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AQA English Language As Exam 25/05/04
Did anyone else do this and if so how did you find it?
Personally I thought that it was ok, I managed to write a lot most of which I feel was relevant and I would be surprised if I did badly. I even managed to fill up the whole answer book and had to ask for additional paper on paper 1, which I thought was amazing!!!
The questions on representation and child language aquisition seemd ok however on paper 3 the male / female interaciton was the better of the two. Personally I chose representation and then male / female interaction.
Both the Vanessa Feltz text in paper one and the conversation transcript in paper 3 seemed ok and I think that I did alright over all.
A question I do have though is on the paper one text:
"Miss World dinasour needs putting to sleep"
Personally I thought that Miss World is a Proper Noun followed by dinasour which is acting as an adjective. Others in my class thought that it dinasour was the noun and "Miss World" the adjective. My teacher said that you could probably have it both ways round and aslong as I had backed up my statement with good argument then I should be ok. Does anyone else have an opinion on this?
Personally I thought that it was ok, I managed to write a lot most of which I feel was relevant and I would be surprised if I did badly. I even managed to fill up the whole answer book and had to ask for additional paper on paper 1, which I thought was amazing!!!
The questions on representation and child language aquisition seemd ok however on paper 3 the male / female interaciton was the better of the two. Personally I chose representation and then male / female interaction.
Both the Vanessa Feltz text in paper one and the conversation transcript in paper 3 seemed ok and I think that I did alright over all.
A question I do have though is on the paper one text:
"Miss World dinasour needs putting to sleep"
Personally I thought that Miss World is a Proper Noun followed by dinasour which is acting as an adjective. Others in my class thought that it dinasour was the noun and "Miss World" the adjective. My teacher said that you could probably have it both ways round and aslong as I had backed up my statement with good argument then I should be ok. Does anyone else have an opinion on this?
Mark_KK
Did anyone else do this and if so how did you find it?
Personally I thought that it was ok, I managed to write a lot most of which I feel was relevant and I would be surprised if I did badly. I even managed to fill up the whole answer book and had to ask for additional paper on paper 1, which I thought was amazing!!!
The questions on representation and child language aquisition seemd ok however on paper 3 the male / female interaciton was the better of the two. Personally I chose representation and then male / female interaction.
Both the Vanessa Feltz text in paper one and the conversation transcript in paper 3 seemed ok and I think that I did alright over all.
A question I do have though is on the paper one text:
"Miss World dinasour needs putting to sleep"
Personally I thought that Miss World is a Proper Noun followed by dinasour which is acting as an adjective. Others in my class thought that it dinasour was the noun and "Miss World" the adjective. My teacher said that you could probably have it both ways round and aslong as I had backed up my statement with good argument then I should be ok. Does anyone else have an opinion on this?
Personally I thought that it was ok, I managed to write a lot most of which I feel was relevant and I would be surprised if I did badly. I even managed to fill up the whole answer book and had to ask for additional paper on paper 1, which I thought was amazing!!!
The questions on representation and child language aquisition seemd ok however on paper 3 the male / female interaciton was the better of the two. Personally I chose representation and then male / female interaction.
Both the Vanessa Feltz text in paper one and the conversation transcript in paper 3 seemed ok and I think that I did alright over all.
A question I do have though is on the paper one text:
"Miss World dinasour needs putting to sleep"
Personally I thought that Miss World is a Proper Noun followed by dinasour which is acting as an adjective. Others in my class thought that it dinasour was the noun and "Miss World" the adjective. My teacher said that you could probably have it both ways round and aslong as I had backed up my statement with good argument then I should be ok. Does anyone else have an opinion on this?
You're not studying syllabus B then?
Eveeeeeeeeeening!
