Hello everybody and welcome to this video on AQA English Language paper 1.
Now the November re-sit results came out this week, and with them the examiner's reports.
In today’s video I will take you through some of the key points from the exam
reports for 2019, from both the November and the June exams.
Now I won’t go through everything covered in those reports - almost all of the points
made are things I already teach in my animated videos, so do check those out, and I will
link them at the end of this video.
The first point relates to Paper 1 question 1, and is really down to students making this
question harder than it needs to be.
Remember, question 1 is supposed to be an easy opener to settle you into the exam.
It asks you to list four things about a certain topic from a certain section of the text.
Now I cover this point in my animated video on this question, but I wanted to go over
it again because it comes up in both the June and the November 2019 exam reports.
And that point is that students should remember that inferences are not required for this
question, and can in fact lead students to speculate rather than interpret.
If you’ve seen my animation on this question you’ll remember that the example I gave
of this is a question to list four things about Brightly.
One thing we read in the text that Brightly began to cough.
Students who simply wrote ‘Brightly coughed’ would get a mark for this, but trying to interpret
that cough and writing ‘Brightly was sick’, or ‘Brightly had allergies’, or ‘Brightly
had asthma’ would not, as it’s not something that is stated in the text itself.
It’s a simple point to make, but students are making mistakes here time and time again.
For question 2 there was one interesting point in the November report which stated that ‘students
continue to struggle to make clear comments on the use of sentence structure and punctuation
and such comments should only be made where it is possible to link the usage to a precise
effect.’
Again, if you watch my videos you’ll remember that the November 2018 resit paper didn’t
contain any sentence forms worthy of note, so it’s important to use the bullet points
in the question as a guide, and not feel you have to write about all three.
If you find a sentence form or use of punctuation that seems to be significant, but can’t
think how it creates a specific and precise effect, then don’t write about it.
In June 2019 the same point was made, that, ‘Students tend to find less success writing
about sentence length or punctuation’.
It doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do so, it just means that many fail to write
about these in a way which will achieve high marks by offering a perceptive and detailed
analysis.
For question 3, a common mistake I’ve seen time and time again myself, that students
write about language in this question, when it is in fact a structure question.
Remember, structure is about why a certain detail is located at that point in the text.
The June 2019 report pointed out one successful way to focus on structure, which is to ‘note
a structural feature at a specific point in the text and then comment on how it has developed
from earlier or how it contrasts with the start or the end.’
For question 4, and again I go through this in my video on this question: you do not have
to argue both sides in this question - you can agree, disagree or have a balanced view.
This was mentioned as a key point where the exam report stated ’Some students were determined
to find a counter-argument, but without having secure evidence for this.
Students should be reminded that a counter-argument is not essential for this question; they may
be more successful making and developing points that continue their original argument’.
For question 5, there was a very interesting point made.
Now I never tell you what the questions themselves were, because I don’t want to give away
questions that you may end up doing for a mock, but the key thing here is that many
students decided to write their creative piece in a younger voice, as children.
The November exam report points out that the difficulty with doing this is that a younger
narrative voice was simplistic and did not allow students to showcase their narrative
skills.
In other words, you want to show the examiner just how amazing your writing skills are,
with your vocabulary, your punctuation, your structure, your language devices and so on.
Don’t choose to write in a way which hinders that.
And even if the image prompt seems to be leading you to write in a simplistic way, know that
that is not what the exam board want you to do.
The image is a prompt for ideas, and should encourage you to write beyond what is simply
contained within the picture itself.
Well I hope you found this video useful.
My guide to this English Language exam has just passed 300 reviews on Amazon, so why
not pick up a copy today.
It takes you through each question in paper 1 and paper 2, and is linked in the description.
Next week we’ll look at Language Paper 2.
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