AQA English Language: A Level Paper 1

What does Paper 1 test? Section A (do all 3 questions) Questions 1 and 2 Analysis of language and contexts of 2 unseen texts linked by topic or theme Text A = newer (post 1950s/60s) Text B = older (1600-pre 1950s/60s) Question 3 Ability to compare them – meaningfully

What does Paper 1 test? Section B (choose 1 of 2 questions) Question 4 or 5 Child language development (CLD) Choice of spoken or literacy (inc. reading and/or writing) Critical comments: essay response to unseen data and evaluation of the critical comment (with reference to data and own examples)

From the horse’s mouth Section B: Child language development (CLD) Always one spoken question, one literacy Always a critical comment in the question Critical comment will have loose link to theory Data is never more than 2 pages long There is no required balance, e.g. 50:50 between analysis of the data, and evaluation of the critical comment AQA recommend doing Section B first (get all the theory down – self-contained – worth least)

From the horse’s mouth Section B: Child language development (CLD) Whole response can hang on the unseen data Candidates can import own examples too Once the data is used, candidates have hit Level 2 For AO2 (theories and concepts): Level 3 “learned” essays may feature here Level 4 students manipulate what they’ve learned to fit new question Level 5 evaluate and link back to question

From the horse’s mouth Section A: meanings and representations Text A is always the newer text Text B is always the older text Question: how has the text shaped the topic (content)

From the horse’s mouth Section A: meanings and representations You can repeat materials from Questions 1 and 2 in Question 3 Level 5 mark does not necessitate clause analysis (in contradiction of the specimen mark scheme) – but it can be useful if you are confident you can do it accurately AQA advise students ‘start with meaning/representation’ – and then find a feature, e.g. ‘Text A represents teenage drivers as potentially dangerous in a humorous way’. Cover 3-4 representations, e.g. writer, audience, topic, publication

From the horse’s mouth Section A: meanings and representations Questions 1 and 2 (single text) should deal with meaning (content) and representations (construction) Question 3 should focus on audience, mode, purpose, genre, i.e. contextual differences (these can also be present in Questions 1 and 2, but are specifically credited in Question 3’s mark scheme)

From the horse’s mouth Section A: meanings and representations Examples of responses: Level 2 labels ‘pronoun’ Level 3 describes ‘relative pronoun’ Level 4 analyses ‘relative pronoun has this effect’ Level 5 patterns ‘relative pronouns are used throughout the text for these effects’

From the horse’s mouth: grade boundaries out of 500 2017 2018 2019?? A* 426 A* 433 A 373 A 381 B 316 B 328 C 259 C 275 D 202 D 222 E 145 E 169