This is a great cross-curricular activity!

Pupils quantify various aspects of language, make comparisons, display their data. If pupils are familiar with more forms of data presentation they will likely produce better quality output.

Various forms of data presentation.

You may wish to play this short video of the JFK Moon speech. This would be a nice way to introduce the activity and before they begin the activity you may wish to pose questions to the pupils such as:

• What did you think of that speech?

• Do you think there is anything measurable about the speech that would indicate it was a good speech?

It is suggested pupils work in pairs:

1. Print one copy (two pages per side, double-sided, without stapes) of pupil sheets and distribute to each pair.

2. Pupils are to choose one of the first two passages which are the both examples of advanced language. To save time, much of the data has already been entered into tables for these two speeches. Pupils are to complete the table for their chosen speech.

3. Pupils are also to choose one of the last two speeches which are both examples of more basic use of language. Pupils are to record all of the data for their chosen speech into one of the tables.

4. Distribute either an A3 or A4 sheet for pupils to compare and display their finding as appropriate for your SoW.

Some possible ideas:

• Use comparative bar charts to show the distribution of sentence lengths.

• Radar charts (spider diagrams) could be used to compare use of abstract nouns, precision of language etc. but it would make sense not to include concrete nouns in this diagram.

• To make it cross-curricular pupils could add explanation/example of abstract versus concrete nouns, or an explanation of why they considered the language to be more precise in one of the passages.

• Use of pie chart to display noun ratio (abstract vs. concrete).