RELEVANT ASPECTS ABOUT THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH (OLD ENGLISH, MIDDLE ENGLISH AND MODERN ENGLISH)

First of all, I decided to give a brief explanationa about the relevants aspects along the history that contributed to develop the English Language, because of:

1. In my point of view, it is relevant to know deeply how the English language has developed as the students have to be closer to the history of english and, as a consequence, to become familiarized with the older pronunciation, writing and speaking for further situations.

2. The students want to learn the English language so I consider that they should know more about the origins of the language and also the culture apart from the language.

After had explained to them the topic and had done some activities I hope they keep in their minds the informations I will provide them.

THE GOALS THAT I INTEND TO ACHIEVE

Students will find amazing to the fact of how a language over the time can change so much to the point where a speaker of the modern versión would not understand the speaker of an earlier version.

On the other hand, I hope, as a teacher, to do my best all the time, from explaining in an easy and clear way the topic so they learn something to be succesful about the time table and the activities I will do.I want to apply a teaching method that I feel it will work best for the students as a whole and individually.

DESCRIPTION OF THE AUDIENCE

Three English students from 15 to 20 years old who doesn´t have a good attitude towards History matters.

They are in an advanced group but the majority are visuals, the 30% are auditory and the rest are kinesthetic.

Their strength are: They like learning by theirselves.

ACTIVITIES

1. I will make a time line on the board, telling them the topic that we are going to study at the same time I will tell them the importance of paying attention to the explanation.

2. I am going to start telling the Old English history. I will explain to them the influences of the Celts, the Saxons and the Danes, marking the periods on the time line and showing them some images I have collected in a powerpoint presentation as well.

3. I am going to tell them about William the Conqueror and how he changed the English language when he moved his court from Normandy to London. I will poin out that is estimated there are 33,000 words borrowed from the French.

4. I will give the students examples of how spoken and written English has changed over the years. I will start with the poem “Beowulf”, first, they will try to put into the correct order the extracts from the poem, after that they will hear the poem in order to know if they were correct. To end, I will give them the translation into middle english and modern english so they could see the difference between them.

5. I will move on to the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer and then Shakespeare.6. Students will ask to do a semantic field about the topic they have

already learnt. In the centre “English´s history” will be written, in the next circles: Old English, Middle English, Modern English.

INFORMATION

THE GERMANIC INVASION (449-1100)

Before the fifth century, the residents of what is now England, spoke a Celtic language. That all changed when three groups of people from the north coast of Europe--the Angles, Saxons and Jutes--crossed the sea to invade and settle England. The Celtic language and most of its speakers were displaced or marginalized, and the invaders' Germanic language took over. A smattering of Celtic words survived, but the dominant language became Anglo-Saxon, the precursor to the Old English.

The Romans left some very straight roads behind, but not much of their Latin language. The Anglo-Saxon vocab was much more useful as it was mainly words for simple everyday things like ‘house’, ‘woman’, ‘loaf’ and ‘werewolf’.

Four of our days of the week - Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were named in honour of Anglo-Saxon gods, but they didn’t bother with Saturday, Sunday and Monday as they had all gone off for a long weekend.

While they were away, Christian missionaries stole in bringing with them leaflets about jumble sales and more Latin.

Christianity was a hit with the locals and made them much happier to take on funky new words like ‘martyr’, ‘bishop’ and ‘font’.

THE VIKING INVASION (9th CENTURY)

A new round of invasions, this time from Scandinavia. Since their language, Old Norse, was also Germanic, it married with Anglo-Saxon quite easily, and after time they merged into one language, which is called Old English. Norse contributed a large number of words to the English lexicon, particularly words with the "sk" sound, such as "skin," "sky," "skull" and "scatter."

Along came the Vikings, with their action-man words like ‘drag’, ‘ransack’, ‘thrust’ and ‘die’, and a love of pickled herring. They may have raped and pillaged but there were also into ‘give’ and ‘take’ – two of around 2000 words that they gave English, as well as the phrase ‘watch out for that man with the enormous axe.

