Noam Chomsky, an MIT professor and theorist (used for paper 3 question 2), who proposed the Language Acquisition Device (LAD), and who argued that language is innate and biologically based - is on the Epstein files. The guy who studied child behaviour btw

I do the AQA exam board for English language at alevel. I was wondering if anyone could mark this paper 1 question 1 for me?

Your help is very much appreciated!!

Section A was horrendous imo i was staring blankly at it for at least 5 minutes, i found it so hard to analyse the language. CLA was great though. what did everyone else think? (aqa)

I have notes for the A Level parts, paper 3 and 4 (child language acquisition, language and the self, English in the world)

not to toot my own horn but they are 💅spectacular💅. would it be useful if I shared them here? or do I have to go around making a website if I want to publish them?

colorado.edu

Catcalling vs compliments link to politeness theory as "Catcalling can be intimidating, and can threaten both positive and negative face." Catcalling presumes familiarity that is not truly present between the speaker and the listener.

I'm researching this for my Eng lang A lvl NEA and I would initially expect the language to be different... when asked to differentiate between a catcall and a compliment it is typically identified that a catcall is about something you cannot control (your body) and has sexual overtones whereas a compliment is about something you can control (such as the way you dress) and is intended innocently. I generally agree with this line of reasoning.

However, for this nea I conducted interviews with women who had been catcalled and asked them to describe the language used by men during specific incidents and although I can't share the exact data I will say that my findings were that the language used was almost exactly identical barring 2 exceptions.

The questions were as follows, if anyone is interested in answering them out of curiosity, (although I likely won't be able to add in the data to my project (seeing as I'm already over the word count and have only done my intro and methodology so far), I would if it could lead to a different or particularly interesting conclusion.):

Have you ever been catcalled by a man? What did they say?

Have you ever been complimented by a male stranger? What did they say?

How did it make you feel? Being catcalled vs being complimented?

Give an example of language used to catcall vs compliment:

One "Hi pretty" was a compliment whereas another qualified as sexual harassment, I do not doubt my sources and have experienced this dichotomy myself on a number of occasions (being called the base adjective "gorgeous" by my boyfriend is a very different experience to having it repeated at me by a strange balding man blocking my route home in a white van when I was 14, despite the fact that "gorgeous" is not a particularly offensive or vulgar lexis and it does not necessarily connote anything sexual). So, if it is not the language used, is it the context, the life experiences of the listener (which would impact how safe vs unsafe she'd feel in a given situation) which are factors out of the control of the speaker? (This seems to take away some responsibility from the speaker.) Or, is it the speaker's intentions which we can presume to know through tone of voice, posture and the actions following their speech (i.e. walking away or following the individual)?

Something I found alarming was that when answering number 3 (on compliments) some of my interviewees told stories about unknown old men who 'complimented' these young women by looking them up and down and saying "nice" or something of the sort.

When asked how they felt about these so called compliments they responded with variations of "uncomfortable" due to the age differences (pedophilia) but still identified these comments as instances of receiving compliments rather than catcalls. For me, this cannot be accurate, as I, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary define a compliment as “an expression of esteem, respect, affection, or admiration" none of which was contained in these interactions. To put it plainly, a compliment should make the subject feel good whereas a catcall is more concerned with the desires of the speaker and objectifying the subject.

So, this is a brief(-ish) summary on the subjects I will touch on in my NEA. My English teacher commented when reading it that I should potentially save my work for a dissertation (which I don't think will be relevant for the course I want to study (a combination of Philosophy and Linguistics)) or make a post on LinkedIn or a blog as I would have to delete the majority of my work to have room for the analysis of my data (which I have yet to begin despite being so over the word count)... I didn't want to post on LinkedIn (the atmosphere there is too fake and covered in work-politeness,, it's hard to sound neutral about men while researching in detail the sorts of things some men openly say to women on the streets) and I don't have a blog (although my sisters have a website I could access) so I've come to reddit for advice and opinions.

Any comments on my research or ideas on how to expand on this, share my work online in a forum where it will reach and potentially help people to think about/reconsider their own experiences? I'd also be very grateful for any ideas or how I could include this in a personal statement geared towards Philosophy and Linguistics.

Thanks so much for your time and reading my paragraphs of waffle, I hope you've found it somewhat interesting and have a good day!

Seeing as I would have LOVED for someone to have done this when I first started lang... I have decided to share the best books that I have used this year to widen my expertise and gain more knowledge in the subject! Let's get straight into it:

My 100% faithful books:
Wordslut, Amanda Montell- this is the NUMBER ONE rec of mine bc it's just so thoughtful, critical and descriptivist. It looks at genderlect, social inequality in language and is a great mention for any question about language used by different social groups. Some chapters are more relevant for A-level than others, but who knew the names that people give to their areas could be so telling about the current gender norms???

Words, Words, Words, David Crystal- amazing to get you engaged in reading something entertaining and informative; what I like to call passive revision. This book is super easy to read and Crystal's humour really shines through in everything he writes. I found myself amused that I was actually laughing at cheesy jokes in a book about linguistics.

Algospeak, Adam Aleksic- you may have come across etymologynerd on TikTok (I certainly have) and this is his book about language in a digital age. It is in my opinion the MOST relevant book on language in the socio-digital age at the moment because it is so up to date. It looks at censorship, ideologies online and neologism to cope with rapid changes. Very descriptivist, very entertaining for A-level students because it's written by a fellow Gen-Z.

Obviously we can deduce that my favourite questions are the question 2 on both paper 1 and 2 for OCR... so here are some other very useful books to help you think more into the other questions. I will specify question for OCR but if you happen to be doing a different board, hopefully the content still lines up!

