English LanguageQ&A by dot point

Analysing language: using the language levels (phonetics, phonology and prosodics; lexis and semantics; grammar and morphology; pragmatics; discourse) plus genre, audience, purpose and mode to analyse an unseen text in Unit 1 Section A.

Contemporary English: present-day language in use, including the influence of technology, electronic communication and social change, analysed for Unit 1 Section B.

Critical writing (part c): a reflective commentary analysing the language choices made in the part (b) original piece, explaining how they suit genre, audience and purpose.

Language issues (part a): the key debates including standard and non-standard English, accent and dialect, language and power, language and gender, and language acquisition, discussed with reference to data.

Original writing (part b): producing a piece of writing for a specified genre, audience, purpose and mode, using deliberate language choices.

Language change over time: how English has changed in lexis, semantics, grammar, orthography and graphology from earlier periods to the present, and the theories that explain change, applied to the comparison of texts.

Analysing spoken language (Section A): the features of speech (prosodics, fillers, pauses, overlaps, turn-taking, adjacency pairs, repair) and the theories of conversation, applied to a transcript.

Creative re-casting (Section B): transforming a given source text into a new genre, audience, purpose or mode, making deliberate language choices appropriate to the new form.

Language and Identity (non-exam assessment): an independent language investigation of 2500 to 3500 words in one of four areas (self-representation, gender, culture, language diversity), with data collection, analysis and contextual reflection.