrator (me). Hopefully that's the most straightforward and democratic way of running it.

For anyone new to blogging, we can't actually host any files here: what we can do is link to other sites and add a few comments about what might be useful about the links (although that's not absolutely necessary). If you do want to share actual resources beyond links, I have purchased some webspace under a similar name to this blog and we can use that. Just email me if you want some material to go on the site, or if you want help with anything on here.

When you post, there are tags and categories that can be added to help place the different links in the right topic areas. I've tried to base the ones posted so far on the categories in the AQA A spec for this unit, but if you think of your own tags, just add them as you see fit.

With a bit of luck we'll soon have lots of stuff to share and loads of ideas to think about.

Representation of soldiers' wives and partners

2008-06-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

From today's Sun. Might be good for its obviously gendered construction of Daniel Gamble's girlfriend's identity ("Heartbroken Tammy", "Inconsolable Tammy" , "pretty shop assistant Tammy").

Social groups - "pikeys"

2008-06-11T04:31:00.000-07:00

BBC Magazine article on the word "pikey"

Wikipedia's definitions of "pikey"

ENGA2 - representation of Muslims in Britain

2008-06-08T02:45:00.000-07:00

The Guardian - Inside the world of UK Muslim women:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/01/britishidentity.islam?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews

The Guardian - Recognise our role in society

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jan/21/islamandbritain.comment5

International Herald Tribune - Head-to-toe Muslim veils test tolerance of secular Britain

http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=6263112

Muslim Women's Sport Foundation in the media

http://www.mwsf.org.uk/media.html

Majeds Blog - Do Muslim Women Need Empowering?

http://majedsblog.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/event-analysis-do-muslim-women-in-britain-need-empowering/

The Daily Mail - Hairdresser sued for refusing to hire Muslim woman in a headscarf

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492407/Hairdresser-sued-refusing-hire-Muslim-woman-headscarf.html

Muslim Parents Association UK - Shaping the Future: A Call to Parents

http://www10.brinkster.com/muslimpa/parenting1.asp

War in Afghanistan - reports from Telegraph

2008-06-08T02:42:00.000-07:00

I thought these were good links to articles about the war in Afghanistan and a video diary that might be good for transcription and analysis. The Telegraph articles are by Thomas Harding and I think they'd be interesting to analyse on their own as texts as well as ones to group together for study on ENGA2.

Telegraph article on paratroopers' assault on Taliban

Paratroopers launch surprise attack

Video diary