Listen to your Child, David Crystal- CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITON

A Little Book of Language, David Crystal- CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION and general application of language.

The Lexicographer's Dilemma, Jack Lynch- LANGUAGE CHANGE.

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, John McWhorter- LANGUAGE CHANGE.

Language Change: Progress or Decay?, Jean Aitchison- LANGUAGE CHANGE

Etymologicon, Mark Forsyth- LANGUAGE CHANGE

The Rise of Dogwhistle Politics, Deborah Cameron- LANGUAGE IN THE MEDIA and TOPICAL LANGUAGE

English Language and Politics, George Orwell- TOPICAL LANGUAGE

Aitchison's Linguistics, Jean Aitchison- TOPICAL LANGUAGE and LANGUAGE IN THE MEDIA

This has taken me like 30 mins already and I have to go to work so I will put more books in the comments when I remember them! Hope this helps!

I'm appearing for english 9093 as a private candidate in the Oct/Nov 2024 series and I’m feeling overwhelmed. Due to unforeseen circumstances taking eng was a very last min decision and now I'm struggling quite a bit. While I’ve managed to gather notes and understand the course material I'm having serious trouble solving past papers which is very very very bad given that the exams are only a month away. To make things even worse I’m sitting for all four components at once. I’ve watched all the videos available on YouTube and tried to attempt most of the sample papers I could find but it’s not enough. Unfortunately I can’t afford tutoring or crash courses so reddit and Youtube are my last hope. If anyone could share sample answers for all four papers, especially Papers 3 and 4 I’d beincredibly grateful. I just need sample answers like tons of them because I’m struggling with how to write proper responses for those papers Any solved past papers or guidance would mean so much to me. Also I'm a former edexcel student and didnt have much prior knowledge of how the caie system works although I’ve managed to get the hang of it but still would appreciate any tips. Thank you.

How did we find this? Please don’t discuss any of the content as we wouldn’t be allowed to!

Was it easy to answer the texts, did you find it easy to analyse, were you stuck?

I hope the grade boundaries are low, because they might as well have given us windings, even though I felt I got a good result out of it.

After these exams, I've been doubting myself on my skills but I got my NEA score and got a 76. I hear that's a low A, high B. Super proud of myself, I've always been a C grade student but I've been improving literally very recently before the exams had begun🫶🏽

I may be on the wrong subreddit as I live in Australia but my question stays the same.
My English teacher told me that my writing (an imaginative writing task) is amazing and would have gotten me a 20/20 in university, however I was given a 17/20 as it would, when I do my HSC (final exams in year 12 Australia) be too hard to fully grasp and understand by the markers. I was wondering how I can potentially ‘dumb down’ my writing style to avoid this in the future. Any tips?

Any paper 2 predictions ?

Im currently getting 8's and 9's at gcse. For those who got similar grade how hard do you find enlish languague at a level

ok so the diversity question i ate UP i was so thrilled but then the texts i thought were really really rough, could barely think of points to make. I saw things i could talk about but i couldn’t make connections to the other text it was pretty bad. especially since it was the highest mark question

idk how helpful this will be but the other sections are still a work in progress so have at this one, even though it’s a bit minimal. there’s a lot you can talk about with each of these so that’s why I don’t have tons 💪

hi guys! i’m going into A2 coming september and ive started coursework, i can write about anything as long as i can analyse the language in it. does anyone have any recommendations for what i could write about (im terribly indecisive and can’t decide myself lol)

Hello everyone. I'm currently studying Eng Lang at A Level and I make revision notes. Although I do OCR, most of the content will still overlap to other exam boards. I've uploaded everything I've made so far to dropbox. It is still a work in progress though. If you find any of the notes helpful, please feel free to share them around. Hopefully these will be helpful and lmk if there's any mistakes anywhere! :) Here's the link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ujt4odt4jv3kdb7eup0jx/AFsjPBZXrZyVzEyMLs7twTQ?rlkey=xso9oqu3t0lojvq8ekl3jm3sj&st=c5y83q0j&dl=0

Does anyone have notes for paper 3 and paper 4. I'm a private candidate and I'd really appreciate it, if any of you have good notes or tips/ websites, study resources!

Thank you very much!!

worried for results day.
do u think grade boundaries will fall this yr by a few marks?

I recently got my feb march marks and I have failed english. I did only AS level english and somehow still managed to fail it. It brought down my entire aggregate and ruined my marks. So I am planning to retake it in october november. Any advice on where and how to start so I can make sure to ace the exam and english can die in a hole somewhere.

Can someone review this text analysis of English language and give marking based on your point of view and how should I make it more stronger. For two essay one is a blog and one is a article on struggles faced by youth parents less

I went from a B in As to a C in A2 and while I wasn’t expecting an A or anything (due to how difficult it is to score an A, I tried my best on my end) I was definitely not expecting my grade to drop to a C as I had a very high B in As (failed to secure an A by only a few marks) and I feel like A2 English is rather easier to score in as there’s lesser creativity and it’s more knowledge based ? Or is it just as subjective? My family is pretty shocked and wants me to get my paper rechecked. Is it worth it ? What if my grade drops even further ? Is there a chance my grade could improve ? Any help and guidance would be very appreciated !

Hello! I've started my AS levels, and throughout IGCSEs, I've always truly enjoyed studying FLE. I'm writing in the hope of getting advice from people who have taken (or teach) English language (9093). How difficult would self-studying it be? I have to choose between EGP (with school support)- which I, personally, find unrewarding- and EL (without school support).

For context, I plan on pursuing English for my UG degree (in India), and have 4 other subjects (one I may drop).

(I did get an A* in IGCSE, by the way- and acknowledge that this will be MUCH harder.)

Thanks!