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  • Subjects
  • Languages
  • Free courses
  • Describing language
  • Introduction and guidance
  • How to get a badge

Course content

  • Introduction and guidance
  • Introduction and guidance
  • What is a badged course?
    • Current section:
      How to get a badge
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week 1
  • Introduction
  • 1 What is language?
  • 2 English is one language among many
    • 2.1 What is the biggest language in the world?
    • 2.2 Where does English get its words from?
  • 3 Introducing morphology
  • 4 Free and bound morphemes
    • 4.1 More about morphemes
    • 4.2 Adding more morphemes
    • 4.3 What are the morphemes telling you?
  • 5 This week’s quiz
  • 6 Summary of Week 1
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week 1 practice quiz
  • Week 2
  • Introduction
  • 1 Different kinds of words
    • 1.1 Word classes
    • 1.2 The word classes you will focus on
  • 2 This week’s words
    • 2.1 Different kinds of nouns
    • 2.2 Can you spot the different types of noun?
    • 2.3 All the noun types together
  • 3 Nouns make more nouns
  • 4 This week’s quiz
  • 5 Summary of Week 2
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week 2 practice quiz
  • Week 3
  • Introduction
  • 1 A doing word?
    • 1.1 How verbs can shape meaning
  • 2 Verbs and morphemes
  • 3 Verb + verb = verb
    • 3.1 Auxiliary verbs
    • 3.2 Modal auxiliaries
    • 3.3 How modal auxiliaries can add nuance
    • 3.4 The range of functions of modal auxiliaries
  • 4 Categorising verbs
  • 5 This week’s quiz
  • 6 Summary of Week 3
  • Acknowledgments
  • Week 3 practice quiz
  • Week 4
  • Introduction
  • 1 Present, past and future?
    • 1.1 Tense in English
    • 1.2 Participles: verbs without any tense
  • 2 Regular and irregular verbs
    • 2.1 Irregular verbs at work
    • 2.2 What you know so far
  • 3 Verbs in other languages
  • 4 This week’s quiz
  • 5 Summary of Week 4
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week 4 compulsory badge quiz
  • Week 5
  • Introduction
  • 1 What are things like?
    • 1.1 Finding the adjectives
  • 2 Types of adjectives
    • 2.1 What can adjectives tell us?
    • 2.2 Where do adjectives go?
    • 2.3 Comparing using adjectives
    • 2.4 Just talking nonsense?
  • 3 Adjectives working together
  • 4 New, improved! Adjectives and advertising
    • 4.1 Write your own advert
  • 5 This week’s quiz
  • 6 Summary of Week 5
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week 5 practice quiz
  • Week 6
  • Introduction
  • 1 Adverbs
    • 1.1 Can you recognise an adverb?
    • 1.2 More things you can do with adverbs
  • 2 How words work together
    • 2.1 Open and closed class words
    • 2.2 Not all word classes can be expanded
    • 2.3 Can you tell what class a word is from its shape?
  • 3 Closed class words
    • 3.1 Pronouns
    • 3.2 Determiners
    • 3.3 Prepositions
    • 3.4 Conjunctions
  • 4 This week’s quiz
  • 5 Summary of Week 6
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week 6 practice quiz
  • Week 7
  • Introduction
  • 1 The structure of language
    • 1.1 How to build a language
    • 1.2 Where do the words go?
    • 1.3 The order of words (in English)
  • 2 English sentence structure
    • 2.1 Subjects and objects
    • 2.2 A Latin headline
  • 3 How sentences are built
  • 4 Adding more information
    • 4.1 SVOCA
  • 5 This week’s quiz
  • 6 Summary of Week 7
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week 7 practice quiz
  • Week 8
  • Introduction
  • 1 Sentence forms
    • 1.1 Asking questions
    • 1.2 Questions in other languages
    • 1.3 Giving commands and making exclamations
    • 1.4 Spotting different sentence forms
  • 2 Structure and sentence functions
  • 3 Combining sentences
    • 3.1 Making longer sentences
    • 3.2 Making more complex sentences
  • 4 Language in the real world
    • 4.1 Collocation
  • 5 Playing with language
  • 6 This week’s quiz
  • 7 Summary of Week 8
  • Next steps?
  • Tell us what you think
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week 8 compulsory badge quiz

About this free course

About this free course

24 hours study

Level 1: Introductory

Full course description

Become an OU student

Become an OU student

  • BA/BSc (Honours) Open degree
    BA/BSc (Honours) Open degree
  • BA (Honours) English Language
    BA (Honours) English Language
  • Introducing English language studies
    Introducing English language studies

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Course content Course content
Describing language
Describing language

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

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  • Week1
  • Week2
  • Week3
  • Week4
  • Week5
  • Week6
  • Week7
  • Week8

How to get a badge

Getting a badge is straightforward! Here’s what you have to do:

  • read each week of the course
  • score 50% or more in the two badge quizzes in Week 4 and Week 8

For all the quizzes, you can have three attempts at most of the questions (for true or false type questions you usually only get one attempt). If you get the answer right first time you will get more marks than for a correct answer the second or third time. Therefore, please be aware that for the two badge quizzes it is possible to get all the questions right but not score 50% and be eligible for the badge on that attempt. If one of your answers is incorrect you will often receive helpful feedback and suggestions about how to work out the correct answer.

For the badge quizzes, if you’re not successful in getting 50% the first time, after 24 hours you can attempt the whole quiz, and come back as many times as you like.

We hope that as many people as possible will gain an Open University badge – so you should see getting a badge as an opportunity to reflect on what you have learned rather than as a test.

If you need more guidance on getting a badge and what you can do with it, take a look at the OpenLearn FAQs [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . When you gain your badge you will receive an email to notify you and you will be able to view and manage all your badges in My OpenLearn within 24 hours of completing the criteria to gain a badge.

Get started with Week 1.

PreviousPrevious What is a badged course?
Next AcknowledgementsNext
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