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REVISION! AQA English Language: B - 24th of June 2011

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Reply 20
Hey guys!

I've cruised through two years of English Lang, bar a blip in my Creating Texts cwk (which I rescued this summer!) and I reckon this exam is ite. I'm currently about to make a few more revision presentations (slides) and theres a few word documents on TSR so they're worth having a look at.

As for structure, as Mehhhx mentioned, the best way is ALWAYS the linguistic methods, since you nail one of the AO's. The best way to evaluate, in my opinion, is to stick a context thing down, and be all tenative about it.

I think it's pointless going into absolute detail on theorists, just know some short, key facts cos I doubt you're gonna write aeons on like how they went out research etc; just know what they did and what they concluded as well as dates and who challenged/supported them.

Basically play to your strengths; mine is bullshxtting, so I'm very hopeful.
I'm pretty sure I'll spend at least 15minutes of the 2.5 hours daydreaming about life :L

But Language Change help etc would be very handy, as well as those AO2 notes, if you could? ;D
Reply 21
Contemporary language change.

You might already know this, but it's written into points, because it's considered good :P... (also check out my use of 'you' instead of
'one'! Language change! :tongue:)

Ok!
Previously, due to standardisation, in the 1800's and early 1900's, there was a lot of STIGMATICISM
due to attitude in PRESCRIPTIVISM.
Such as: non standard spelling and pronounciation
high rising intonations
glottal stops

Use of OVERT PRESTIGE within advertising and media, influence in everyday life! More formal approaches to life, first names for only friends, and more issues
of power, no use of contractions such a 'Can't' in writing and definitely no slang evident in writing or speech (when
speaking to people of superiority especially)
Media is more revered.

In contemporary pieces:
More media outlets, and options, unlike previous times.
Everything stretched toward informality and covert prestige in relation to this, because of the working and middle
class masses having more of a voice! and obviously more of a market in their values.
You can examples in this with politicians, bringing down there standards of speech, and this is more accepted
because of relaxed attitudes. Such as "I will" instead of "I shall".
More contractions in writing, use of 1st person for attitudes usually not condoned, first names for everyone
Influence of social networking and texting, creating need for shortened words and simplicist views, more of a DESCRIPTIVIST
VIEW, more influence in youth sociolects and it's popularity
Media is more hyperbolic.


Well that was me just VERY QUICKLY writing down all my contemporary change notes to hand.
There's other stuff in grammar, pronunciation, punctuation and technological aspects of the language! but as complex as that sounds, it's actually rather simplistic and I didn't want to bore you
Reply 22
You are a goddess.
Reply 23
Right for a nice AO2 concept, as taught by a humorous Professor...
bare with me...

Basically, he described words as having CORE ELEMENTS, being peripheral (secondary) and criterial (central)
it can also be thought of as connotation and denotation, the exam writer condoned this concept so listen well!

The core elements, can be promoted to a criteral meaning or demoted to a peripheral meaning. Think of this like particles
moving around...
For example.
in Old English the word "mann" meant:
criterally, or protoypically: human being
yet peripherally meant: adult, male.

in time however, it can be argued that these core elements have BOTH became prototypical.

So you can use this concept in relation to AO1 terms!

Broadening: loss or demotion of core CRITERAL meaning becoming MORE PERIPHERAL

Narrowing: PERIPHERAL MEANINGS becoming MORE CRITERAL.

I'm sorry, I'm not good at explaining this!
Hey :smile: Argh I think I better starting revising english :| I found out the other week that I don't need it for my offer so I kinda abandoned it, but I just can't bear going into the exam without knowing my stuff! So I'm gonna spend tonight writing up notes and stuff on language acquisition and hope it sinks in. English Language does seem to be the subject that's quite easy to revise though doesn't it! :tongue:
Reply 25
Linnynewby; thank you so much! Going to add those to my notes tomorrow! :biggrin:
Reply 26
I'm feeling infinitely more confident on Language Change as opposed to Child Acquisition. Regardless of the texts available on language change, it's still really easy to shoe-horn in contextuality and key concepts of whichever century and make comparisons with contemporary language:

18th century has prescriptivism engraved in it - Jonathan Swift writes to parliament in complaint of the arising of neologisms and colloquialisms in young adults; Samuel Johnson attempts to compile the first comprehensive dictionary in hope a standard can be achieved and language can be frozen in time.
Genres of cookery and travel grow vastly, resulting in borrowings from other languages.