I thought thatthe ENA1 exam was alright. I got a bit muddled on the Section A analysis. I commented quite a bit on the use of the prnouns, semantic fields, minor vs major sentences. Spoke a bit abnout the noun phrases and attirbutive adjectives, use of mood. Thats pretty much about it, really. I got really muddled and confused trying to find everything so I ended up just concentrating on what I could find and probably mucked that wee bit up
I thought the Section B questions were really good as they gave you a lot of scope. I revised Children Language Acquisition a lot more thna Language and Rep so I did the CAcqOfLang question. What got to me was the way in which it phrased the question - it targetted "you" and thus it would probabl ellicit a first person "I" response. Either way, I wrote it. I spoke about the idea of imitatoin (because it was shown in the statement above the question), then wrote about the idea of innateness/nativism. I used all the names and used some criticisms. Then i spoke about word formation in terms of compounding, mainly because I coudlnt' think about anything else. Then I started writing about cognition (Piaget) and Eric Lennegburg's idea on critical age theory, quoting a lot of research that we had learnt about Judy Kegl and some of her Nicaraguan children. I finsihed the whole paper in the last few seconds, filling up the whole booklet to the last line (I decided I couldn't really be botherd to ask for another piece of paper as it would take too long and so I just concluded). I chose to focus more on the theories in the CAcqLang question but I made some very brief referewnce to holophrases, etc
In ENA3 (the interacting through language paper), the transcript was quite tough. All I could think abot was applying theories for most of it. I applied the accomodation, grices maxim, labov oral narrative (my shining moment! I've finally found somewhere to apply it - basically, i found that karen told an anecdote and that it follwo3ed labov's ideas) and i wrote a little about the way in which the women used typically 'female language'). I wrote about adjjacency pairs, uses of informal language, some minor use of dialect grammar, repetition, and some other things I can't really rememeber.
For Section B, I looked at both questions and thought "hmm... now what can I do with these." I chose the question about mens and womens language and how it has "improved my understanding". I thought that I might as well use the first persona pronoun for this because, why not? I've always been told not to but this time I just though it would aid my exprsssion and fit the question more so I did. I didn't really revise for the womens and mens languages question but I managed to rememebr a few of the thing that Lakoff, Cheshire, Coates and Tannen said. I thought I should start with an opening that made my essay different. Soi I started with the "Before my study, I was under the cmmon misconception that women talk for longer and are much more 'chattier' than men in their interaction" or words to that effect. This I thought was the only way that i could create a lasting effect on the examiner. It linke dnicely in to the next statement that said "I was, however, proved wrong by Fishman's research that stated...."
Overall, I thought the questions were a bit rubbishy. The question on CAcqLang and Mens/Womens Speech seemed to be more open-ended questions. It almost seemeed as if the examienrs were asking what we thought of the course.
I really hope I get the grades I want, butif not... retakkkkkkkkkkke in jan, methinks.
Hope you all did well, and tell meh what you thought o fthe exam and how you answered the quessies.
Ta-rah ta-rah!
I thought thatthe ENA1 exam was alright. I got a bit muddled on the Section A analysis. I commented quite a bit on the use of the prnouns, semantic fields, minor vs major sentences. Spoke a bit abnout the noun phrases and attirbutive adjectives, use of mood. Thats pretty much about it, really. I got really muddled and confused trying to find everything so I ended up just concentrating on what I could find and probably mucked that wee bit up
I thought the Section B questions were really good as they gave you a lot of scope. I revised Children Language Acquisition a lot more thna Language and Rep so I did the CAcqOfLang question. What got to me was the way in which it phrased the question - it targetted "you" and thus it would probabl ellicit a first person "I" response. Either way, I wrote it. I spoke about the idea of imitatoin (because it was shown in the statement above the question), then wrote about the idea of innateness/nativism. I used all the names and used some criticisms. Then i spoke about word formation in terms of compounding, mainly because I coudlnt' think about anything else. Then I started writing about cognition (Piaget) and Eric Lennegburg's idea on critical age theory, quoting a lot of research that we had learnt about Judy Kegl and some of her Nicaraguan children. I finsihed the whole paper in the last few seconds, filling up the whole booklet to the last line (I decided I couldn't really be botherd to ask for another piece of paper as it would take too long and so I just concluded). I chose to focus more on the theories in the CAcqLang question but I made some very brief referewnce to holophrases, etc
In ENA3 (the interacting through language paper), the transcript was quite tough. All I could think abot was applying theories for most of it. I applied the accomodation, grices maxim, labov oral narrative (my shining moment! I've finally found somewhere to apply it - basically, i found that karen told an anecdote and that it follwo3ed labov's ideas) and i wrote a little about the way in which the women used typically 'female language'). I wrote about adjjacency pairs, uses of informal language, some minor use of dialect grammar, repetition, and some other things I can't really rememeber.
