Do you know the difference between a noun and an adjective? Do you know why we say indefatigable but not unfluffabluable? Would you like to?In this course you’ll go on a whistle-stop tour of all the key components of language. You’ll learn how to identify different parts of a language, from words all the way up to phrases and sentences. You’ll look at how English structures compare to other languages. You’ll get the chance to test your knowledge and undertake some simple analysis of your own. And you’ll also get to grips with how an understanding of language structure can help you to be creative and playful with language. Armed with this new knowledge, you’ll be able to explain why advertising works, and why jokes are funny!Aimed at complete beginners, no knowledge of grammar has been assumed in this course. You’ll start at the beginning and go on a journey through the different levels of language structure together. You might also find this course useful if you’ve studied grammar in the past but have got a bit out of practice and need a refresher. Transcript355Enrolling on the course will give you the opportunity to earn an Open University digital badge. Badges are not accredited by The Open University but they're a great way to demonstrate your interest in the subject and commitment to your career, and to provide evidence of continuing professional development.Once you are signed in, you can manage your digital badges online from My OpenLearn. In addition, you can download and print your OpenLearn statement of participation – which also displays your Open University badge.The Open University would reallyappreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our start-of-course survey. Once you completethe course we would also value your feedback and suggestions for future improvement, in our end-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not passon your details to others.This course is accredited by the CPD Standards Office. It can be used to provide evidence of continuing professional development and on successful completion of the course you will be awarded 24 CPD points. Evidence of your CPD achievement is provided on the free Statement of Participation awarded on completion.Anyone wishing to provide evidence of their enrolment on this course is able to do so by sharing their Activity Record on their OpenLearn Profile, which is available before completion of the course and earning of the Statement of Participation.
Overview
Syllabus
- Introduction and guidance
- Introduction and guidance
- What is a badged course?
- How to get a badge
- Acknowledgements
- Week1Week 1: Making words
- Introduction
- 1 What is language?
- 2 English is one language among many
- 2.1 What is the biggest language in the world?
- 2.2 Where does English get its words from?
- 3 Introducing morphology
- 4 Free and bound morphemes
- 4.1 More about morphemes
- 4.2 Adding more morphemes
- 4.3 What are the morphemes telling you?
- 5 This week’s quiz
- 6 Summary of Week 1
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week2Week 2: Nouns: naming things, places, people and ideas
- Introduction
- 1 Different kinds of words
- 1.1 Word classes
- 1.2 The word classes you will focus on
- 2 This week’s words
- 2.1 Different kinds of nouns
- 2.2 Can you spot the different types of noun?
- 2.3 All the noun types together
- 3 Nouns make more nouns
- 4 This week’s quiz
- 5 Summary of Week 2
- Acknowledgements
- Week3Week 3: Verbs 1: how we describe what we do
- Introduction
- 1 A doing word?
- 1.1 How verbs can shape meaning
- 2 Verbs and morphemes
- 3 Verb + verb = verb
- 3.1 Auxiliary verbs
- 3.2 Modal auxiliaries
- 3.3 How modal auxiliaries can add nuance
- 3.4 The range of functions of modal auxiliaries
- 4 Categorising verbs
- 5 This week’s quiz
- 6 Summary of Week 3
- Acknowledgements
- Week4Week 4: Verbs 2: how verbs work together
- Introduction
- 1 Present, past and future?
- 1.1 Tense in English
- 1.2 Participles: verbs without any tense
- 2 Regular and irregular verbs
- 2.1 Irregular verbs at work
- 2.2 What you know so far
- 3 Verbs in other languages
- 4 This week’s quiz
- 5 Summary of Week 4
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week5Week 5: Adjectives: adding more information
- Introduction
- 1 What are things like?
- 1.1 Finding the adjectives
- 2 Types of adjectives
- 2.1 What can adjectives tell us?
- 2.2 Where do adjectives go?
- 2.3 Comparing using adjectives
- 2.4 Just talking nonsense?
- 3 Adjectives working together
- 4 New, improved! Adjectives and advertising
- 4.1 Write your own advert
- 5 This week’s quiz
- 6 Summary of Week 5
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week6Week 6: All the bits in between
- Introduction
- 1 Adverbs
- 1.1 Can you recognise an adverb?
- 1.2 More things you can do with adverbs
- 2 How words work together
- 2.1 Open and closed class words
- 2.2 Not all word classes can be expanded
- 2.3 Can you tell what class a word is from its shape?
- 3 Closed class words
- 3.1 Pronouns
- 3.2 Determiners
- 3.3 Prepositions
- 3.4 Conjunctions
- 4 This week’s quiz
- 5 Summary of Week 6
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week7Week 7: Putting it all together
- Introduction
- 1 The structure of language
- 1.1 How to build a language
- 1.2 Where do the words go?
- 1.3 The order of words (in English)
- 2 English sentence structure
- 2.1 Subjects and objects
- 2.2 A Latin headline
- 3 How sentences are built
- 4 Adding more information
- 4.1 SVOCA
- 5 This week’s quiz
- 6 Summary of Week 7
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week8Week 8: Language in the real world
- Introduction
- 1 Sentence forms
- 1.1 Asking questions
- 1.2 Questions in other languages
- 1.3 Giving commands and making exclamations
- 1.4 Spotting different sentence forms
- 2 Structure and sentence functions
- 3 Combining sentences
- 3.1 Making longer sentences
- 3.2 Making more complex sentences
- 4 Language in the real world
- 4.1 Collocation
- 5 Playing with language
- 6 This week’s quiz
- 7 Summary of Week 8
- Next steps?
- Tell us what you think
- References
- Acknowledgements
