AS and A2 English Language

Staff

Mr K Liffen - Head of Department Mr T Foley

AS:
Unit 1: Seeing Through Language:

Written Exam, 2 hours

Language and Mode: Students will be required to write an analysis of two texts for comparison
Language Development Essay: Initial Language acquisition – ‘How Children learn to talk

60% (30% of AS+A2)

Unit 2: Representations and Language

Two pieces of Coursework, 2500 words in total:

Investigation: Students will analyse between three and five texts (which may be extracts from longer texts). There will be a temporal relationship between the texts. An investigation may focus on a number of texts:

Produced at the same time (e.g. surveying newspaper articles published on the same day)
Evolving over times (e.g. a news story spanning a period of time)
Produced at different times (e.g. texts produced in the 1950s, 1970s and the 21st century)

The analysis will be 1000-1500 words long. Copies of the analysed text will be presented with it.

Production + commentary: Students will produce a text of 600 words. The text should have a clear genre other than an academic one such as an essay. The intended audience, purpose and place of publication should be specified as much as appropriate to the genre. The text should be written to produce or to challenge a particular representation of a social group, individual event or institution.

The text should be accompanied by a 400 word commentary justifying the intended representation and explaining how it has been achieved.
40% (20% of A2+A2)

A2:
Unit 3: Language Explorations:

Written Exam, 2 hours 30 minutes

Language Variation and Change task: Students will study regional, social (i.e. according to age, gender, class, ethnicity, groups) and international variations of English, the causes of variation and change, the PC debate, attitudes to change and theories and explanations for variation.
Language Discourses task: Students will study discourses about international, regional and social accents and dialects, language change, gender and interaction and political correctness.

60% (30% of AS+A2)

Unit 4: Language Investigations and Interventions

Two pieces of Coursework, 3000 - 3750 words in total:

Investigation: Students will carry out an original piece of language research to answer questions they have posed or to test a hypothesis they have generated. The investigation will focus on spoken rather than written language. Students will collect their own data to investigate. Sample assignments:

A study of dialect and accent features across three generations in a family
A study of figurative language in a politician’s speeches
A study of attitudes to rising intonation in declaratives
A comparison of the language of all male and all female groups in a problem solving activity
An evaluation of the access provided to spoken language on television by Teletext subtitles

The investigation will be between 1750-2500 words long (excluding data).

Language Intervention: The Language Intervention task is designed to allow students to make an informed contribution to social debates about language, communicating their knowledge beyond the confines of their academic discipline. Students will study writing in different forms to inform, argue, instruct and persuade and study how to transform and represent linguistic ideas for a non-specialist audience. Sample assignments:

A feature article in a quality/broadsheet newspaper about whether regional accents and dialects are dying out and whether this matters
A feature article in a lifestyle magazine about whether men and women really do use language differently in interaction
A script for a radio documentary on Radio 4 about world English, standardisation and fragmentation
A webpage for a county council explaining the issues about the words used to refer to people from different social groups and its policy
A review of the book Between You And I: A Little Book of Bad English by James Cochrane to appear in a quality newspaper

Students will produce one or two texts totalling 1250 words.
40% (20% of A2+A2)

Entry Requirements

At least 5 A* - C GCSEs; two B passes at GCSE English and English Literature (recommended)