MIDDLE ENGLISH (1100-1500): THE NORMAN INVASION

In the eleventh century, William the Conqueror invades Britain, bringing new concepts from across the channel like the French language, the Doomsday book and the duty free Galois’s multipack. The dialect of French spoken by the new invaders was called Anglo-Norman or Norman French, and it was of Latin rather than Germanic origin. This, and the fact that the Normans looked down upon the conquered Anglo-Saxons, kept their two languages largely separated.

After a few centuries, however, as the Normans and Anglo-Saxons intermingled, so did their languages, and by the 14th century Middle English replaced Norman French as the official language of the courts and politics.

The amount of Norman influence on English grammar and vocabulary cannot be overstated:

Many English suffixes came from French--"-tion," "-ment" and "-able." By the end of the Middle English period, over half of all English words were of Norman French origin.

French was de rigeur for all official business, with words like ‘judge’, ‘jury’, ‘evidence’ and ‘justice’ coming in and giving John Grisham’s career a kick-start.

Latin was still used ad nauseam in Church, and the common man spoke English – able to communicate only by speaking more slowly and loudly until the others understood him.

Words like ‘cow’, ‘sheep’ and ‘swine’ come from the English-speaking farmers, while the a la carte versions - ‘beef’, ‘mutton’ and ‘pork’ - come from the French-speaking toffs – beginning a long running trend for restaurants having completely indecipherable menus.

The bonhomie all ended when the English nation took their new warlike lingo of ‘armies’, ‘navies’ and ‘soldiers’ and began the Hundred Years War against France. It actually lasted 116 years but by that point no one could count any higher in French and English took over as the language of power.

The great vowel shift: This shift affected how people pronounced long vowels. For example, in Middle English the word "sight" would have rhymed with "meet," "house" with "loose" and so on.

The Great Vowel Shift ushered the language into the pronunciations used today, but unfortunately, the spelling of words did not change, which is one reason why English is such a notoriously difficult language to learn.

Around this time, consonants also underwent some changes in pronunciation with no accompanying changes in spelling, which is evident in words like "knight" and "through," which would have been pronounced more phonetically in Middle English.

SHAKESPEARE

As the dictionary tells us, about 2000 new words and phrases were invented by Shakespeare. He gave us handy words like ‘eyeball’, ‘puppy-dog’ and ‘anchovy’ - and more show-offy words like ‘dauntless’, ‘besmirch’ and ‘lacklustre’. He came up with the word ‘alligator’, soon after he ran out of things to rhyme with ‘crocodile’. And a nation of tea-drinkers finally took him to their hearts when he invented the ‘hobnob’. Shakespeare knew the power of catchphrases as well as biscuits. Without him we would never eat our ‘flesh and blood’ ‘out of house and home’ – we’d have to say ‘good riddance’ to ‘the green-eyed monster’ and ‘breaking the ice’ would be ‘as dead as a doornail’. If you tried to get your ‘money’s worth’ you’d be given ‘short shrift’ and anyone who ‘laid it on with a trowel’ could be ‘hoist with his own petard’. Of course it’s possible other people used these words first, but the dictionary writers liked looking them up in Shakespeare because there was more cross-dressing and people poking each other’s eyes out.

Shakespeare’s poetry showed the world that English was a rich vibrant language with limitless expressive and emotional power. And he still had time to open all those tearooms in Stratford.