Late 19th century sees compulsory education brought in, a standard is put in place for the sake of common learning. Travelling and trade with collonialised countries becomes extremely common. Some advances in science and technology are made.

20th century has two world wars, science and technology erupts, the wireless and television become the first forms of technological media - the BBC sets a certain level of pronunciatory standard. The personal computer is invented in the late 20th century; newspapers are written far more liberally and less formally; the Internet leads to instant and global communication and the birth of thousands of neologisms; mobile phones and instant messaging allow colloquial written messages to be sent for the first time - the formatting and discourse structure of snailmail becomes largely redundant.

I'm solely revising language acquisition from now. I know the theorists mildly well but I'm undicided on whether the multitude of tables in the textbook are worth learning, at most they just seem to allow one small point to be made or another to be mildly extended. I think I'll be focusing on grammar and orthography for child writing, with some description of the context in which the child appears to have grown up (can dialect or accent be deduced from phonetic spelling, etc) and phonology, pragmatics and child parent interaction (scaffolding is hugely important here) for child speech.

Reading seems to be quite hard to analyse other than discussing the intentions of the book and the child's ability to articulate certain vowel and consonant clusters.
Reply 27
Original post by Karne
I'm feeling infinitely more confident on Language Change as opposed to Child Acquisition. Regardless of the texts available on language change, it's still really easy to shoe-horn in contextuality and key concepts of whichever century and make comparisons with contemporary language:

18th century has prescriptivism engraved in it - Jonathan Swift writes to parliament in complaint of the arising of neologisms and colloquialisms in young adults; Samuel Johnson attempts to compile the first comprehensive dictionary in hope a standard can be achieved and language can be frozen in time.
Genres of cookery and travel grow vastly, resulting in borrowings from other languages.

Late 19th century sees compulsory education brought in, a standard is put in place for the sake of common learning. Travelling and trade with collonialised countries becomes extremely common. Some advances in science and technology are made.

20th century has two world wars, science and technology erupts, the wireless and television become the first forms of technological media - the BBC sets a certain level of pronunciatory standard. The personal computer is invented in the late 20th century; newspapers are written far more liberally and less formally; the Internet leads to instant and global communication and the birth of thousands of neologisms; mobile phones and instant messaging allow colloquial written messages to be sent for the first time - the formatting and discourse structure of snailmail becomes largely redundant.

I'm solely revising language acquisition from now. I know the theorists mildly well but I'm undicided on whether the multitude of tables in the textbook are worth learning, at most they just seem to allow one small point to be made or another to be mildly extended. I think I'll be focusing on grammar and orthography for child writing, with some description of the context in which the child appears to have grown up (can dialect or accent be deduced from phonetic spelling, etc) and phonology, pragmatics and child parent interaction (scaffolding is hugely important here) for child speech.

Reading seems to be quite hard to analyse other than discussing the intentions of the book and the child's ability to articulate certain vowel and consonant clusters.


Wow thankyou!! Hopefully for reading there'll be instances of introducing hypernymy. I know the differences between analytical and synthetic phonics, but I'm worried I get them mixed up! :headhurts:
Reply 28
Don't forget if you want to do reading to look through speech, too!

I reallllly hope the questions are either speech or reading. As for Language Change... I normally do the question with 1 text to analyse, and get an alright mark for it. However, just to make sure I can get all the marks I need I may go for the compare.

I went into school today and got a full mock exemplar answer which got 39 and 43 per question respectively. I don't have a scanner unfortunately, however, reading through, the person has been very basic.They have not overused terminology and have made pretty simple observations and have then analysed in detail.

