Worlds of English
How has the English language spread internationally - and is the worldwide influence of English a cause for celebration or concern? How is it changing in response to social, cultural, and technological developments? ‘Worlds of English’ investigates these notions by looking at the expansion of English in China since the 1970s, how it is now the dominant language used at the European Parliament and how a local vernacular in Singapore, known as 'Singlish' is causing controversy. It also examin
Keep on learning   There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to Business English: Making decisions Acknowledgements This free course includes adapted extracts from an Open University course which is no longer available to new students. If you found this interesting you could explore more free Language courses or view the range of currently available OU Languages courses. Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available un 3.7 Features of speech: language in real life In our discussion of dysfluency, we specifically avoided the use of the word ‘error’. In the past, because written grammar was used to judge speech, common features of speech were judged as errors because they do not occur in the more planned environment of written text. Thus what type of data is analysed is crucial to what the grammatical findings are. We said earlier that grammar descriptions were increasingly being developed on the basis of examining how language is really used. 3.3 Features of speech: dialogue In Section 3.2, Texts 1 and 2 were both monologues, that is, one person speaking or writing. Speech is more often a dialogue, a communication between two or more speakers and this influences the grammar choices made. We can see this in the dialogue transcribed below. 1.2 The importance of grammar We want you to start thinking about what exactly we mean by a term like ‘grammar’ and how and why grammar differs in speech and writing. For some of you this will revise and build on your knowledge of previous study. Activity 1 is a way of raising questions in your mind and you will find some answers or explanations in the rest of the course. 1.1 La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias In this session you are going to learn how to describe places, in terms of both appearance and function, starting with a new technology park in Valencia,
la Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, a wonderful example of modern Spanish architecture. Key learning points Description of a famous public place Adjectives: gender and number 3.4.1 Describing characteristics The following expressions are useful when you are describing something. There is/are There is a large open-plan reception area. There are 55 parking spaces. Has/have [got] The site has 1,000 m2 of storage space. All the offices have outside windows. Form and uses of language Mapping your journey Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: understand spoken descriptions of holiday resorts understand people talking about where and when they take their holidays and why write an informal postcard or letter identifying the advantages and disadvantages of a holiday resort and/or describing personal holiday plans make a short oral presentation about personal holiday plans question other people about their plans Introducing Health Sciences: Visual Impairment 4.11 Critiquing gender essentialism Look again at what Tannen and Gray say about men's and women's communicative behaviour. Then review the description of essentialism 4.9 The revival of gender essentialism After falling out of fashion in the wake of feminist influence in the 1970s and 1980s, there are signs that the notion of ‘essential’ gender differences is undergoing a revival. At an academic level, this has been stimulated by work within genetics, evolutionary psychology and neurology (see Baron-Cohen, 2003). At a more popular level, self-help manuals which apparently ‘explain’ the differences between men's and women's behaviours, and offer advice on coping with them, have become hu 4.5 Gender and power Feminist writers have documented the ways in which inequalities based on gender are reflected and reproduced in health and social care services. Although the majority of workers in care services are women, men are over-represented in management and in positions of authority, and male-dominated professions, such as medicine, tend to exert more power than those, such as nursing, in which women are the majority. For example, whereas women make up 75% of the workforce in the NHS (Doyal, 1999), th 3.3 Ethnicity By contrast with ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’ is still widely used to describe differences between groups, although like ‘race’ it is a contested term. The terms ‘ethnic’ and ‘ethnicity’ are commonly used to denote groups of people who share common national or geographical origins, values and beliefs, and customs and traditions. Unlike the notion of ‘race’, ethnicity does not imply innate biological differences but rather similarities derived from belonging to, or being brought 2.7.2 Identities are dynamic The identities people assume, and the relative importance they attach to them, change over time because of both personal change in their lives and change in the external world (for example, as a result of changing ideas about disability). Consequently, identity should not be seen as something ‘fixed’ within people. Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material within this product Course image: Author(s): Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce materia
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Do you want to relocate to the UK? This free course, Business English: Making decisions, will help you with the language difficulties that can arise while providing assistance with the practicalities of the decision-making processes involved and the consultation that is necessary to ensure employees are kept informed.
First published on Tue, 23 Oct 2018 a
In this free course, Form and uses of language, we will consider how language can be used in different ways for different purposes. To do this we will use the theme of memorial and commemoration. In the first section we briefly discuss the life of the poet Siegfried Sassoon before examining both his poetry and his prose. Through this we will see how Sassoon conveys meaning in different ways for different audiences using different forms. Following this we discuss more generally how different mean
Mapping your journey
Partial or total loss of sight affects millions of people worldwide. Many cases are preventable or curable, but simple interventions are not available in some poorer countries. The 15 video tracks in this album explore the impact of visual impairment and corrective treatments. Derek Child explains how he learned to adapt to losing his sight and the training that helps him stay mobile and independent. Experts from Contamac reveal the science behind lens production. The Good Health Train brings b
Activity 19
