What's the point?

(No, it's not a beginning of term moan about the state of education, more an intro to what this weblog is about...)

With new students starting at college and current English Language students perhaps using this blog for the first time, I thought it would be useful to explain what the idea is behind it all.

The main idea is to pick out interesting items about English Language use (as reported in various media like the newspapers, radio, TV, websites etc) and post a brief comment on them to stimulate a bit of thought and discussion. I nicked the idea from Julie Blake's Language Legend (which is still the daddy of all language blogs!) but maybe the longer this one goes on and the more students and others contribute, the more this blog's identity will evolve.

Beyond this though, if you're stuck for ideas on your A Level project you can pick one of the topics here as the basis for exploration; or if you want to catch up on the latest research on conversation analysis or child language acquisition, then I'll try to keep you up to date with what's being discussed out there, beyond your text book!

So, if you're a new AS student looking at this for the first time, or a seasoned A2-er (or even someone who's done it all before and gone on to university) then your comments, links and ideas are welcome. Of course, many people outside SFX have been reading and posting here too, so you'll find loads of different ideas and opinions.

Anyway, happy reading - and if you find anything interesting about any aspect of language that you think is worth sharing, post a comment or email me.