Eight years ago I was also in this position - I have a degree in English Literature, and hadn't studied English Language since I did my own A-Levels. I was frightened of the grammar aspect of the course mostly, but just generally felt very overwhelmed at the thought of learning a brand new course from scratch. I had no real resources whatsoever to work with and was feeling a little intimidated to say the least. One thing I was able to do during my first year of teaching the course however was sit down with another teacher from a Sixth Form that was part of our Academy, and nothing else I've done since was as impactful as this. Whilst I can't sit down and meet every single person who asked for help over on X, I am finally at a point where I might be able to start sharing some wisdom after a fairly sparkly set of 2024 results.
So, I will try my best to put together a decent series of blogs that cover what I think are the most important aspects of the course. I will caveat this by saying that I teach AQA and have little to no understanding of the requirements of any other exam board. I will also caveat this by saying that there will be many, many people out there who would be far more qualified than me to provide this information to you. I am not an English Language A-Level examiner. I know one very well and regularly send my essays to her because I'm not 100% sure I'm right! I am also sure your exam board themselves will have many videos and resources that would be helpful to you in starting your journey - but I offer you my interpretation of what I think I do well in the classroom for my pupils.
I want to start with the Assessment Objectives. A good understanding of these was the foundation for me, and was the first place that my very kind Sixth Form friend started with when she was trying to teach me about the course. Knowing which assessment objective goes with which question is vital.
In this post I am just going to talk you through AO1. I will aim to do all the other AOs all in a row in as quick succession as my schedule will allow!
Assessment Objective One:
Apply appropriate methods of language analysis, using associated terminology and coherent written expression.
This is your terminology and your essay organisation. For AQA this applies to Paper 1 Questions 1, 2 and 4, and Paper 2 Questions 1, 2 and 3 and is always worth 10 marks.
Terminology really is key in this course, which is a far-cry from the expectation at GCSE. There are some nice, quick adjustments you need your pupils to make in the first instance.
- 'Writer' becomes text producer
- 'Reader' becomes text receiver
- 'Presented as...' (as in like 'Macbeth is presented as') becomes 'represented as' when writing a meanings and representations essay.
But there are several high-leverage things that I do with this assessment objective to get pupils to the top bands of the AO1 mark scheme.
1. Insist that every time the pupil refers to part of the text, they provide a term to go with it. We ban the words 'word', 'quote', 'line' etc. and refer instead to the very specific grammatical term that best describes the element of the text they are referring to. It feels alien and wrong to us because we have been taught that this is just 'feature spotting' - but all it has to be is 'relevant to the task', and if the task is to discuss the meanings and representations in a text, and you have picked a relevant part of the text to discuss and tied this to a representation, then it isn't feature spotting, it's just aiding their explanation of the representation.
2. Try to spot a pattern. Are there tons of dynamic verbs in the text? If so, what are they doing? Do they help create a sense of energy and dynamism? Is there an interesting clause pattern that runs throughout? Again, if so, what is it doing? Is it helping to represent the issue at hand as urgent and necessary? We are avoiding just plain feature spotting by doing this, and actually making a meaningful comment about the whole text.
3. Hit multiple levels of language. It isn't enough for them to just say 'the noun phrase' over and over again, although it is so tempting because they find these easy to identify. They need to hit lexis (your word-level analysis e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives etc.) of course, but they also need to be hitting the syntax (clause, phrase, sentence-level analysis), phonology (sounds e.g. sibilance, plosives etc.), semantics (things like connotations are good here, but also anything metaphorical etc.), graphology (although I ask them to avoid this mostly unless it's staring them right in the face), pragmatics (the situational context of the text, including things like audience positioning) - I could go on (and I will in another blog post if you want me to!). But essentially, they need to hit as many of these different areas as they can as opposed to sticking to just one.
4. Explore the layers of the levels of language. For the same quotation there might be several of the levels of language at play. We need to help pupils to recognise how these are connected. Are the dynamic verbs very violent and aggressive? And do the plosive P sounds help to add to this level of anger? And does the anaphoric repetition help to reinforce the anger and emphasise the urgency? If so, you've hit three levels of language and analysed the way they are all connected, and as a result you've hit a band 5 element of the AQA mark scheme.
5. An essay structure helps them, even at KS5. It is tempting to believe that, because they have sat their GCSEs, they all know how to structure an essay. One of the aspects of the AO1 mark scheme is to guide the reader. You need an introduction, topic sentences, a conclusion, to be able to guide a reader properly. Teach them these things explicitly. My favoured method specifically of topic sentences when doing a meanings and representations style question is to put the representation in the topic sentence. For example, 'Throughout the text, X is represented as Y and Z in order to/because they aim to [insert purpose].' This way, we are certain we are focusing the paragraph on a specific representation.
6. Practice, practice, practice those terms. For Band 5 on the mark scheme they need there to be 'rare errors'. They need to be right. If they don't feel 100% confident with various levels of language, they will revert back to that default position of 'the noun phrase...' and we need that all important variety. I do drills with my pupils almost every day. I show them virtually anything (a greetings card, an advertisement, the front of an Amazon package, the blurb of a book, literally anything short!) and they have to identify every piece of lexis, and then two other language levels of their choice. I do this every single day until I am confident they can do it.
I hope that this helps a bit. I will aim to share my wisdom on Assessment Objective 2 as soon as I can. If you have read anything in here that you think is incorrect, and are more qualified than I am to pass judgement, then please please let me know. I am still constantly learning and would love you to teach me something.
Andie x
Please could you recommend a good primer or text or resource for grammar etc terms eg a list from anaphora to zeugma?
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