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With the 2014 ENGA1 exam fast approaching, I thought I'd add a few quick posts to help with revision and exam technique. This post is about the Language Development essay in Section B of the paper. Key things to remember here are: You need to answer the question! Generic, all-purpose answers only get you so far; it's vital to actually address the question that you've been set. Your intro doesn't need to be talk about all the stages, pre-verbal and otherwise; it's much better to unpack the question's wording in your intro. For example, in the question "Discuss how children develop their vocabulary and learn to use it appropriately", think about what the two key areas actually mean: vocabulary = lexis and semantics & " use it appropriately " = pragmatics . Use examples to illustrate your points. It's not enough to just say general things about what children do: quote actual examples either from your own study or from the data provided i...

You can find plenty of advice for the data question on ENGA1 in previous posts on this blog (like this and this ), but if you want help on the essay, here goes... With my examiner hat on (it's a bit like a wizard's hat, but less fashionable), I'd say that some of the things that examiners really want to see are as follows: People who answer the question . This may seem blindingly obvious, but lots of students seem to write very generic answers which don't really address the question that's been set. So, avoid this by actually addressing and deconstructing the question right from the start. By this, I mean try to define what you think the question is really asking about and how you are going to deal with it. So, if the question says "Discuss the ways in which children develop their grammatical skills" you need to define what's meant by "grammatical skills" (i.e. syntax and morphology).  Examples .  Give examples. It's all very well knowi...