English LanguageQ&A by dot point

Original writing genres and craft (Component 3): the range of forms (article, speech, narrative, travel writing, review, blog, letter), their conventions, and the craft of effective writing (structure, sentence variety, lexical precision, voice and rhetorical technique) within each (AO5).

Recreative and adaptive writing (Component 3): responding to a stimulus text or prompt, transforming material across forms, audiences and purposes (re-genre-ing), and making deliberate adaptive choices, the stimulus-driven dimension of the original writing (AO5).

The Component 3 exam (Creative and Critical Use of Language): the structure of the 1 hour 45 minute paper, producing two original writing pieces and one reflective commentary from the stimulus, the AO5 and AO1 to AO3 split, and how to plan and manage the time.

The reflective commentary (Component 3): analysing your own original writing, explaining and justifying language choices using linguistic concepts and terminology, linking choices to audience, purpose and form, the critical (AO1, AO2 and AO3) counterpart to the creative writing.

Writing for purpose and audience (Component 3): crafting original writing for a specified or chosen purpose, audience, form and context, controlling register, tone and structure, and making deliberate language choices, the foundation of the AO5 original writing.

Analysing unseen texts (exam skill): a repeatable method for analysing any unseen text or transcript under time, establishing context, selecting the frameworks that do real work, moving from feature to effect, and building a structured analytical answer (AO1 and AO3 across the components).

Comparing texts for AO4 (exam skill): exploring connections across texts informed by linguistic concepts and methods, structuring comparison by idea or feature rather than text by text, and integrating comparison with analysis, central to the Component 2 change question and any comparative task.

Structuring essays and managing time (exam skill): planning analytical and discursive answers, structuring a clear argument under time, allocating time across multi-section papers, and the exam strategy that gets every task answered to its mark scheme across the Eduqas components.

The assessment objectives (AO1 to AO5): what each objective rewards, how they are weighted differently across the four components, and how to write deliberately to the objectives a given task assesses, the framework underlying every mark in Eduqas A700.

Analysis and frameworks in the NEA (Component 4): applying the linguistic frameworks to your data (AO1), integrating identity concepts, theories and research (AO2), reading context (AO3), and building a sustained, evaluative analysis that answers the research question rather than describing the data.

Choosing an investigation area (Component 4 NEA): selecting a language and identity topic (self-representation, gender, culture, diversity), narrowing it to a focused, answerable research question, ensuring a workable data set, and the concepts and theories that frame each area.

Methodology and data collection (Component 4 NEA): selecting and gathering a workable data set, qualitative and quantitative approaches, ethical considerations (consent, anonymity), preparing and presenting data, and writing a transparent methodology that justifies the research design.

The Language and Identity investigation (Component 4 NEA): the independent 2,500 to 3,500 word language investigation on a language and identity topic, its structure (introduction, methodology, analysis, conclusion), the prescribed areas, and how it is assessed (AO1, AO2 and AO3) and moderated.

Writing up the investigation (Component 4 NEA): structuring the research report, writing in academic register, drawing evidenced conclusions that answer the research question and acknowledge limitations, and referencing sources and data correctly within the 2,500 to 3,500 word limit.

Attitudes to language change (Component 2): prescriptivism and descriptivism, the debate over decline and progress, purism and the role of authorities, attitudes in public discourse, and how to argue critically about responses to change with concepts and examples (AO2, with AO1 and AO3).

The contexts and causes of language change (Component 2): the social, political, technological and cultural drivers (contact and trade, empire and migration, science and technology, the printing press, standardisation, education and the media), and how to explain why a change happened when it did (AO2 and AO3).

English in the twenty-first century (Component 2 Section B): the language of digital and online communication, contemporary varieties and global Englishes, the technological and cultural forces shaping present-day English, and how to analyse and discuss current language change with concepts and examples (AO1, AO2 and AO3).

The processes of language change (Component 2): lexical change (borrowing, coinage, affixation, compounding, blending), semantic change (narrowing, broadening, amelioration, pejoration, semantic shift), grammatical change, and orthographic and graphological change, and how to analyse them in dated texts (AO1 and AO3).

The language change question (Component 2 Section A): analysing dated texts from across the post-1500 period, naming the processes of change, explaining their causes, deploying theory, and comparing across the texts to build an argument about how and why English has changed (AO1, AO2, AO3 and AO4).

Theories and models of language change (Component 2): models of how change spreads and why it happens (the wave and S-curve models, random fluctuation, functional theory, substratum theory, lexical gaps, Aitchison's metaphors of damp spoon, crumbling castle and infectious disease), deployed critically with examples (AO2).

Language acquisition (a Component 1 Section B language issues topic): the stages of children's spoken and written development, the major theories (behaviourist, nativist, cognitive, social interactionist), key evidence and concepts, and how children acquire language, argued critically with theory and examples (AO2, with AO1 and AO3).

Language and power (a Component 1 Section B language issues topic): instrumental and influential power, power in occupation and institutions, the concepts (synthetic personalisation, face and politeness, power asymmetry), and how power is constructed and enacted through language, argued critically with examples (AO2, with AO1 and AO3).

Language and situation (a Component 1 Section B language issues topic): register and how context shapes language, the field, tenor and mode of discourse, the spoken-written continuum, formality and audience, and how situational factors construct meaning, argued critically with concepts and examples (AO2, with AO1 and AO3).

Standard and non-standard English (a Component 1 Section B language issues topic): Standard English and its history, accent and dialect, regional and social variation, overt and covert prestige, and attitudes to non-standard varieties, argued critically with concepts and examples (AO2, supported by AO1 and AO3).

The language issues essay (Component 1 Section B): how to answer the discursive essay from a choice of three across the four topics, building a critical argument (AO2) that deploys concepts and theories and grounds them in examples (AO1 and AO3) under time.

The spoken language question (Component 1 Section A): analysing at least two transcriptions of real spoken language across the linguistic frameworks, reading transcript notation, and moving from feature to effect to construct an argument about the talk (AO1 and AO3).

Discourse: whole-text structure and organisation, cohesion (referencing, conjunction, lexical cohesion), and the structure of spoken interaction (turn-taking, adjacency pairs, openings and closings, repair), and the move from a discourse feature to its effect (AO1 and AO3 across the Eduqas A700 components).

Grammar (morphology and syntax): word formation and inflection, word classes, phrases and clauses, sentence types and functions, mood and voice, and the move from a grammatical feature to its effect on meaning (AO1 and AO3 across the Eduqas A700 components).

Graphology and multimodality: layout, typography, colour and images, the relationship between visual and verbal modes (anchorage, salience, reading paths), and the move from a graphological or multimodal feature to its effect, especially in designed and digital texts (AO1 and AO3 across the Eduqas A700 components).

Lexis and semantics: analysing word choice, word classes, semantic fields, connotation and denotation, formality and register, and the move from a lexical feature to its effect on meaning (AO1 and AO3 across the Eduqas A700 components).

Phonetics, phonology and prosody: the IPA and speech sounds, phonological patterning (alliteration, sibilance, plosives), accent features, and the prosody of delivery (intonation, stress, pace, pause), and how to read them from a transcript (AO1 and AO3, central to Component 1).

Pragmatics: implied meaning, Grice's maxims and implicature, speech acts, politeness and face, deixis and shared knowledge, and the move from a pragmatic feature to its effect on meaning (AO1, AO2 and AO3 across the Eduqas A700 components).