Title: All Talk: English 14-19.
Authors: J. Blake et al.
Publisher: BT.
ISBN 978-1-904709-28-2
Free resource.
This review was written by Amanda Stec, PGCE English, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.
All Talk is a resource that can be used by teachers and students in English lessons. It focuses on routine everyday talk and is a tool for building an understanding of communication in everyday interaction.
Each of the fifteen modules outlines an aspect of communication in everyday interaction within four main categories: talk about the self (names, idiolects, multilingual talk), online and offline talk (texting, chatting and paralinguistic features), dialect and accent and public talk. The book provides materials for discussion and reflection, whilst emphasising practical approaches to teaching about language. All Talk teaches skilful ways of talking for different purposes, such as with the module on spoken word poetry and performance talk. It also teaches ways of interacting in a variety of contexts such as talk in school – both on- and off-task – and with family and friends.
This resource adopts a multimodal approach to teaching about spoken language. For example, one of the activities involves students preparing a storyboard and making a podcast about linguistic diversity. It also includes alternative aspects of language such as a module on British Sign Language and activities in which students analyse a translated transcript of British Sign Language in written standard English. All Talk contains helpful teacher guides, lesson builders, planned activities, web links, word clouds and graphs as well as text in order to support a variety of lesson activities.
Rather than being an add-on, the DVD is a resource in its own right and helps to illustrate many points that the book makes. It includes voxpop videos, scripted representations of interactions, video soundbites, recordings of speakers, samples of face to face chats, interviews, improvised student performances and a themed collection of performed poems.
All Talk would be valuable for teaching the Spoken Language requirement in GCSE English Language. It also directly supports the Speaking and Listening curriculum topic of GCSE English and GCSE English Language. It could be used to support some Year 9 and Year 12 lessons.
As a trainee teacher I found the materials offered enough structure to help me incorporate it into my lesson plans. The abundance of ideas and resources also facilitated my teaching of the English Language course.
