Course overview and specification

There are two exam papers - worth 40% each – are called ‘Language, the Individual and Society’ (paper 1), and ‘Language Diversity and Change’ (paper 2).    

Both of the exams test your language knowledge; your ability to read, analyse and understand the deeper meanings in texts; your ability to construct an argument in response to an essay question; and paper 2 tests your ability to structure a creative response to a task. The main topic for paper 1 is how children learn language (tested on one essay question) and the umbrella of diversity and change for paper 2 is very wide and allows you to specialise in what you are interested in.   

Diversity covers all the ways that people use language or how language represents people and groups differently at any one time – according to their gender, sexuality, occupation, ethnicity, age, interest, location, class, audience, context etc etc etc.  As this list is so long, we often cover some topics in more detail than others, according to the interests of the classes. There are lots of topics under the idea of change too: change in how language is used in England over time (from 1600 to present), how English has become a world language, the future of English, different views on how/why English changes and how these changes spread.   

The non-examined assessment (coursework) you study is worth 20% of your final grade and is in two parts.  We start both pieces in year 12: original writing with commentary where you study a text as a style model from which to create your own new text; and the language investigation in which you choose your own area of study, collect data and analyse it to help answer the research questions which you set.   

The exam board specification is available here: 

Student Overview