as english language coursework

International AS and A-level English Language (9670)

The assessment of this qualification reflects the style of assessment adopted at university level, providing an ideal platform for higher education.

These assessment styles include data analysis, discursive essays, directed writing, original writing and research-based investigative writing. They help students to become excellent critical readers and evaluators of sources.

They also help students to develop and sustain arguments, as well as adopt a number of different writing skills which are invaluable for both further study and future employment.

Unit 1: Language and Context (AS)

Unit 2: Language and Society (AS)

Unit 3: Language Variation (A2)

Unit 4 (exam OR NEA ): Language Exploration (A2)

Syllabus summary

OxfordAQA International AS/A-level English Language covers the following topics:

Language and context

• Section A: Understanding texts (Understanding context: audience, purpose, genre and mode.)
• Section B: Directed writing (Writing to a specific brief, involving the transformation of some or all of the material in Section A in order to create a new text.)

Language and society

• Section A: Language and social groups: texts (Understanding the ways in which people use language to: express identities, construct and maintain relationships, mark group membership, claim power and status, and play and entertain themselves and others.)
• Section B: Language and social groups: writing (Developing the skills of academic argument in written language.)

Language variation (A-level only)

• Section A: Learning language
• Section B: International English

Language Exploration (A-level only)

• Written paper (Investigating data)
• Non-Exam Assessment (Researching an aspect of language use)

Teaching resources available

OxfordAQA provides all the resources and advice you need to teach the International AS and A-level English Language specification effectively.

• Download the  specification
• View our  training courses to help you deliver OxfordAQA International AS and A-level English Language
• Approved textbooks and resources  published by Oxford University Press

We have too many International AS and A-level English Language resources to list here, so please visit our resource area for teachers  to see them all, including:

• Schemes of work to allow you to plan how to deliver the specification in a way that will best suit you and your students
• Teaching guidance to outline clearly the scope of teaching and learning
• Topic tests and mock exam analysers to allow you to track your students’ progress throughout the teaching year

This is a modular qualification, with four papers over the AS and A-level teaching period and two routes through the course.

AS Paper 1 – Language and Context:

• Section A – Understanding Texts
• Section B – Directed Writing
• Students answer one question from each section
• 50% of AS-level, 20% of A-level

AS Paper 2 – Language and Society:

• Section A – Language and Social Groups: Texts
• Section B – Language and Social Groups: Writing

A-level Paper 1 – Language Variation:

• Section A – Learning Language
• Section B – International English
• 30% of A-level

A-level Paper 2 – Language Exploration:

• Students answer one question from a choice of two
• 2 hours 30 minutes

Non-Exam Assessment (NEA):

• Students conduct a language investigation
• Assessed by teachers, moderated by AQA
• Candidates may re-sit a unit any number of times.
• The best result for each unit will count towards the final qualification.
• Candidates who wish to repeat a qualification may do so by re-sitting one or more units.

Thinking about switching to OxfordAQA?

Take a look at:

• Example specimen exam paper  and  mark scheme

You must be an approved OxfordAQA centre to enter students for our exams. Make sure you  become an OxfordAQA centre  before you start teaching a course.

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Course specification

• Study Guides
• Homework Questions

As english language coursework commentary example

Programmes & Qualifications

Cambridge international as & a level english language (9093).

• Past papers, examiner reports and specimen papers

You can download one or more papers for a previous session. Please note that these papers may not reflect the content of the current syllabus.

Unlock more content

This is only a selection of our papers. Registered Cambridge International Schools can access the full catalogue of teaching and learning materials including papers from 2018 through our School Support Hub .

Past papers

• -->June 2022 Mark Scheme Paper 11 (PDF, 233KB)
• -->June 2022 Mark Scheme Paper 21 (PDF, 195KB)
• -->June 2022 Mark Scheme Paper 31 (PDF, 272KB)
• -->June 2022 Mark Scheme Paper 41 (PDF, 220KB)

Examiner reports

• -->June 2022 Examiner Report (PDF, 5MB)

Specimen papers

• -->2021 Specimen Paper 1 Mark Scheme (PDF, 941KB)
• -->2021 Specimen Paper 2 Mark Scheme (PDF, 934KB)
• -->2021 Specimen Paper 3 Mark Scheme (PDF, 955KB)
• -->2021 Specimen Paper 4 Mark Scheme (PDF, 934KB)

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• Syllabus overview
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• How to Make Your Coursework as Good as It Can Possibly Be

Many GCSE and A-level subjects are assessed in part by coursework in addition to exams, meaning that the mark you receive for coursework contributes to your overall grade. Many students prefer coursework, because it’s a chance to showcase your academic abilities away from the high-pressured environment of the exam room, making it ideal for those who don’t perform to the best of their abilities in exams. However, the time you have available for coursework, in contrast with the time constraints of the exam room, can lull some students into a false sense of security. Coursework is arguably just as challenging as exams, just in different ways – and, given the fact that you have more time, much higher standards are expected of you in coursework than in exams. Careful planning and research are needed for successful coursework, as well as strong data-gathering and essay-writing skills. In this article, we look at how to produce excellent coursework, from planning to proofreading. This information might also be useful to you if you’re planning on attending an Oxford Summer School this summer.

What is coursework?

