AQA English Language and Literature (ELLA3) 11th June 2015

Is anyone doing this exam on Thursday? Predictions for Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs text?

I am doing it but I don't think you can really predict what text the cupcakes text can be due to the vast number of them. The only thing our English teacher said was that he doubts the exam board would be so mean to give us a radio broadcast, encyclopaedia entry etc. They'd rather see your use of language creativity in a letter/diary entry and then your analysis in the commentary. However, this isn't definite and with AQA you never know haha!

Ah yes. I'm not feeling panicked about it because every aspect of it is unseen until the day haha! Thanks for getting back to me though, something like 39 texts we've studied and only 1 gets chosen, so can't really revise it! I'm focusing on my other exams for now. Good luck!

I never revise for English as it's practically impossible bar practising identifying terminology! Good luck too, let me know how you find it!

Is anyone doing this exam on Thursday? Predictions for Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs text?

I am really worried. I did decently on my coursework apparently but the 60 mark question in ELLA 3 will kill me, I'm sure of it.

What are you struggling with? Can I help?

Structuring my answer in general (not the ****ing Anchor method as I keep seeing everywhere). And how do I ensure I cover everything I need to in that first question (i.e. all frameworks). PLEASE REPLY!!!

Oh god I never do the anchor method, I don't understand how it could ever work. Instead I try and integrate each text with comparisons. Well you get 30 mins to plan in the unseen so it's pretty good.

But how do you structure it like do you have a preplanned structure? I'm just so scared!

Are you on about cupcakes or unseen? It's really hard to predict structure till the actual day. What I would say is start with a GAP paragraph - Genre, Audience, Purpose, then read through text A and use that one first, comment on language and other features, but not use it as an anchor if you get what I mean?

Structuring my answer in general (not the ****ing Anchor method as I keep seeing everywhere). And how do I ensure I cover everything I need to in that first question (i.e. all frameworks). PLEASE REPLY!!!

For Section A this is the structure I've been taught:

Intro: Outline a thesis statement, soo this'd be where you integrate the context and the feelings of the writers/speaker. For example I did a practice question on parents (got 50/60) and my thesis statement was
"All three texts express the speaker or writer's thoughts and feelings towards their parents, focusing strongly on the influence of adoration and compassion can have on a relationship between both parents and the child. Furthermore the writer/speaker consider in their responses the effect a lack of compassion and adoration can have on their parents relationship and on the parent-child relationship." - By giving a thesis statement it gives you a point of reference throughout your response and at the end of each comparative paragraph you can link it back to this to show your understanding of the thoughts and feelings of the writers/speaker.
After the thesis statement outline the Purpose, Audience, Form and Tone of the pieces - is it positive/negative/without bias, how does the text type affect the conveying of this?
Paragraph One: Work your way through text A and text B, find key focus points, use a short quote, analyse the quote for attitudes and highlight the terminology which further evidences the attitude you discussed, compare to the other text, is there a similar attitude? Or has the second text used the same terminology/literary technique but to portray a different tone? Repeat this with a couple of other quotes to extend your analysis of the texts, don't forget to make plenty of structure points and grammar points too as this gets you into higher bands 3 and 4. You can then link to the thesis statement or even Text C to give you a starting point for the next paragraph.
Paragraph two: follow the steps above but analyse text B and C.
Paragraph three: again follow the steps used in the first paragraph but analyse text C and text A to show you understand all three, you can then incorporate text B if you can find a relevant point. Link to thesis/intro.
Conclusion: Tie together all three texts by listing the most predominant features that express the feelings and attitudes of the speaker/writers. Say how the audience, purpose, tone, structure and form all contribute to the conveying of feelings, discuss how that impacts the reader or listener etc.

Hope this helps somehow

what are the structure points for section A though other that interruption, adjacency pair, overlap, and turn taking?

Well those would be used to discuss text A's form and structure as it is a transcript, so for the other two texts you'd need to consider the use of rhetorics, sentence types (Declarative, exclamatory, interrogative, imperative), humour, graphology (headings, paragraphs etc), word classes, imagery, grammar, representations of speech, high frequency lexis/low frequency based on audience of the piece, hyberboles, alliteration, repetition, stats/facts, quotes, professional opinions, pronouns to establish audience/purpose/point of view, bias within the piece...

This could all link into structure as structures of texts are based off the audience and so the language used in them helps to form the structure.
So say you have an advice article you'd find headings and bullet points, columns, subheadings, images perhaps. You'd establish this as graphology then analyse the role of each device/feature in helping to form a structure for the piece.
In contrast if you had a poem you'd talk about structure in terms of stanzas, placement of punctuation, length of each stanza, whether it rhymes etc.
Novel, you'd discuss the use of paragraphs - makes it appealing to readers, breaks down the information, big paragraphs suggest importance in terms of imagery etc...

I hope this is the answer you were after...sorry if it's not very helpful...

For poems what are the key things we need to discuss again? Enjambment, end-stopped lines, stanza breaks...anything else? How about finding attitudes in a poem and comparing them to the other texts? That's potentially a bit sticky for me.

Uhm caesuras, imagery, stanza length, overall theme, the title, euphemisms, repetition, hedging, syntax (sometimes poems have exclamations..)...uhmm, I'd say just try and spot the features you'd find in other written texts, you have the most important terminology tbh.

As for attitudes they should be rather clear once you establish the features, so say there's a lot of stanza breaks you could say that it creates a fragmented feeling towards the text and creates an attitude of unrest on behalf of the poet. Over using imagery could suggest that the the poet has a mournful attitude to the main theme of the poem as the memory is still vivid in their minds. Repetition could symbolise anger or urgency to convey information, enjambment could show a sense of uncertainty or lack of clarity with feelings, especially if the focus of the poem was love or something like that.

I'm just hoping we don't get a poem.