For Section B, I looked at both questions and thought "hmm... now what can I do with these." I chose the question about mens and womens language and how it has "improved my understanding". I thought that I might as well use the first persona pronoun for this because, why not? I've always been told not to but this time I just though it would aid my exprsssion and fit the question more so I did. I didn't really revise for the womens and mens languages question but I managed to rememebr a few of the thing that Lakoff, Cheshire, Coates and Tannen said. I thought I should start with an opening that made my essay different. Soi I started with the "Before my study, I was under the cmmon misconception that women talk for longer and are much more 'chattier' than men in their interaction" or words to that effect. This I thought was the only way that i could create a lasting effect on the examiner. It linke dnicely in to the next statement that said "I was, however, proved wrong by Fishman's research that stated...."
Overall, I thought the questions were a bit rubbishy. The question on CAcqLang and Mens/Womens Speech seemed to be more open-ended questions. It almost seemeed as if the examienrs were asking what we thought of the course.
I really hope I get the grades I want, butif not... retakkkkkkkkkkke in jan, methinks.
Hope you all did well, and tell meh what you thought o fthe exam and how you answered the quessies.
Ta-rah ta-rah!
Basically on the analysis parts I did as follows:
Paper one:
Audience / Puirpose / Context of text to be analysed. Next paragrpah was on semantic fields and general lexis. This was followed by Grammar (my fauvorite part - not!) followed by Graphology and a paragrpah on phonology (alliteration, dissonance etc...) I then did a summarising, concluding paragraph explaining how everything had come together to achieve the audience, purpose and context.
I did the representation question basically discussing how vocab used could reflect social prejudice against people with disabilities / black people / women etc and mentioned Sapier Whorf who say that language comes first then thought.
The conversation analysis seemed ok and I think that I picked up on most major points. I started by stating the roles and purpose of each speaker then by exploring their relationship and the context of the conversation. I moved on to look at semantics and topic shifts along with accent and dialect features. Made the observation that it was mainly Standard English and Recieved Pronounciation with the occasional colloquial expression e.g. "yeah and dunno". Mentioned contractions e.g "can't" and ellision (basically the same thing).
I then spoke abit about female style of conversation and mentioned H.P. Grices maxims and how speakers worked together to achieve a common goal, also threw in Giles theory of convergance for good measure.
I moved on to structure of the conversation and the three part exchange near the end along with back channeling noises. Noted that the girl having the operation appeared to be the dominant speaker although they were pretty well balanced. Did a concluding paragraph basically summarising how each speaker had achived their roles and purpose in the conversation.
I chose the male / female interaction question as the other one was awful. Mentioned the general styles of male and female conversation in same sex excehanges before doing a comparrison with how they acted in mixed sex conversations. Said that males were competative and saught to hold the floow whilst females were supportive and cooperative. Mentioned Fishman and Tajfel along with Millmans science experiment illustrating males as the "dominant role". Also mentioned Dorval and the kiddies with the topic shifts (55 for males in a 20 minute conversation and virtually none for girls). Added how females found it difficult to cope with male vales in a conversation although did point out about Margaret Thatcher who succeeded in coping.
Did a concluding paragraph very quickly as time was running out and couldnt really find time to structure any further sensible argument.
Overall wrote about 6 or 7 sides for the textual analysis, 2 and half sides for both essay questions and about 5 sides for the conversation analysis.
How much did you write? (not that it reflects on any way in quality or likley mark!)
Paper one:
Audience / Puirpose / Context of text to be analysed. Next paragrpah was on semantic fields and general lexis. This was followed by Grammar (my fauvorite part - not!) followed by Graphology and a paragrpah on phonology (alliteration, dissonance etc...) I then did a summarising, concluding paragraph explaining how everything had come together to achieve the audience, purpose and context.
I did the representation question basically discussing how vocab used could reflect social prejudice against people with disabilities / black people / women etc and mentioned Sapier Whorf who say that language comes first then thought.
The conversation analysis seemed ok and I think that I picked up on most major points. I started by stating the roles and purpose of each speaker then by exploring their relationship and the context of the conversation. I moved on to look at semantics and topic shifts along with accent and dialect features. Made the observation that it was mainly Standard English and Recieved Pronounciation with the occasional colloquial expression e.g. "yeah and dunno". Mentioned contractions e.g "can't" and ellision (basically the same thing).