As for the Change question, they've pretty much gone through talking about different words being arachaic, broadened, obsolete, etc, what they mean, why they've gone out of use or whatever [which is contextual] They honestly haven't gone into much detail concerning time periods and why that might have affected the change.

Feel pretty confident now. :biggrin:
Reply 29
Original post by Mehhhx
Don't forget if you want to do reading to look through speech, too!

I reallllly hope the questions are either speech or reading. As for Language Change... I normally do the question with 1 text to analyse, and get an alright mark for it. However, just to make sure I can get all the marks I need I may go for the compare.

I went into school today and got a full mock exemplar answer which got 39 and 43 per question respectively. I don't have a scanner unfortunately, however, reading through, the person has been very basic.They have not overused terminology and have made pretty simple observations and have then analysed in detail.

As for the Change question, they've pretty much gone through talking about different words being arachaic, broadened, obsolete, etc, what they mean, why they've gone out of use or whatever [which is contextual] They honestly haven't gone into much detail concerning time periods and why that might have affected the change.

Feel pretty confident now. :biggrin:


:rolleyes: good! I was going to send you all the examiner's reports on lasts years exam, but I can't find it, but I jotted them down:

Overall praise
Praise for systematically addressed essays, rather than chronological or feature-spotting, by looking for patterns and grouping, should be a doddle after the AS exam :biggrin:
Use of synoptic issues to support analysis (like power, or gender, or technology)
Being selective with concepts and theories for AO2 it's only worth 16 marks, in comparison to A01 being 24
Identifying significant linguistic features and relating them to A02 or A03 and applying them accurately
Showing close reading of the text, especially in Language Change, and introducing conceptualised discussions on the speed and nature of the change

Overall faults
Using sweeping generalisations about A02 and A03 concepts and context, with little relation to the text, and worst of all, digressing and becoming distracted, so you lose focus from the question
For language change don't make un-lengthy comments on graphology
Relevant points are made, but aren't developed
In terms of Language Acquisition, don't use the deficit approach, don't criticize the child's language, if they are below theoretical standards, because it isn't standardised, comment on development
Apparently, a lot of Acquisition papers were AO2 led, so be careful with that! :proud:
Reply 30
How likely is it that for CLA there will be a speech question ? In all past papers there seems to be one on speech and one on literacy. I hope this pattern continues or i'm going to come unstuck.
Reply 31
Original post by Mfreeman.
How likely is it that for CLA there will be a speech question ? In all past papers there seems to be one on speech and one on literacy. I hope this pattern continues or i'm going to come unstuck.



I emailed my teacher about this yesterday, she said something around 14/14 papers so far had been structured with a speech question since 2004, and she sees no reason for it to change. However, knowing AQA... :rolleyes:

I know how you feel though, I really want to answer the speech question, I'm paying little attention to reading.

And awesome. I need to read through the criteria for the AOs, it's been awhile.
I love language change, been getting 42+ on all essays I've handed in, however, cla is my worst nighmare, I seem to be able to scrape the mid 20s (so about half marks) but Idk, it's just not my topic :/ I prefer reading and writing to speech but there's so much more to write about speech... *sigh* ah well, must concentrate on my biology exam first (which is tomorrow *argghhhh*) good luck guys x
Reply 33
Original post by Mehhhx
I emailed my teacher about this yesterday, she said something around 14/14 papers so far had been structured with a speech question since 2004, and she sees no reason for it to change. However, knowing AQA... :rolleyes:

I know how you feel though, I really want to answer the speech question, I'm paying little attention to reading.

And awesome. I need to read through the criteria for the AOs, it's been awhile.


I think we have reason to be confident, but like you say this is AQA. I have hardly covered the literacy section so let's hope AQA behaves itself.

