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- © 2002-2012 University of Bristol
Email: Tim.Shortis@bristol.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)117 909 2427
Website: www.thefullenglish.org.uk
Julie Blake and I have been appointed Visiting Research Associates at the University of Bristol in order to work with Dr Nils Langer on a study of Bristolian dialect and the spoken language of young people in the area. The project builds upon a questionnaire survey of Bristolian and youth sociolect - or the language of young people - conducted by 16-19 year old students at St Brendan’s sixth form college, where I taught Advanced Level English Language from 1991 until 2001. The questionnaire design has been used as a model for other undergraduate and postgraduate studies of Bristolian and other dialects, including a forthcoming dissertation by Katharina Oberhofer from the University of Graz. We are beginning work in 2011 with a re-analysis of the 1990‘s questionnaires by Sini Liponen, who is working as an intern following the completion of her degree in Linguistics at the University of the West of England.
Our project with Dr Nils Langer has three dimensions: an exploratory sociolinguistic study of aspects of Bristolian dialect and other varieties especially as they are used by young people in Bristol; the design of educational materials for working with spoken language in educational settings, especially in the context of the study of spoken language becoming a mandatory component in GCSE English; a scoping study of the opportunities for the study of historical variation and change in Bristolian dialect from the evidence of a selection of written archives and related sources.
Julie and I work independently for The Full English, a small Bristol-based research and design company working in the area of resources for teaching about English Language and Literature. We have also been appointed visiting research associates at King’s College London in recognition of our contribution to the teaching of English in UK schools. We work on curriculum and teaching projects which have been described as being concerned with the “re-resourcing of English for the digital age”. We are engaged by the potential of information and communication technologies for augmenting learning in the context of secure disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical expertise. In addition, we teach and research mainly in the areas of English language, Literature and ICT. My current teaching takes the form of a module about new media in KCL’s Language and Communication BA degree along with occasional short courses and student lectures. My principal areas of research are the relationship between language and new media, the digital representation of text archives from libraries and museums for school learning, and the teaching of domains and methods from applied linguistics and social semiotics at school level: for example, spoken language, child language acquisition and language variation over time. My doctoral research is focused on texts, practices and discourses relating to spelling in SMS text messaging, situating these in the longer histories of written English and vernacular spelling practices.
I taught English Language, Literature and Communication Studies for twelve years mainly to GCE A Level students and was Head of English and a Senior Tutor at a sixth form college in Bristol. I was Chief Examiner of the main GCE Advanced Level English Language syllabus (AQA B) from 2000 until 2006 and was a full time researcher on a three year ESRC TLRP research project based the University of Bristol assessing the potential impact of ICT for learning in formal educational settings.
• Co-opted member of Committee for Linguistics in Education 2004-(CLIE)
• Committee member NATE’s ICT Committee
Who’s prepared to teach? With Julie Blake, a benchmarking investigation of the degree level qualifications and preparedness of initial teacher trainees in English. This research was commissioned by the Committee for Linguistics in Education, with financial support from the British Association for Applied Linguistics, the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, the National Association for the Teaching of English, and the Higher Education Academy’s English Subject Centre and centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies.
Find out more about my current projects here.
Find out more about my past projects here.
You can see a selected list of my publications and presentations here.