In this session we will explore:

1. In this session we will explore: • feedback on between session tasks • nouns • nominalisation • articles • adjectives • noun groups • varying sentence beginnings

2. Between session tasks • Most Important Point • What was one point from the reading ‘Learning to use’ and ‘Learning about’ language that resonated with you or that was surprising or new to you ? • Strategies trialled • Observations, ideas, resources

3. One school story

4. What is a noun? • Nouns are words used to represent people, places, ideas and things. A noun answers the question “Who?” or “What?” • There are different types of nouns: • Common nouns(girl, egg, classroom) • Proper nouns (Sam, Wagga Wagga) • Collective nouns (crowd, swarm, team) • Abstract nouns (sadness, love, wonder)

5. What is a noun? • There are different types of nouns. For example: • Concrete/abstract nouns • Particular/general nouns • Everyday/technical nouns • Objective/subjective nouns • Literal/metaphorical nouns Ref “A Grammar Companion” pg 23-25

6. concrete/abstract nouns Common (or concrete) nouns – these nouns name the tangible and visible things eg sand, chair, boy, town, house. Abstract nouns – these nouns name things that cannot be touched or seen such as ideas or concepts or feelings eg memory, honesty, justice, love, luck, prevention, research, issue, factor, process. An important shift in students’ learning is from the concrete to the abstract. This shift into abstraction is a major challenge for students who are used to dealing with concrete, physical experiences. (Abstract nouns are particularly effective in persuasive texts as a rhetorical device)

7. concrete/abstract noun For example People are damaging the ecosystems of aquatic plants and animals by doing many things that are harmful. They dump rubbish in ponds, creeks, rivers, lakes and even the ocean. They use fertilisers to help plants grow but when it rains the nutrients from the fertilisers are washed into the waterways so that algae grow and the water plants and animals die. People are destroying the habitat of these plants and creatures and fragmenting the places where they live. There are now fewer fish to catch because of the overfishing of local species. The main factors adversely affecting aquatic ecosystems include the inappropriate disposal of rubbish, nutrient or sediment runoff, habitat destruction and fragmentation, and depletion of local species through overfishing.

8. particular/general nouns When we are dealing with familiar, personal experiences, we tend to use noun groups that refer to particular people, places and things (eg mum, the lady next door, our house, this ant, my dog Toby, our Toyota). Particular nouns are often found in recounts of personal experience, stories and descriptions. As students progress through school, however, they need to be able to move from the particular to the general, referring to classes of things rather than a particular individual (egtransportas opposed to ‘our station wagon’; domestic animals as opposed to ‘Toby”; community workers as opposed to ‘Mrs Thomas’; mountain ranges as opposed to ‘Mt Keira’). General nouns are more likely to be found in informative texts (such as information reports, explanations) and persuasive texts (expositions and discussions).

9. everyday/technical nouns When students are learning about concepts that are specific to a certain field of study, they need to use technical terminology that is precise and unambiguous (eg digit, haiku, vertebrate, rectangle, carbon dioxide, secondary sources, modality). A technical noun is one that has been tightly defined within a particular discipline so that people working within that discipline can share knowledge efficiently and precisely. Students need to learn the technical language of the specialist disciplines. Activity How Evolution Works- Find technical words in the article. Vocabulary - precise/topical and technical language

10. objective/subjective nouns • In using nouns, we can be objective and impartial, or we can be more subjective and judgemental. Students need to identify when a text is attempting to persuade them to a particular point of view. This often happens through the choice of nouns made by the speaker or writer (eg obsession, mongrel, eyesore, monstrosity, cult, destruction). • Subjective nouns are often found in texts which seek to persuade (eg exposition, discussion, advertisements, editorials, stories).

11. objective/subjective nouns

12. literal/metaphorical nouns The literal meaning is the definition in the dictionary. Sometimes, however, we represent one thing by referring to it metaphorically as something else. This is one way of extending and enriching meaning. For example: a) The Beach The beach is a quarter of golden fruit, A soft ripe melon sliced to a half-moon curve, Having a thick green rind of jungle growth; And the sea devours it with its sharp, sharp white teeth. William Hart-Smith b) ‘Plastic is the new visible face of ocean pollution.’ (Plastics in the Ocean article, ELLA)

13. nouns • As students progress through school, we would expect a movement: • from the particular towards the general • from the everyday towards the technical • from the concrete to the abstract • from the literal to the metaphorical

14. Nouns and types of text • Activity • What types of noun do different types of writing require? • For example in 2012 NAPLAN Year 7: • Persuasive (p 2, 8) • Informative (p 3, p 5, p9) • Imaginative (p 4, p 6, p 7)

