English Reading and writing English as a primary school teaches it: phonics, blending and segmenting, tricky words, vowel teams, handwriting, plurals, -ed and -ing, suffixes and prefixes, silent letters, homophones and the famous spelling traps.
The english course of Mova's primary school: 60 lessons, 1179 sentences, each sentence with its syntax tree and pragmatics. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Mova corpus 0.4).
1 Sounds and letters: how phonics starts 24 sentences · Every letter has a name and a sound. 2 Blending, segmenting and the Year 1 check 23 sentences · Reading and spelling are the same skill going in two directions. 3 Tricky words and common exception words 22 sentences · Most English words follow the sound rules, but some very common ones have an odd bit. 4 Vowel teams, split digraphs and choosing the spelling 21 sentences · A silent e at the end of a word reaches back over one consonant and makes the vowel say its name: hop become… 5 Handwriting: holding the pencil and joining up 24 sentences · A pencil held in a fist like a dagger is driven by the big muscles of the arm, so it wobbles and the hand ti… 6 Spelling plurals: -s, -es, -ies, -ves and odd ones 26 sentences · Most nouns just add -s: cat, cats. 7 Adding -ed and -ing: doubling and dropping e 24 sentences · Josh writes «I was hopping for a sunny day» and means wishing, not jumping on one leg. 8 Endings that sound like «shun»: -tion, -sion, -ssion, -cian 24 sentences · It sounds right, but in English the /shun/ ending is almost never spelled «shun». 9 Suffixes -ous, -ly, -ful, -less, -ness, -ment 22 sentences · A suffix is a few letters added to the end of a word that change its job or meaning. 10 i before e, silent letters and other famous traps 18 sentences · The old rhyme says «i before e except after c». 11 Homophones and near-homophones 24 sentences · Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and mean different things: see and sea,… 12 Prefixes: un-, dis-, mis-, re-, pre-, in-, im-, il-, ir- 20 sentences · A prefix is a few letters added to the front of a word that change its meaning: happy, unhappy; do, redo; vi… 13 Words to know, Years 3–4 (the statutory list, by idea) 20 sentences · In England the National Curriculum gives a list of about 100 words that children in Years 3 and 4 (ages 7 to… 14 Words to know, Years 5–6 (the statutory list, by idea) 19 sentences · The Years 5–6 list in England has about 100 harder words: accommodate, ancient, conscience, desperate, embar… 15 How to learn spellings that stick 26 sentences · Freddie's mum says «just write it out ten times», and Freddie writes «becuase» ten times. 16 Reading for pleasure and the reading book at home 22 sentences · Reading for pleasure means reading because you want to, not because somebody told you to. 17 Retrieval: finding the answer in the text 22 sentences · A retrieval question asks for something the text says clearly. 18 Inference: reading between the lines 20 sentences · Inference means working out what the writer means but does not say. 19 Prediction: what happens next 23 sentences · A prediction is a sensible guess about what will happen next, built from clues in the text and from what you… 20 Vocabulary in context 19 sentences · You do not need to know every word to understand a text. 21 Author's choices: why this word, why this way 23 sentences · Authors choose every word on purpose. 22 Reading a story: characters, plot and setting 25 sentences · Every story has characters (who), a setting (where and when) and a plot (what happens). 23 Reading non-fiction: recount, instructions, report 31 sentences · Non-fiction texts are about real things, and each kind has its own shape. 24 Persuasive letters, newspaper articles and diaries 26 sentences · A persuasive text tries to change your mind. 25 Reading poems: meaning, sound and pictures 25 sentences · A poem packs a lot into a few words, and you read it with your ears and your eyes. 26 Sentences: capital letters, full stops and the four types 29 sentences · A sentence is a group of words that makes complete sense on its own. 27 Word classes: the jobs words do 24 sentences · In «The hungry fox quickly ate the cake under the table», fox and cake and table are nouns (naming words), a… 28 Clauses: main, subordinate and joining words 19 sentences · A clause is a group of words with a verb in it. 29 Fronted adverbials 20 sentences · An adverbial is a word or group of words that tells you more about the verb: when, where, how, or how often… 30 Relative clauses 19 sentences · A relative clause is a clause that tells you more about a noun. 31 Tense consistency and verb forms 19 sentences · Tense is the time a verb points to: "I walked" is past, "I walk" is present, and "I will walk" talks about t… 32 Active and passive voice, modal verbs 18 sentences · In the active voice the doer comes first: "The cat chased the mouse." In the passive