Details
Suitable for: GCSE, AS Level English Language students.
Available: All year, Tuesdays and Fridays. (recommended for students beginning studies in English Language at advanced levels).
Length: 90 minutes. Please allow more time after your workshop to explore the galleries and public spaces.
Group size: minimum of 10 participants.
Key Skills
Comparative language analysis
Workshop outline
Examine original texts, including literary manuscripts, historical documents and early printed material on display in the Sir John Ritblat gallery, to open up a world of questioning.
Participants will be encouraged to ask challenging questions such as:
- How do you question a text?
- How do texts encourage or discourage questions?
- What role does 'context' play in your understanding of an item?
- How does context change with place and time?
- How does the context of the reader influence the meaning of the text?
To accompany this workshop, you can book a 20-60 minute talk with Jonathan Robinson, our leading expert in English accents and dialects. Jonathan will introduce ways of analysing spoken English, focusing on the dual aspects of language change and language variation. Jonathan will also introduce groups to Sounds Familiar?, a website that captures and celebrates the diversity of spoken English in the second half of the twentieth century. This is subject to availability.
Pre-visit activities
Explore the way that the English language has developed over hundreds of years in Changing Language. This website includes digitised facsimiles, a language timeline and inspiring ideas for classroom activities.
Post-visit activities
Develop questioning techniques using our Texts in Contexts website - a rich and unusual collection of over 400 British Library texts, including cookbooks, ships' logbooks, slang dictionaries, quack doctors' pamphlets, Victorian guidebooks and traders' shopping lists.
Investigate Sounds Familiar?, a website that captures and celebrates the diversity of spoken English in the second half of the twentieth century.
How to Book
Our How to Book page has further information about our booking process. To make a booking or for further information about our workshops, please contact the Learning Team on +44 (0)20 7412 7797 or email us at learning@bl.uk.