MODERN ENGLISH: THE KING JAMES BIBLE (1611)

He began a whole glossary of metaphor and morality that still shapes the way English is spoken today

SCIENTIFIC WORDS (17th CENTURY)

New science words were being created like acid, ovary, tonsil. Before the 17th Century scientists weren’t really recognised – possibly because lab-coats had yet to catch on. But suddenly Britain was full of physicists – there was Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle – and even some people not called Robert, like Isaac Newton. The Royal Society was formed out of the Invisible College – after they put it down somewhere and couldn’t find it again. At first they worked in Latin. After sitting through Newton’s story about the ‘pomum’ falling to the ‘terra’ from the ‘arbor’ for the umpteenth time, the bright sparks realised they all spoke English and could transform our understanding of the universe much quicker by talking in their own language. But science was discovering things faster than they could name them. Words like ‘acid’, ‘gravity’, ‘electricity and ‘pendulum’ had to be invented just to stop their meetings turning into an endless game of charades. Like teenage boys, the scientists suddenly became aware of the human body – coining new words like ‘cardiac’ and ‘tonsil’, ‘ovary’, and ‘sternum’ - and the invention of ‘penis’ (1693), ‘vagina’ (1682) made sex education classes a bit easier to follow. Though and ‘clitoris’ was still a source of confusion.

THE AGE OF THE DICTIONARIES

With English expanding in all directions, along came a new breed of men called lexicographers, who wanted to put an end to this anarchy: a word they defined as ‘what happens when people spell words slightly differently from each other’.

One of the greatest was Doctor Johnson, whose ‘Dictionary of the English Language’ which took him 9 years to write. It was 18 inches tall and 20 inches wide – and contained 42,773 entries – meaning that even if you couldn’t read, it was still pretty useful if you wanted to reach a high shelf.

For the first time, when people were calling you ‘a pickle herring’ (a jack-pudding; a merryandrew;a zany; a buffoon), a ‘jobbernowl (loggerhead; blockhead) or a ‘fopdoodle’ (a fool; an insignificant wretch) – you could understand exactly what they meant – and you’d have the consolation of knowing they all used the standard spelling.

Try as he might to stop them, words kept being invented and in 1857 a new book was started which would become the Oxford English Dictionary. It took another 70 years to be finished after the first editor resigned to be an Archbishop, the second died of TB and the third was so boring that half his volunteers quit and one of the ended up in an Asylum. It eventually appeared in 1928 and has continued to be revised ever since.

ENGLISH COLONIALISM

Perhaps the biggest reason for English's worldwide popularity was England's empirical ambition. As the British set sail to take over remote places such as Australia, India and the Americas, their language sailed with them and settled wherever they took root.

This also worked in the other direction: new words were introduced to English speakers and made their way more or less permanently into the English lexicón ("Shampoo" is Hindi; "tattoo" is Tahitian; "pecan" is Algonquin).

FACTORS DURING THE PRESENTATION

PROBLEMATIC FACTORS SOLUTIONSThe computer is not working Try to fix it as fast as it is posible and

if it doesn´t work try to improvise using another resource such as the board or the printed images previously.

Forget de topic Students doesn´t have to realice that I can´t remember the topic so I will have my information in a piece of paper and if I forget it, I will have my

Powerpoint presentation in order to remember.

Students doesn´t understand the explanation

I would explain to them as easy as I can, trying to use mimic, speaking or drawings.

EVALUATION INSTRUMENT

They will be asked to do a semantic field about the topic they have already learnt. In the centre “English´s history” will be written, in the next circles: Old English, Middle English, Modern English.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

How to teach English History. (n.d.). Retrieved July 11, 2012, from http://www.ehow.com/how_7866265_teach-english-language-history.html#ixzz20TH0K2sI

Major developments in the history of the English language. (n.d.). Retrieved July 11, 2012, from http://www.ehow.com/info_7943771_major-developments-history-english-language.html#ixzz20THJ86hb

Canterbury Tales. (n.d). Retrieved July 12, 2012, from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/CT-prolog-para.html

Shakespeare sonnets. (2004). Retrieved July 11, 2012, from http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/

The open university. The history of english in ten minutes. (n.d.). Retrieved July 11, 2012, from http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/english-language/the-history-english-ten-minutes?track=5cd3f2ca23

Wikipedia the free enciclopedia. Retrieved July 12, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KJV-King-James-Version-Bible-first-edition-title-page-1611.jpg