15. Why do we need to know about nouns? As students move into later primary and secondary school, ‘they will encounter and create texts that are characteristic of the kinds of written texts that require careful crafting and reflection. Such texts are typically quite dense and contain high levels of nominalisation and abstraction.’ (A New Grammar Companion pg 160) Nominalisation is a way of making a text more compact and ‘written’ by changing verbs (and other words) into nouns. Instead of saying, for example, “When you heat a liquid it can change into a gas. When the gas cools it returns to a liquid.” we could use nominalisations: “Vaporisation is followed by condensation.” (A Grammar Companion pg 21)

16. Nominalisation • the process of forming a noun or noun group from a verb, conjunction, adjective or clause • The agent is removed so the writing becomes more objective, compact and abstract • eg destroy destruction • people who develop land for profit developers • Nominalisation of a verb: • eg Water vapourcondenses when the air temperature is reduced. • Condensation results from a reduction in air temperature. • Nominalisation of a clause: • eg Students like using mobile phones so much they spend • too much money on them. • The popularity of mobile phones has led to unnecessary • expense.

17. Nominalisation More examples eg Before preparing the benches you should clean and sanitize them so that they don’t become cross contaminated. Before preparation the benches should be cleaned and sanitized to avoid cross contamination. eg You should prepare the chicken within 20 minutes in case binary fission occurs and bacteria grows. The chicken should be prepared within 20 minutes to prevent binary fission and the growth of bacteria.

18. Nominalisation

19. Nominalisation Forming nominalisations Nominalisations can be formed by adding a suffix to a verb frustrate/frustration (suffix –tion) argue/argument (suffix –ment) propose/proposal (suffix -al) Nominalise these sentences: 1.She encouraged the cast and they performed brilliantly. 2. After the Romans settled Britain many roads were built.

20. Nominalisation 1.She encouraged the cast and they performed brilliantly. Her encouragementof the cast resulted in a brilliant performance. 2. After the Romans settled Britain many roads were built. Following Roman settlement of Britain, there was much road construction. Activity - Exercise 6.10 (Droga and Humphrey)

21. Nominalisation

22. Why do we need to know about nouns? Human impact on aquatic systems More spoken-like text: Certain animals and plants live in the water and they interact with each other and form communities and these communities also interact with other non-living things and this is called an ecosystem. But these ecosystems are being damaged because human beings keep butting in and mucking up the environment. A ‘written’ version of the text All ecosystems are having to deal with the problem of human impact on an unprecedented scale. Aquatic ecosystems are being increasingly damaged because human beings are intervening irresponsibly in the natural environment.

23. Why do we need to know about nouns? Human impact on aquatic systems A ‘written’ version of the text All ecosystems are having to deal with the problem of human impact on an unprecedented scale. Aquatic ecosystems are being increasingly damaged because human beings are intervening irresponsibly in the natural environment. A very ‘written’ version of the text The result of irresponsible human intervention in the natural environment is increasing degradation of aquatic ecosystems.

24. The shift from spoken to written text More spoken-like text: Certain animals and plants live in the water and they interact with each other and form communities and these communities also interact with other non-living things and this is called an ecosystem. But these ecosystems are being damagedbecausehuman beings keep butting in and mucking up the environment. (10 clauses) A very ‘written’ version of the text The result of irresponsible human intervention in the natural environment is increasingdegradation of aquatic ecosystems. (1 clause) If we look at this very ‘written’ sentence, we can see the language has been compacted in the shift from spoken to written mainly through the use of noun groups (nominalisation). The sentence is now very lexically dense (many content words, lexical items: nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives) – typical of more mature written texts.

25. Nominalisation Nominalisation is an important resource for creating abstract and technical terms and for condensing information in texts. It is highly valued as it can help students to sound more like experts or authorities with the text more objective and succinct. Nominalisation is one of the major differences between spoken and written language. Nominalisation becomes increasingly important as students move through primary school into secondary school. Textbooks and other resources used in specialised subjects such as history, science, maths and geography use nominalisation to package more information into sentences and increasingly, students are expected to use nominalisation to demonstrate that they understand the more abstract concepts in these subjects.

26. Nominalisation Nominalisation is a useful strategy for compacting information and making texts tighter and the texts of students who can use it effectively tend to be more highly valued. However, it has the effect of making texts very dense and difficult to read. Students need support in ‘unpacking’ nominalisations back to the ‘spoken’ form, for example: habitat destruction and fragmentation “people are destroying the habitat of plants and animals and they are fragmenting the places where they live” Teaching students about nominalisation is equally important in both reading and writing as students not only need to unpack meanings in the texts that they read but also to condense ideas in their own writing. For example the event of getting to the destination can be packed into the noun group the arrival.