Original post by nikki_aiyana
I love language change, been getting 42+ on all essays I've handed in, however, cla is my worst nighmare, I seem to be able to scrape the mid 20s (so about half marks) but Idk, it's just not my topic :/ I prefer reading and writing to speech but there's so much more to write about speech... *sigh* ah well, must concentrate on my biology exam first (which is tomorrow *argghhhh*) good luck guys x


Seen as you've been doing so well on change, do you follow a particular structure for the essay?
Also, good luck on your biology exam :smile:
Reply 34
Original post by Mfreeman.
I think we have reason to be confident, but like you say this is AQA. I have hardly covered the literacy section so let's hope AQA behaves itself.


I'm covering everything, to be honest they'll probably stick to the same format, but in my other exams AQA has been quite devious and left people who dismissed topics unprepared, so I'm not risking it. I'm going over writing now, just in case, but I can see myself going for a speech transcript if it's there!
Original post by Mfreeman.
Seen as you've been doing so well on change, do you follow a particular structure for the essay?
Also, good luck on your biology exam :smile:


I just follow the framework, that's why I struggle so much with cla because I can't seem to apply the framework, I've always been incredibly systematical with my essay writing to the extent that my teachers tell me that I'm too systematic lol
I make sure my introduction has a fair amount of context in as it's good to know you've got a lot of context already so you don't have to worry too much if you can't link context in some of your examples from the text
I tend to start with lexis because there is lots to talk about and then grammar because it's worth a lot of marks, after that I just progress through the framework although if there is any phonological change that you can pick out from the text, it would be good to put that in near the beginning as there isn't usually much to write about phonological change
also, don't specifically say 'I am now going to talk about the features of lexical change in the text' that links it too much to AO2, it's better to just say you are going to pick out lexical features within the text and link them, where you can, to aspects of AO2 and AO3, hope this helps =]
x
Reply 36
Original post by nikki_aiyana
I just follow the framework, that's why I struggle so much with cla because I can't seem to apply the framework, I've always been incredibly systematical with my essay writing to the extent that my teachers tell me that I'm too systematic lol
I make sure my introduction has a fair amount of context in as it's good to know you've got a lot of context already so you don't have to worry too much if you can't link context in some of your examples from the text
I tend to start with lexis because there is lots to talk about and then grammar because it's worth a lot of marks, after that I just progress through the framework although if there is any phonological change that you can pick out from the text, it would be good to put that in near the beginning as there isn't usually much to write about phonological change
also, don't specifically say 'I am now going to talk about the features of lexical change in the text' that links it too much to AO2, it's better to just say you are going to pick out lexical features within the text and link them, where you can, to aspects of AO2 and AO3, hope this helps =]
x


When you say 'grammar' are you talking predominantly about standardisation in the 18th C ?
Reply 37
Original post by Mehhhx
I emailed my teacher about this yesterday, she said something around 14/14 papers so far had been structured with a speech question since 2004, and she sees no reason for it to change. However, knowing AQA... :rolleyes:

I know how you feel though, I really want to answer the speech question, I'm paying little attention to reading.

And awesome. I need to read through the criteria for the AOs, it's been awhile.


This is true, but the Jan 2011 paper featured parent and child reading a book for the speech question, so some knowledge of reading would have been helpful there. The question didn't explicitly ask for comment on the reading, just the interaction between mum and child, but it would seem daft not to revise some reading stuff too.
Original post by Mfreeman.
When you say 'grammar' are you talking predominantly about standardisation in the 18th C ?


no, I'm talking anything you can find but if you can link it to AO2 it'll give you more marks especially if you link it to prescriptivism such as robert lowth's 'a short introduction to english grammar' where some rules have acquired currency
linking it to contextual factors such as the standardisation linked to caxton's printing press will help give you more marks but AO1 is more based on picking out features
another contextual feature grammar can be linked to is the influence of technology and informalisation which is where more modern texts can be linked in

sorry I took so long to reply, was doing a biology paper x
Reply 39
Do you think for CLA they could ask you to comment on a piece of speech and a piece of writing in the same essay?

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