voice the thing the act… 33 Commas: lists, clauses and clarity 18 sentences · A comma is a tiny signpost that tells the reader where one part of a sentence ends and the next begins, so t… 34 Apostrophes: missing letters and belonging 17 sentences · An apostrophe is a little raised comma with two jobs: it marks letters that have been squeezed out ("do not"… 35 Direct speech: inverted commas and new speakers 16 sentences · Direct speech is the exact words a character says, and inverted commas (also called speech marks) hug those… 36 Brackets, dashes, colons, semicolons and hyphens 17 sentences · Brackets, dashes and commas can all hold extra information that you could lift out and still leave a full se… 37 Paragraphs and cohesion: holding a text together 17 sentences · A paragraph is a group of sentences about one thing, and starting a new one tells the reader "something has… 38 Standard English and dialect: "we was" in talk, "we were" in writing 17 sentences · Standard English is the dialect used for school writing, exams, newspapers and formal letters all over the E… 39 Planning before writing 16 sentences · A plan is a map you draw before a journey: a few words or pictures that show where your writing starts, wher… 40 Openings that hook the reader 17 sentences · The first line of a piece of writing is a fishing hook: its job is to catch the reader and make them want th… 41 Describing: senses, showing and precise words 17 sentences · Good description lets the reader stand inside the scene, and the trick is to use more than your eyes: close… 42 Building tension and suspense 17 sentences · Suspense is the delicious worry of not knowing yet: the reader holds their breath because something might ha… 43 Editing and redrafting 15 sentences · A first draft is like the first go at building a Lego model from your head: it stands up, but some bricks ar… 44 Writing to inform, instruct and persuade 17 sentences · Every piece of writing has a job, and the job decides its shape: instructions tell you how, reports and expl… 45 Poetry: rhyme and rhythm 16 sentences · Rhyme is when words end with the same sound, like wall and fall in the old nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty sat… 46 Poetry: simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration 17 sentences · Poets paint pictures with words, and they have a few favourite tricks: the simile, the metaphor, personifica… 47 Poetry forms: haiku, limerick, kenning, acrostic, performing 14 sentences · A haiku (from Japan) is, in English schools, three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables catching one small moment;… 48 Spoken language: presenting and show-and-tell 18 sentences · Giving a talk is a skill, like riding a bike: wobbly at first, smoother with every practice. 49 Debating and discussion 14 sentences · A debate is an argument with rules: two sides, a topic called the motion ("Homework should be banned"), turn… 50 Listening: following talk, asking good questions 18 sentences · Listening is more than sitting quietly: your brain has to catch the words, hold on to them and work out what… 51 SATs: the reading paper 15 sentences · SATs are national tests that Year 6 children in England sit in May; the reading paper gives you about three… 52 SATs: grammar, punctuation and spelling paper 17 sentences · The GPS paper tests grammar, punctuation and spelling: a 45-minute paper of about 50 short questions, plus a… 53 Writing assessment and the "Year 6 panic" 16 sentences · In Year 6 lots of children get the "Year 6 panic": tummy aches, bad sleep and scary thoughts like "I'll fail… 54 Putting it together: reading and writing like a writer 17 sentences · Reading like a writer means noticing the tricks an author uses, not just what happens: how the first line ho… 55 Olympiad: the Spelling Bee 17 sentences · In a spelling bee the pronouncer says a word and you spell it aloud, letter by letter; one wrong letter and… 56 Olympiad: word puzzles anagrams, palindromes, word ladders — 16 sentences · Word puzzles treat letters like pieces in a game: you rearrange them, reverse them or swap them, and every a… 57 Olympiad: riddles, lipograms and hidden words 14 sentences · Riddles play with double meanings: "keys" can open locks, or be the black and white keys of a piano, and the… 58 Olympiad: Breakthrough puzzles in made-up languages 15 sentences · In a UKLO Breakthrough puzzle (UKLO is the UK Linguistics Olympiad, and Breakthrough is its first, easiest l… 59 Olympiad: real languages and codes 16 sentences · Swahili changes the start of a word instead of the end: mtoto (child) becomes watoto (children), and mtu (pe… 60 Olympiad: tricky comprehension 17 sentences · Tricky comprehension questions test whether you read exactly what the text says, not what you expect it to s… ← previous Chinese streetnext → Euphemisms↑ back to the school This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/