England · Pearson EdexcelSyllabus
English Language syllabus, dot point by dot point
Every dot point in the England English Languagesyllabus, with a focused answer for each one. Click any dot point for a worked explainer, past exam questions, and links to related dot points. Written by Claude Opus 4.8, Anthropic's latest AI.
Analysis and Investigation
Module overview →- How do you analyse and compare unseen texts under exam conditions?Exam text analysis: analysing and comparing unseen texts using the discourse framework, building a comparative argument, and writing to time.12 min answer →
- What toolkit do you use to analyse any English text, and how do you move from naming a feature to proving its effect?Methods of language analysis: the language levels of phonology, lexis and semantics, grammar, pragmatics, discourse and graphology, and moving from feature to effect.13 min answer →
- How do you craft original writing to a genre, audience and purpose, and reflect analytically on your own linguistic choices?Original writing and commentary: writing for a chosen genre, audience and purpose using a style model, and reflecting analytically on linguistic choices in a commentary.12 min answer →
- How do you plan, run and write up an independent language investigation that reaches genuine, evidence-led conclusions?The language investigation: framing a focused research question, collecting and handling data ethically, applying analytical methods, and writing up findings.13 min answer →
Child Language Development
Module overview →- How do children acquire spoken language, through what stages, and what do their errors reveal about the system they are building?Spoken language acquisition: the phonological, lexical, grammatical and pragmatic stages of spoken development and the features that mark each.13 min answer →
- What theories explain how children acquire language so fast, and how do you weigh the evidence between them?Theories of language acquisition: behaviourism (Skinner), nativism (Chomsky), cognitivism (Piaget) and social interactionism (Bruner and Vygotsky), with the evidence for each.13 min answer →
- How do children learn to write and to read, and what do their spelling and writing samples reveal about each stage?Written language development: Kroll's stages of writing, the development of spelling, and how children learn to read.13 min answer →
Language Change
Module overview →- Why do people react so strongly to language change, and how do you evaluate the prescriptivism-descriptivism debate?Attitudes to language change: prescriptivism and descriptivism, the metaphors used to describe change, and the debate over decline versus evolution.13 min answer →
- How has English changed across time at every language level, and what drove the change?Historical language change: lexical, semantic, grammatical, phonological and orthographic change in English from Early Modern English to the present.13 min answer →
- What theories explain how and why language change spreads, and what processes generate new words?Theories and processes of change: the wave, S-curve and random fluctuation models, the influence of technology and society, and the functional and lexical processes of change.13 min answer →
Language variation
Module overview →- How has English spread to become a global language, and how do you evaluate the rise of World Englishes against a single standard?Global English and World Englishes: Kachru's three circles, English as a lingua franca, nativised varieties, linguistic imperialism, and attitudes to global English as opportunity or threat.14 min answer →
- How does language construct and reflect gender, power and occupational identity, and how do you evaluate the competing models?Language and gender, power and occupation: deficit, dominance and difference models, instrumental and influential power, and occupational register, with Lakoff, Tannen, Zimmerman and West, Fairclough and Drew and Heritage.14 min answer →
- How does the language of journalism represent people, places and events, and how do you expose the ideology behind apparently neutral reporting?Language and journalism: representation and bias, journalistic register and headlines, tabloid versus broadsheet style, and critical discourse analysis of transitivity, nominalisation and synthetic personalisation.14 min answer →
- How does an individual speaker's language both signal and actively construct identity?Language and the individual: idiolect, sociolect, accent and dialect, code-switching and the construction of identity through language choices.13 min answer →
- How does language vary by region and social class, and what do the classic sociolinguistic studies show?Social and regional variation: regional dialects, sociolinguistic studies of class, social networks and the named research of Labov, Trudgill and Milroy.13 min answer →
- What is Standard English, and how do attitudes to non-standard varieties reveal judgements about their speakers?Standard and non-standard English: the nature and status of Standard English, prescriptivism and descriptivism, and attitudes to non-standard varieties.13 min answer →