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With the clocks going forward, beautiful blossom blooming on the trees and summer rapidly approaching, it's time to cast happy thoughts from your mind and think about the looming exams in June. Sorry. There's still plenty of time to get revising (or just 'vising' if you haven't done some of the course content yet) but there are a few key things you can do now to make sure that what you are on the right lines for later on. We've already had a revision post from Olivia which focused on advice from her as a former student for students in the run-up to the exams, so this one takes a slightly different tack and thinks about the bigger picture and some suggested reading. Big ideas Think big, to begin with. Before you dive into the details of different topic areas and sections of exam papers, think about the big questions around English. How confident are you about them? Back in this blog post , I suggested that one of the ways to help understand the scope of areas su...

In this blog post, we've invited former A level English Language student, Olivia to give some advice to students about how she revised and what her top tips are for students doing the course. Thanks to Olivia for writing this and for all the great ideas here. Hi, I’m Olivia! Two years ago I sat the A Level English Language exams. I’m now at university and make and share English Language revision resources for ambitious students as @astarlevels on TES  and Twitter . With that in mind, in this post I’m sharing my revision tips for aiming high in A Level English Language. I’ve split it into four sections: learning theory, preparing for writing essays/ articles, tackling data and general revision tips. Learning theory               The first step in preparing for the exam is to get familiar with the AO2 you’ll need. Go through your notes from the past two years and fish out all the bits that look interesting or ...

You've still got over 2 weeks before you sit Paper 2 so there's still time to do some reading. In the last post I mentioned how it's important to read plenty of articles about language, but there's even time to read around the subject (or listen if that's what you prefer). I posted these suggestions earlier in the year, but there's still time to dip in and out and these are all accessible for students if you've got a bit of time and patience. My top tips are: Deborah Cameron,  The Myth of Mars and Venus  - a brilliant, dry take on how women and men use language and the myths around it. Henry Hitchings,  The Language Wars  - a readable and comprehensive overview of some of the ways in which English has been debated about and argued over ever since it came to be. Jean Aitchison,  Language Change: Progress or Decay?  - excellent for how language changes and what people think about it. Essential reading for Paper 2. Annabelle Mooney and Betsy Evans,  Langu...

As you'll no doubt have studied on this course, descriptivists  describe  language while prescriptivists  prescribe , telling us what we should (or shouldn't) be doing with language. After (nearly) two years of language study, you'll probably have got the general idea that we (your teachers) would prefer you to be descriptive rather than prescriptive about language. That's not (necessarily) because we want you in some kind of liberal-leftie lockstep in which anything goes, but because if you're studying language you really need to be able to do better than just say "I don't like X and that's why you shouldn't use it" (where X is vocal fry, 'Americanisms', rising intonation, 'like', (non-literal) 'literally' or 'bae'... Ok scrub that, no one should say 'bae'). Overall, what I think we want you to avoid is knee-jerk prescriptivism. And that doesn't mean you can't challenge language change and/or l...

If you ask a linguist to describe a form of language, they'll probably focus on its features, its functions, its background and history. Ask a non-linguist and they'll probably describe it using evaluative terms such as ugly, broken, lazy or even beautiful (sometimes), or they'll reach for metaphor: language is an amazing tool; language is a beautiful building that needs to be protected; British English has to be defended against an invasion of awful Americanisms; urban slang is polluting our once proud language etc. These metaphors are interesting because they often encode a way of seeing the world - and usefully for you, sitting the exam - a way of conceptualising language that you can analyse and discuss. What's important about these metaphors is that they will often seem quite appealing - or even perfectly natural - as an idea and you might even read them and think that it's quite neat way to describe language, but if you dig a bit deeper, you can often see that...

Apologies for the lack of posts on here this year. The new job and various other commitments (not Fortnite, honestly...) have meant that most of the A level Language stuff I've done has been via the @EngLangBlog Twitter account or for books and revision guides (coming soon!). Anyway, I'll put a few short revision posts up in the weeks to come, focusing on areas to do with the A level. First off, some Language Discourses material and what to make of the whole idea of discussing how language is viewed and written about. One of the first things to realise is that 'Language Discourses' can be relevant for all of Paper 2, not just Section B. Arguments about language diversity and language change apply just as much in Section A in the essay questions and if you've seen last year's paper (which you should have done by now), you'll see that arguments over the control and direction of English are central to one of the questions. Don't be afraid to discuss attit...

