Hello everybody and welcome to this final tips video for the 2022
AQA English Language paper 1 exam, which takes place on the 18th May.
Question 1 is supposed to be the exam board’s easy opener,
but so many students struggle with it. Two things I want to point out here:
To begin with, you have to select information from within the lines specified by the question.
To help, draw a box around these lines - just be careful not to cross through any
text because you’ll need to be able to read it.
Another issue, which was common in the November 2021 exams, was selecting information about
the wrong character. So, when you get into that exam and look at question 1,
if it’s about a character, make sure you look closely at the text and only pick
points which are about the character you’re being asked to write about.
Question 2 is the language analysis question, and whilst students seem to be getting better
at identifying language items, there is still an issue with explaining the effects and meaning of
these features. Now as I go through in my animated video, you can only achieve band 2 - half marks
at best, if an effect is mentioned but it’s vague and generalised - you can find the most amazingly
sophisticated language features, but if you just write things like ‘this draws you in’ or ‘this
helps you paint a picture in your head’, it really isn’t good enough. The challenge here is that the
wording of the question itself is vague: how is language used to describe something. So my advice
is to first ask yourself ‘what is the specific effect that the writer is trying to achieve?’
Once you have that in mind you can pick the features you want to write about
and explain in detail how they achieve that effect. and it could be emotive - it could be to
create a sense of mystery or shock or excitement but it doesn't have to be emotive: it could be
something like the use of contrasting language to reveal the contrasting sides of a character,
or using language to portray a sense of dominance and control.
Question 3 is the structure question. Very similar to my advice for question 2,
it is not enough to just spot structural devices and explain their effect in a way
which is vague and generalized such as this grabs your attention / it draws you in / it
makes you want to read on - you're never going to get above half marks if you do that.
What you need to do is find structural features and write again about their effect in a manner
which is precise and specific to the source. What this means is, you can’t really go into the exam
with pre-set ideas about the effects of structural devices. For example, the effect of a flashback in
one extract could be totally different to the effect of a flashback in a different extract.
So think carefully about what’s going on in the extract, and how the structural features
create a specific effect in the context of that particular piece of writing.
Remember, structure is all about how things shift and move and change - that could be a shift in
more obvious things like setting, or time, or character, or action to dialogue, or it could be
a more subtle shift - a shift in tension, or pace – how things are sped up or delayed. But it’s all
about the effect of those structural features – not just finding them in the first place.
For question 4, this is a 20 mark question. So the first thing to say is you’re going
to want to spend around 25 minutes on this question. And let me just talk for a moment
about timing here. If we allow 15 minutes to read the source, there are 90 minutes to gain 80 marks,
which means you should spend around one minute per mark available on each question.
So even though question 2 is the kind of question you could probably spend 30 minutes on,
as an 8 mark question you should spend around ten minutes on it and then move on to question 3. And
managing your timing is so important, because if you spend too long on the early questions,
you’ll run out of time for the high mark questions at the end of the paper.
Anyway, back to question 4. The key thing is that second bullet point about HOW the writer
presents something. We don’t want to write a narrative answer which just retells the plot:
when THIS happens it makes us think THIS. No, we want to pick out the
methods the writer has used to create the impression the question is focused on.
And by ‘methods’ we really mean anything the writer has used to create that impression.
The list of things we’ve seen in the exams up to this point is long- basically, if it’s a method
used to create the impression the question is about, you can write about it in your answer.
Question 5 is the writing question. Two things to point out here. In the November 2021 exam report
it was highlighted how less successful answers relied upon long sections of direct speech.
Now this all comes down to timing again – if we allow 5 minutes for planning and 5 for checking
at the end, there’s around 35 minutes of actual writing time in this question.
If you include too much dialogue, it’s likely that you’ll miss out
on other key areas such as description of setting or character. So keep an eye on the
length of your dialogue. If you don’t know how to do that, I’ve made a video on just that topic.
And finally, don’t forget that there are a possible 16 marks awarded for technical
accuracy in question 5: for spelling, punctuation and grammar. I would suggest that you actually
include a couple of things to do with this in your plan, so you can be reminded of it as you
look back at it when you’re writing. Like varying your sentence and paragraph length for effect,
using a wide range of punctuation, varying your sentence openings – those kinds of
things will keep your writing engaging for the examiner when they come to mark it.
Now if you’re revising, I really recommend watching my animated videos on the exam
questions. Each one is only 5 minutes long,
so in 25 minutes you’ll learn lots of helpful things about these questions.