Teach Secondary Issue 13.6

DICTIONARY DEEP DIVE Join David Voisin on a rich, and sometimes surprising journey through the points at which literacy, language and vocabulary intersect... SAME ROOT, DIFFERENTWORDS PARDON MY FRENCH RDV stands for the French, ‘ Rendez-vous ’. As a compound noun, it means ‘agreed encounter’ – sometimes of a romantic nature – or the more formal ‘appointment’. As a phrase, it means ‘make your way somewhere’ or also, ironically, ‘surrender yourself’. The expression isn’t to be confused with ‘RSVP’ which stands for ‘ Répondez s’il vous plaît ’ (‘answer please’). The Tier 2 word ‘respondent’ (a person who answers) is evidently linked. LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Reacting to a pupil’s misuse of grammar, a German colleague of mine once commented, “ What’s happened to the past participle? ” As two immigrants of different nationalities, we were now speaking the same language. Relatively few anglophones will be familiar with this term. Deriving from the grammatical construction ‘subject / auxiliary / past’ (as in ‘I have written’), the infamous past participle can often lead to confusion. As languages have evolved, this construction has become modified over time, with speakers sometimes omitting the auxiliary (‘I done this’) or simply flouting the past participle altogether, and using just the past form of the verb (‘I have wrote’ or even ‘I had my nails did’). Non-standard parlance still qualifies as language, but we ought to perhaps describe such use as ‘convention’, rather than the more prescriptive ‘rule’. It’s been observed that past participles ending in ‘one’ (such as ‘done’ or ‘gone’) are more susceptible to change – yet it’s interesting to see how people who learnt English grammatically, rather than phonologically, will rarely write the egregious ‘I could of done’, as a misspelling of the abbreviated auxiliary (‘ve). Syntactic understanding does more than simply please grammar sticklers, though. Past participles are a useful derivation of the verb. The form often lies at the heart of the passive voice, and it can also be used stylistically, in the manner of adjectives (‘fallen angel’, ‘sunken eyes’). TEACHING TIP: SHOWHUMILITY School literacy doesn’t start with literacy programmes, or even books. It starts with teachers. A rich literacy culture is built upon the two pillars of passion and knowledge, yet school leaders sometimes neglect to capitalise on teachers’ experience, willingness or talent. This is because it’s often assumed that literacy coordinators must belong to English departments, stemming from a narrow view of what constitutes ‘language’. The only way to contemplate English (or any language) is with humility. English is such a multi-faceted entity that one person alone cannot claim to know enough about it – and let’s not forget that literacy extends far beyond championing poetry and the canon. What about song lyrics? Religious debates? PE pep talks or sports commentary?What about rap, theatrical scripts or the non-fiction texts studied in the sciences and humanities? MFL teachers who have studied both literature and linguistics can expound on all these, as indeed can any member of staff who genuinely wants to get involved and read to children. If leaders want literacy to permeate the whole school, then they have to invest in their teachers first. David Voisin is a head of MFL You look at yourself in a mir ror; a mir age is an optical illusion In French, ‘ un mir ador ’ is a watchtower and ‘ ligne de mir e ’ means ‘line of sight’ The Spanish ‘ mir ar ’means ‘to look’ 17 teachwire.net/secondary