The Coursework Unit
ENGA2 is the first unit of the 2009 AQA-A English Language A level course. It’s an internally-assessed coursework unit and is worth 40% of the AS mark (i.e. 20% of the A-level). It consists of two sections:
- Investigating a representation
- Producing a representation
It’s important that these two aspects are seen as interconnected: the minute your students analyse how a feature writer ridicules what he considers to be the excesses of the current ‘health and safety’ mentality, they will also be becoming aware of the satirical and humorous methods that they might use themselves.
Brooker Activity - On Mollycoddled Children.doc
Looking, for example, at the techniques of Charlie Brooker [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/children.foodanddrink] they are both preparing for their coursework analysis and potentially preparing for their production piece.
They are also becoming aware of some of the structural features of a written journalistic genre (that of ‘opinion feature-writing’) – a genre they’re unlikely to have explored for GCSE, and thus which will be quite new to them.
You can read HERE one suggested approach to the teaching of the production piece, as well as student-friendly guidelines to writing the commentary. You will need to download the Word document and find the relevant...
