Quick questions on The language change question (Component 2 Section A): analysing dated texts - Eduqas A-Level English Language

This question draws on everything in the change topic. You need the processes (lexical, semantic, grammatical, orthographic and graphological change) to name features precisely; the causes (contact, technology, printing, standardisation, social change) to explain them; and the theories (the wave and S-curve models, functional theory, Aitchison's metaphors) to frame them. Strong answers move fluently between describing a change, accounting for it, and theorising it.

The common weakness is to separate the objectives: a description section, then an explanation section, then a theory section. The strong answer integrates them: each analytical point names a process (AO1), accounts for it (AO2), reads its context (AO3) and compares across the texts (AO4) together. A point on borrowing, for instance, names the loanwords, explains them by contact and prestige, reads their effect, and compares an earlier and later text, all in one developed paragraph.

Section A typically includes a multi-part question alongside the extended response. The shorter parts may direct you to specific levels or features; answer exactly what each asks, staying at the directed level and managing your time so the extended analytical response, which carries the most marks and the comparison, gets the bulk of your effort.

"Tracing lexis across the texts shows the direction of change. The seventeenth-century text borrows heavily from Latin in a learned register (a product of Renaissance learning), while the nineteenth-century text shows those borrowings naturalised and supplemented by new coinages for industrial technology, and the modern text adds digital neologisms. Comparing the three, rather than analysing each alone, reveals an accelerating, technology-driven expansion of the lexicon, with the cause shifting from learning to industry to the digital age."

"The decline of inflection is visible across the texts: the earliest marks the second person with '-est' and uses 'thou', the middle text has lost these, and the modern text is fully analytic. Naming this as inflection loss (AO1), accounting for it by the long shift from a synthetic to an analytic grammar and the levelling effects of standardisation (AO2), reading what it does to the texts (AO3), and tracing it across the three (AO4) integrates all four objectives in one point." This shows the integration the question rewards.

Which assessment objective is distinctive to this question, and what does it require? [2 marks]

Why should you organise the answer by change rather than by text? [2 marks]

Analyse how and why English has changed over time, with reference to and comparison of the dated texts. [20 marks]