Paper 2, Question 1 Revision

Morning all,

We are doing some paper 2 revision today, specifically question 1. We've done a lot of work on the article analysis and comparison question, but that's only one question on the paper and you have 2 others to complete - the opinion article and the discursive essay.

Q1 of your paper 2 will be the discursive essay. My group will remember that we did a lot of work on how to approach a discursive essay last year and what makes this different to an analytical essay that you will do in the meanings and representations questions, for example.

For this task you will be given a choice of 2 statements. No data or prompt, just the statements, which could be on anything from language and gender to occupation to social groups/social class to language change. The questions will look like this (click here).

Your job is to construct an essay which seeks to explore this statement, using everything you know about the topic, focusing mostly on theories and studies. You are marked out of 30 for this question: 10 marks for AO1 (written expression and terminology) and 20 marks for AO2 (language concepts and theories).

Click here to see a B grade response to the gender discursive question. This is the style that you should be seeking to emulate, however since this is a high B grade, there is still room for improvement, specifically in the clarity of the written expression which is not always consistent, and the lack of specific examples in the discussion of theory.

Your task today is to get into pairs and plan a discursive response to the following question:

'Evaluate the idea that language change can be controlled and directed.'

Start by mindmapping everything you know about the topic of language change, including the argument of descriptivism vs prescriptivism, terminology, theories/theorists, articles you have read (look back through my blog at the wider reading post), documentaries, TED talks, context and anything else you can think of. This will give you a good foundation of what things you could include and refer to.

You then need to work together to write the essay, which is due in tomorrow without fail. To put this in perspective: in the real exam you allocate 45 minutes to complete this task - I am giving you today and tomorrow, which is 3 hours not including homework.

Usethe exemplar essay above as an example, but please be aware that it needs improvement. The best 2 essays will be typed up and given out as exemplars to use for your revision.

Any questions, let me know. Enjoy!