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Component 02: Dimensions of linguistic variation

5 dot points across 5 inquiry questions. Click any dot point for a focused answer with worked past exam questions where available.

How do children learn what language is for, and how do you analyse functional and pragmatic development from data?

Functions and pragmatic development: Halliday's functions of early language, the development of pragmatic competence (turn-taking, politeness, conversational skill), and analysing what children use language to do (AO1, AO2, AO3 in H470/02 Section A).
How children learn what language is for, for OCR A-Level English Language (H470/02 Section A): Halliday's functions of early language, the development of pragmatic competence (turn-taking, politeness, conversational skill), and analysing the purposes behind children's utterances in transcript data.
13 min answer →

What are the stages of spoken language acquisition, and how do you identify a child's stage from transcript features?

Stages of spoken acquisition: phonological development and simplification processes, the lexical stages (holophrastic, two-word, telegraphic, post-telegraphic) and grammatical development, and identifying a stage from data (AO1, AO2, AO3 in H470/02 Section A).
The stages of spoken language acquisition for OCR A-Level English Language (H470/02 Section A): phonological development and simplification processes, the lexical stages (holophrastic, two-word, telegraphic, post-telegraphic) and grammatical development, and identifying a child's stage from transcript features.
13 min answer →

How do you answer the OCR child language data question, integrating analysis, theory and context under time?

The child language data question (H470/02 Section A, 20 marks): integrating cross-level analysis (AO1), acquisition theory (AO2) and the role of interaction (AO3) into an evaluated response to a transcript or written data.
How to answer the OCR A-Level English Language child language data question (H470/02 Section A, 20 marks): integrating cross-level analysis (AO1), acquisition theory (AO2) and the role of interaction (AO3) into an evaluated, data-led response, and managing the task under time.
13 min answer →

What are the main theories of how children acquire language, and how do you deploy them critically in the child language question?

Theories of language acquisition: behaviourism (Skinner), nativism (Chomsky), cognitivism (Piaget), social interactionism (Bruner, Vygotsky) and functionalism (Halliday), and deploying them critically to explain data (AO2 and AO3 in H470/02 Section A).
The main theories of child language acquisition for OCR A-Level English Language (H470/02 Section A): behaviourism (Skinner), nativism (Chomsky), cognitivism (Piaget), social interactionism (Bruner, Vygotsky) and functionalism (Halliday), and how to deploy them critically to explain transcript data.
14 min answer →

How do children learn to write, and how do you analyse the development of written language from data?

Written language development: emergent writing and the stages of spelling and composition (Kroll's phases, Gentry's spelling stages), the relationship between speech and writing, and analysing children's written data (AO1, AO2, AO3 in H470/02 Section A).
How children learn to write for OCR A-Level English Language (H470/02 Section A): emergent writing, the stages of spelling and composition (Kroll's phases, Gentry's spelling stages), the relationship between speech and writing, and analysing children's written data.
13 min answer →