Online Resources for the Study of Scots in the Classroom

Calling all secondary school teachers throughout Scotland! We are pleased to announce a one-day event showcasing resources available for the study of Scots in secondary schools. The event will focus on a number of online resources which encompass the words, sounds and sentence structures of Scots past and present, including:

The Scots Syntax Atlas

Where in Scotland do people say The windows needs washed? And what about I like they books? This atlas provides an interactive tool for learners to map the sentence structures of Scots. In doing so, they will be equipped to describe the linguistic ‘rules’ of their own variety and others throughout Scotland.

Exploring the Multilingual Past of Scotland

Did you know that the Scots caa – English call – is a Scandinavian word? Or that pinkie is Dutch, to fash is French and janitor is Latin? Find out how to uncover the fascinating multilingual history of Scots with free online dictionaries.

Place Names of Scotland

Church Street or Kirkgate? This resource invites learners to use the place and street names of their own area to discover more about local history and language. Alongside developing skills in map-reading, it’s a good idea to combine it with a healthy walk.

Sounds of the City

This resource looks into speech sounds of Glasgow past and present. The resource includes quizzes and activities which shed light on the changes in pronunciation that have taken place in Glasgow over the past few decades.

The SCOTS corpus

The Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech is a 4.5 million word fully searchable collection of texts in Scots and Scottish English, containing recordings/transcriptions of informal speech, correspondence, poems, prose fiction and many more genres. This can be combined with the other resources showcased here, allowing you to explore words in their authentic linguistic context.

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In the morning session, these resources will be introduced by a number of University of Glasgow academics working on Scots.

In the afternoon session, you will be given the opportunity to test-drive these resources through a series of task-based activity workstations aimed at secondary school pupils.

By the end of the day, you will be familiar with a set of exciting resources for the study of Scots, and how they can best be used in the classroom setting.

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Date: 14 June 2019

Time: 11am to 4pm. Lunch provided.

Place: The University of Glasgow (rooms tbc)

Registration will be open until Friday 17th May.