27. Articles Articles answer the question “ Which one?” There are two kinds of articles: the definite article “the”and the indefinite article “a / an” The articles in English indicate the degree to which a reference to something is general or specific. If it is a general reference, we use the indefinite article a or an (eg We saw a whale). If it is specific we use the definitive article the (eg The whale plunged into the water). The prime function of articles is to signal that a noun is to follow sooner or later eg the brown fox the proverbially quick brown fox a sports car an expensive state-of-the-art sports car. A or AN A is used before words beginning with a consonant SOUND and AN before words beginning with a vowel SOUND. Therefore it is “an hour” but “a once in a life time experience”.

28. Adjectives An adjective is a word that describes, defines or evaluates a noun. ega big room, a windowless room, an awful room, a poky room. An adjective can tell us much about the noun. There are different types of adjectives eg possessivemy, his, her, Sandra’s, our, their quantitytwo, many, lots of, a hundred, both opinion beautiful, delicious, wonderful, funny, horrible factual big, old, yellow, sharp-clawed comparingmore delicate/most delicate, best, bigger classifyingPersian cat, air transport, plastic shoes, art lesson

29. Adjectives • Adjectives are usually used before the noun (eg the big, red, steam train), but this has not always been the case and we still have expressions such as “his lady fair” and “life eternal”. • Adjectives can also be used after the verb. eg The building is new. I feel uncomfortable. Tim's backpack feltvery heavy. Which painting is famous? The storm remained strong for several days.

30. Nouns and noun groups Activity Find the nouns and underline the noun groups in these sentences (remember to include any articles, pronouns and adjectives relating to a noun in the noun groups): • Our National Parks protect Australia’s native fauna and flora. • They also protect Australia’s ancient history by preserving Aboriginal Dreamtime stories. • Aboriginal people lived on the coast and in the harsh fiery deserts.

31. In this session we explored: • nouns • nominalisation • articles • adjectives • noun groups • varying sentence beginnings

32. References • A Grammar Companion– Beverly Derewianka PETA 2002 • A New Grammar Companion - Beverly Derewianka e:lit 2011 • Grammar and Meaning – Target Texts Berry, NSW 2005 • Conversations about Text – Joanne Rossbridge and Kathy Rushton e:lit 2010 • English K-6 Syllabus – Board of Studies NSW 1998 • Writing and Spelling Strategies – NSW DET 2007 • Aspects of Grammar – NSW DET 2006 • Teaching Literacy in …series (9 books) NSW DET 1998 • Working Grammar – Sally Humphrey, Kristina Love and Louise DrogaPearson 2011

33. References Online resources • NAPLAN publications: Persuasive Writing Marking Guide Teaching Strategies To find online: DET Intranet > School Measurement, Assessment and Reporting Toolkit (SMART) menu right hand side > NAPLAN (left hand side menu) > Publications. You will find the NAPLAN 2011 Persuasive Writing Marking Guide in the NAPLAN 2011 Manuals section and scroll down for teaching ideas in NAPLAN 2010 Teaching Strategies and NAPLAN 2009 Teaching Strategies.

34. References Online resources • BST and ELLA Marking Manuals and Teaching Strategies - NSW DET 2004 - 2008 • Aspects of Grammar – NSW DET 2006 To find online DET Intranet > School Measurement, Assessment and Reporting Toolkit (SMART) menu right hand side > Historical EMSAD resources (left hand side menu) > find BST and ELLA publications on the main page to find BST and ELLA Marking Manuals and Teaching Strategies. Scroll down on the BST publications page to also find Aspects of Grammar. Teaching Literacy in … series (9 books) NSW DET 1998 To find online DET Intranet > Curriculum resources (tab along top) > Curriculum learning and innovation centre (first website) > Support for Years 7-12 (right hand side menu) > go to search at top right and type in in Literacy > Scroll down to Literacy Publications > you will find the Teaching Literacy in … series at the end of the page.

35. For our next session: • Undertake the professional readingGetting Started with Functional Grammar in an Upper Primary Classroomprovided at Workshop 2 with your reflections on the readings recorded in the journal. • Plan and implement a lesson or lesson sequence trialling ideas to teach any of the grammar concepts presented at Workshop 1 or 2 and report back for discussion and sharing of observations, ideas and resources with other course participants.