For teachers coming into Language as Literature specialists, teaching linguistic theory is perhaps the most alien aspect of the course.  It is often seen as the most factual aspect within English teaching at A Level, and is sometimes (frustratingly) viewed by students as the only thing they can revise, as they see it as more explicitly ‘content’ than other elements of the course.

This is a collection of suggestions for different ways of introducing theoretical and research-based content to students, as well as ways of developing...

Associated Resources

• http://english.edusites.co.uk/index.php/category/c/teaching-ideas/

Carrying out linguistic analysis of texts and extracts in class

This is, of course, something that needs considerable practice in AS and A2 Language classrooms, and it can be a constant battle to engage in meaningful linguistic analysis while still ringing the changes.

This selection of ideas can be used for different kinds of analysis: general AS level analysis to embed and apply linguistic techniques; analysis of particular kinds of text (e.g....

If there’s one ‘framework’ that has the ability to haunt both teacher and student alike, it is surely grammar. For many teachers, putting a tentative toe into the Sea of Grammar seems all-too-easily to risk slipping on a coastal shelf and floundering to seemingly bottomless and very murky depths – not waving but drowning, maybe?

This guide is the result both of a passion for grammar and several years of trying to find ways to teach it that work for students of varying abilities and levels of interest. It’s not an attempt at...

This guide considers ways of teaching textual analysis using the exam boards’ ‘linguistic concepts’ (aka analytical ‘frameworks’). The guide works alongside the previous guide that, under the umbrella of ‘discourse analysis’, explored the mnemonic ‘G-CAP’: genre, context, audience and purpose.

The purpose of using these ‘linguistic concepts’ is to provide a selection of useful ‘levels’ from which a text can be considered analytically, levels that will allow a close, methodical and above all, subtly revealing...

AQA English Language B – ENGB1

An Introduction

ENGB1 is the first unit of the new (2009) AQA B course; it’s a wholly examined unit worth 60% of the student’s AS mark (i.e. 30% of the A-level). It consists of two sections:

• Section A: ‘Text Varieties’

• Section B: ‘Language & Social Contexts’.

The introductory unit, ENGB1, needs to be viewed as far more than just ‘a unit’ within this AS level course. Whilst it is, in some respects, a natural development from the students’ GCSE English course, many students are surprised...