I then spoke abit about female style of conversation and mentioned H.P. Grices maxims and how speakers worked together to achieve a common goal, also threw in Giles theory of convergance for good measure.
I moved on to structure of the conversation and the three part exchange near the end along with back channeling noises. Noted that the girl having the operation appeared to be the dominant speaker although they were pretty well balanced. Did a concluding paragraph basically summarising how each speaker had achived their roles and purpose in the conversation.
I chose the male / female interaction question as the other one was awful. Mentioned the general styles of male and female conversation in same sex excehanges before doing a comparrison with how they acted in mixed sex conversations. Said that males were competative and saught to hold the floow whilst females were supportive and cooperative. Mentioned Fishman and Tajfel along with Millmans science experiment illustrating males as the "dominant role". Also mentioned Dorval and the kiddies with the topic shifts (55 for males in a 20 minute conversation and virtually none for girls). Added how females found it difficult to cope with male vales in a conversation although did point out about Margaret Thatcher who succeeded in coping.
Did a concluding paragraph very quickly as time was running out and couldnt really find time to structure any further sensible argument.
Overall wrote about 6 or 7 sides for the textual analysis, 2 and half sides for both essay questions and about 5 sides for the conversation analysis.
How much did you write? (not that it reflects on any way in quality or likley mark!)
I found the unit 3 paper the harder of the two:
I talked about, in the transcript:
Interactional/ Transactional
Aims + Roles
Labov
Semantic Fields
Non-Fluency: Hedges, Fillers, etc
Gender
Feedback
Function
Structure
Seizing Floor + attempts to
Sentence Types - complex, simple etc.
Overlaps
Monitoring Features
Tags
and some other stuff I hope - 5.5 sides for this question
For the second question, I did successful communication, choosing questions and feedback.
I wrote about four types of questions - open, closed, rhetorical and tag questions and gave examples of when they might be used and their effects (+ a bit about gender)
I wrote about positive feedback and backchanneling and touched on monitoring features.
On the Unit 1 paper, I wrote the same amount for each question as in the first question.
For the paper analysis, I wrote about
Context + Aims
Function
Tenor
Lexis - Semantic Field, Nouns, Verbs Adjs, Pronouns
Grammar - Sentence types (SVO etc.)+ 1 clause example
Phonology - Alliteration and rhyme
Semantics - One example of a stark contrast
PUNS
Graphology - touched on this
One bit I was quite proud of was saying that the dominant semantic field of body parts, by being dominant, was shown to be more important than the subordinate semantic field of human qualities, illustrating the point that physical qualities are thought by many to be more important than emotional qualities, which was in keeping with the main point raised.
I did the child language acquisition question, first mentioning Skinner and then loads of stuff refuting him. Then I mentioned babies listening to radio and mimicking it. Talked about alternative theories after that inc. Chomsky and Piaget. Then I said that the bit of the course I found most intersting was the process by which children learn language - so I went thorugh that from birth to telegraphic, including theorists like MCNeill and McShane along the way. Gave a few examples indicating context reliance and went on to say that babies emphasis shifts from satisfying basic needs and wants to communicating with others.
All in all, was not a BAD exam but I really struggle with all that writing - had a massive migraine at end of paper :-(
Thing is, I could get an A but I could get a C. You just really don't know with English do you?
Sorry if I have gone on a bit - this is as helpful for me as it is for anyone else though, so apologies in advance!!!
I talked about, in the transcript:
Interactional/ Transactional
Aims + Roles
Labov
Semantic Fields
Non-Fluency: Hedges, Fillers, etc
Gender
Feedback
Function
Structure
Seizing Floor + attempts to
Sentence Types - complex, simple etc.
Overlaps
Monitoring Features
Tags
and some other stuff I hope - 5.5 sides for this question
For the second question, I did successful communication, choosing questions and feedback.
I wrote about four types of questions - open, closed, rhetorical and tag questions and gave examples of when they might be used and their effects (+ a bit about gender)
I wrote about positive feedback and backchanneling and touched on monitoring features.
On the Unit 1 paper, I wrote the same amount for each question as in the first question.