Here's the third in a short (and predictably-titled) series of ... yadda yadda yadda...you get the drift. Still on the subject of Language Discourses, what have different people - linguists, writers and media commentators - had to say about the big debates around change and diversity? Who could you go to for some ideas about different approaches to these arguments? A really good starting point is the linguist Jean Aitchison, whose BBC Reith Lectures in 1996 were all about language: what it is, how we acquire it, how it changes and how people feel about it. Her book, Language Change: Progress or Decay? (now in its fourth edition and a great text for the whole second year of this course) looks at some of the patterns of change we see in English over time and some of the perennial complaints about such change. One of her best known metaphors is the the idea that prescriptivists (those who resist change and want to tell everyone else what constitutes 'proper English') fall int...

Here's the second in a short (and predictably-titled) series of posts preparing you for next week's first sitting of the new AQA A level Paper 2. The last post was on Language Discourses and what they are. This one is on some of the discourses and debates you could explore. These are just a few suggestions; there are lots of other areas you could look at and I know nothing about what might appear so don't take any of these as predictions. My advice is always to revise all the possible areas and be ready for anything. Gender debates - remember, as with the AS paper this summer, debates about gender can be about how language is used but also how gender is represented in language. American English and World Englishes - have a look at some of the arguments here  and here about the supposed Americanisation of English. Attitudes to accents and dialects - this cropped up on the AS paper this summer and is worth thinking about from an A level perspective. New words and arguments...

This is the first of a short (and tediously-titled) series of posts on revision for AQA A level English Language Paper 2. With Paper 1 out of the way and Twitter awash with exam-based memes and 'bananagate' stories, you can now turn your attention to Language Change, Diversity and Discourses. You've still got just under a week to go, so there's time for some reading and thinking as well as practising the skills you need to use across the three very different questions you'll need to answer. Today, let's have a look at Language Discourses and what you can do to work on these before the exam. One thing to say is that while Section B is the main Language Discourses bit of the paper (it's even called that), arguments and debates about language can crop up in Section A as well, so don't narrow your thinking down too much. The first thing to ask is "What the hell is a language discourse?". The answer - for this paper, at least - is that it's a wa...

One of the big differences between what you do at AS level and A level is in the "command word" used to give you your tasks. At AS level, Paper 2 questions use the formulation "Discuss the idea that...", where the "idea" is something that you can then focus on and tell us about. By using "discuss" as the command word, the question (well...it's an imperative really, grammar-lovers, so not really a question at all) is asking you to tell us about what you know in relation to this topic. There's no real sense in the word 'discuss' that to answer the question at a reasonable level that you have to weigh it all up and come to any kind of definitive conclusion, but that's what's expected a bit more at the highest level (Level 5 of the AO2 mark scheme) where last year's main indicative content key words were: explore , assess and " make some evaluative comments ". The way I've taught my students to approach this...

It's just one day until ENGA3, so here's a quick post to wish you luck and to offer a few suggestions to make your examiner look upon you favourably. Quote helpfully  You should be using quotations from the texts you're analysing in your answers, but make sure they're helpful quotations. What's the difference between 1 and 2 below? The writer uses the noun phrase "the foul degradation of our language continues apace" to support his prescriptive view of language change. The writer uses the noun phrase " the foul degradation of our language continues apace" to support his prescriptive view of language change. In short, 1 is wrong and 2 is right. That's because the quote used in 1 isn't actually a noun phrase, but a whole simple sentence/independent clause, while the quote in 2 actually specifies which bit is the noun phrase. I don't doubt that the person answering in the first one knows what they mean, but they're not making it eas...

Today's tediously titled top tips will focus on analytical frameworks for ENGA3, in particular the Section B Language Discourses question. As I was saying in yesterday's post about Section B, the key difference between the two sections on the paper is that Section A deals with language as it's actually used - in different times, different places and by different people - while Section B deals with language as something to be discussed, argued about and debated. So, in terms of analysis, you can apply many of the same frameworks - word, phrase, clause and discourse analysis - to texts in both sections, but Section B really lends itself to a Critical Discourse Analysis approach. In effect, this means that you're using language analysis to work out the ideological position a text producer is taking in discussing a language issue. So, this could mean you're using language analysis to work out how a writer is using the following: pronouns to address the reader and posit...

To carry on the boring naming convention established earlier this week, this is part 4 of your ENGA3 June 2014 revision tips. So far we have looked at a bit of Section A Change and a bit of Section A variation, so now it's time for Section B Discourses. One of the first things to remember is that Section B is different from Section A. In Section A the texts are based on language in use (language being used in different times and in different varieties) but in Section B the texts are about language . They will raise questions around how people feel about language and the way it changes and varies from time to time and person to person. Last year's question was on Language and Gender, setting two extracts from a text which gave a very simplistic, difference model-style, interpretation of how women and men talk. It was there as a starting point for discussion, a springboard for offering a critique of such reductive models. If you 'd read Deborah Cameron's Myth of Mars and...

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...