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Component 03: Independent language research (NEA)
Quick questions on Choosing an investigation topic: framing a research question - OCR A-Level English Language
8short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is identifying a workable area?Show answer
The investigation can address any genuine area of language in use, and the exam topics suggest fertile ground.
What is narrowing to a research question?Show answer
The decisive step is narrowing a broad topic into a single, answerable question. "Language and gender" is a topic, not a question; "How do male and female sports commentators differ in their use of evaluative lexis?" is a question. A good research question is focused (one clear thing to find out), answerable (the data can settle it), and rich (it will yield enough to analyse across the levels and engage concepts).
What is ensuring the data is gatherable?Show answer
A question is only investigable if its data can actually be gathered, ethically and at a workable scale. Before committing, check that the data exists or can be collected, that gathering it is ethical (consent and anonymisation where people are involved), and that the quantity is manageable (enough to analyse, not so much it cannot be handled). A brilliant question with ungatherable data is a dead end.
What is a model narrowing?Show answer
"A student interested in social media might begin with the broad topic 'language online', which is far too wide. Narrowing, they reach 'How is informality constructed in the captions of a single brand's Instagram posts?', a focused question about a specific, gatherable data set, rich enough to analyse across lexis, grammar, graphology and pragmatics and to engage concepts of synthetic personalisation and the mode continuum. The narrowing turns an impossible topic into an investigable question."
What is a model data check?Show answer
"Before committing to a question on workplace talk, a student would check the data: can conversations be recorded with the informed consent of all participants, anonymised, and at a manageable length? If consent is not obtainable, the question, however interesting, is not investigable, and a written-data alternative (workplace emails, say) might be substituted. Checking the data before committing prevents a dead end."
What is q1?Show answer
What is the difference between a topic and a research question? [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
Why is a question that is too broad the commonest cause of weak investigations? [2 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
Identify an area of language to investigate and frame it as a focused, answerable research question, justifying your choice. [16 marks]