For the paper analysis, I wrote about
Context + Aims
Function
Tenor
Lexis - Semantic Field, Nouns, Verbs Adjs, Pronouns
Grammar - Sentence types (SVO etc.)+ 1 clause example
Phonology - Alliteration and rhyme
Semantics - One example of a stark contrast
PUNS
Graphology - touched on this
One bit I was quite proud of was saying that the dominant semantic field of body parts, by being dominant, was shown to be more important than the subordinate semantic field of human qualities, illustrating the point that physical qualities are thought by many to be more important than emotional qualities, which was in keeping with the main point raised.
I did the child language acquisition question, first mentioning Skinner and then loads of stuff refuting him. Then I mentioned babies listening to radio and mimicking it. Talked about alternative theories after that inc. Chomsky and Piaget. Then I said that the bit of the course I found most intersting was the process by which children learn language - so I went thorugh that from birth to telegraphic, including theorists like MCNeill and McShane along the way. Gave a few examples indicating context reliance and went on to say that babies emphasis shifts from satisfying basic needs and wants to communicating with others.
All in all, was not a BAD exam but I really struggle with all that writing - had a massive migraine at end of paper :-(
Thing is, I could get an A but I could get a C. You just really don't know with English do you?
Sorry if I have gone on a bit - this is as helpful for me as it is for anyone else though, so apologies in advance!!!
This is what I hate about English, you really dont know how you have done. Many subjects are fact based but English is 50% fact 50% application thus meaning that half of it is more down to exam technique and how you formulate answers often whilst under extreme pressure and tight time constraints.
I have seen stuff that you have mentioned that I omitted, you have probably seen stuff that I have mentioned that you omitted.
Either way we seem to be talking roughly about the same sort of things and hopefully we will both come out with a reasonable mark.
I need a "c" grade overall (doing As and A2 in one year) so anything above that is a bonus for me. Hopefully I should get ATLEAST the "c" that I need! I would be very surpirsed and paying a fee to see my paper / have a remark if I didnt especially as my coursework was pretty good and thus even if my exams were low / mid c that should hike it up.
I have seen stuff that you have mentioned that I omitted, you have probably seen stuff that I have mentioned that you omitted.
Either way we seem to be talking roughly about the same sort of things and hopefully we will both come out with a reasonable mark.
I need a "c" grade overall (doing As and A2 in one year) so anything above that is a bonus for me. Hopefully I should get ATLEAST the "c" that I need! I would be very surpirsed and paying a fee to see my paper / have a remark if I didnt especially as my coursework was pretty good and thus even if my exams were low / mid c that should hike it up.
LOL. Wish I was in your position. I NEED an A Grade! I have realised that I didn't write anything about politeness in transcript essay, despite knowing all the theories. I hope both papers are marked by same person though as I incorporated them elswewhere in the 2 papers. TBH, there is always gonna be stuff you miss out - I just hope that maybe I did write sumthing about politeness!!! What did you get for your coursework? I am on 107/120 at the moment, but something tells me my mark is going to drop!!!!
Tom
Tom
I got 93/120 for my As (I mark off an A apparantly) and 38/39 out of 60 for my A2 (a strong C).
Both marks are apparantly very credible for someone doing the full A-levl in one year as an evening student whilst (trying to) work full time.
You can know all the theories and all the case studies however you will rarley remember to get all of the relevant ones into an exam. I for example have realised I forgot to mention stuff that I had revised 200 times over. It is also a fact that you will never be able to comment on all of the linguistic features in a text / transcript, what you have to do is pick three or four relevant ones that stand out and just go for it.
What did you think to my initial question about "Miss World dinasour should be put to sleep". Do you agree that it could be seen either way with dinosour as both an adjective or noun?
Both marks are apparantly very credible for someone doing the full A-levl in one year as an evening student whilst (trying to) work full time.
You can know all the theories and all the case studies however you will rarley remember to get all of the relevant ones into an exam. I for example have realised I forgot to mention stuff that I had revised 200 times over. It is also a fact that you will never be able to comment on all of the linguistic features in a text / transcript, what you have to do is pick three or four relevant ones that stand out and just go for it.
What did you think to my initial question about "Miss World dinasour should be put to sleep". Do you agree that it could be seen either way with dinosour as both an adjective or noun?
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