GCSE and A-level coursework typically takes the form of an extended essay or project. Its objectives vary from one subject to another, but there’s usually an emphasis on the student conducting independent research into a topic of their own choice. Thus coursework often takes the form of some sort of investigation; it may, therefore, help to have your ‘detective’ hat on as you explore, investigate and analyse your topic. You can usually work on your coursework at home, though it’s sometimes completed under controlled conditions through sessions at school. To give you a better idea of how coursework varies from one subject to another, here are some examples:

• English – English coursework usually takes the form of an extended essay with a title of your choice. You’re usually given a choice of themes and/or texts to explore, and you could choose a format such as a comparison between a set text and another one.
• Geography – Geography coursework usually focuses on the gathering, reporting and interpretation of data designed to answer a particular geographical question. You could investigate usage of a shopping centre, for example, or look at erosion on a particular beach.
• Sciences – coursework for science subjects often takes the form of a scientific project or experiment that you conduct and report on yourself.

Before you start work on your coursework, it’s essential that you have a thorough understanding of the rules. Failing to conform to the rules – inadvertently or not – may result in your coursework (or possibly even your entire qualification) being disqualified, so it’s a serious matter.

• No plagiarism – this is particularly dangerous given the ready availability of relevant information on the internet these days. Make sure everything is in your own words; you’ll need to sign a declaration stating that it’s your own original work.
• There’s only so much help your teacher can give you . They can provide guidance on what you need to include, and on what the examiners will be looking for. You can ask them questions, but they’ll usually only be able to check through your first draft once and offer broad hints on updating it.
• Check the word count , and stick to it. Find out whether footnotes, appendices and bibliographies are included in the word count.
• Check what topics you’re allowed to do your coursework on; if there’s an exam on this topic, you’ll almost certainly have to choose a different one for your coursework.

Choose your topic wisely

Ideally, choose something you’re genuinely interested in, as your enthusiasm will come across and you’ll find it more enjoyable to write. If there’s something you’ve been working on for the course so far that you’ve particularly enjoyed, you may be able to focus more on this as part of your coursework. For science coursework, you’ll need to choose something to investigate that you can measure, change and control; it should be what’s called a ‘fair test’, meaning that you have to acknowledge all the controls you use in the experiment and why. Try not to pick a topic for which the scope is too vast, as you’ll struggle to research it properly and you’re unlikely to do it justice, and it’ll be hard to keep within the word limit. Ask your teachers for some guidance on choosing your topic if you’re not sure what to write about; they might even tell you a bit about what previous students have done to give you some inspiration.

Plan how long it’s going to take

Never leave your coursework until the last minute, even if this is your normal approach to essays and it usually works for you. Make sure you understand when the deadlines are, including time for submitting a first draft for comments from your teacher. Then schedule blocks of time for working on it, allowing plenty of time before the deadline to cater for any unexpected delays. Allow ample time for making corrections based on teacher feedback on your first draft, and keep some time aside before the deadline for final editing and proofreading. Because actual deadlines are few and far between, you’ll need to take responsibility for the writing process and impose some deadlines on yourself to ensure it’s finished in time. Write down your deadlines on a calendar, with the coursework broken into stages and dates assigned to each, by which time each task should be complete. You can base your stages on the next few points in this article – research and data gathering, a structure plan for the piece of work, writing up, and so on.

Conducting your research and gathering data

As coursework is primarily a research exercise, the research phase is crucial, so don’t be tempted to skimp on it and go straight to writing up. Use as many different resources as you can to gather data: books, journals, newspapers, television, radio, the internet and anything else you think might be relevant. For science and Geography coursework, you’ll need to base your work on a hypothesis, so the research stage should start by coming up with at least one hypothesis, otherwise your research will lack direction. The research phase for some subjects may involve site visits for gathering data, so allow plenty of time for this, particularly if you need your parents to drive you somewhere to do so. If it’s a scientific experiment you’re conducting for your coursework, you’ll need to pay careful attention to planning the experiment using rigorous scientific methods (also noting what Health and Safety precautions you are taking), as well as reading up on the background and theory so that you have an idea of what to expect from the outcome of your experiment. In the research stage, make notes about what you expect to happen, so that you can later compare your expectations with what actually did happen. The experiment itself also forms part of the research and data-gathering stage for your science coursework; in the write-up stage, which we come onto shortly, you analyse and write up the results.

Plan your structure

Once you’ve completed your research, the process of writing up begins. Before you get down to the actual writing, however, it’s advisable to write a plan for how you’re going to structure it – essentially an essay plan for English coursework and other subjects for which the coursework is based on an extended essay. It’ll look slightly different from an essay plan for science subjects and others that revolve around project work, but the principle is the same: plan out what order you’re going to present your information in. For big projects, this is particularly important, because with a lot of information to convey, you risk being disorganised and waffling.

Writing up your project

For any coursework, but particularly coursework based around an extended essay, you’ll need to perfect your essay-writing abilities. For science coursework, writing up your project also involves data analysis, as you interpret the results of your experiment and work your notes into formal scientific language. Follow the links below to find lots more useful advice on writing great essays.

• How to write dazzlingly brilliant essays
• How to write more original essays
• Techniques from creative writing that can improve your essays

When you’re writing up, it’s important to find a place where you can work quietly, without distractions that could cause you to make careless errors. You wouldn’t want noise or distractions when you were in an exam room, so treat your coursework with the same reverence.

Supporting materials and images

For some subjects, namely the sciences and Geography, it would be appropriate to include images, graphs, charts, tables and so on in your coursework. For example, for Geography coursework, your extra material could include annotated images and maps of the site you’re talking about, plus tables, graphs and charts. An appendix could then detail your raw data; if, for example, your coursework focused on the results of a survey, you could put the raw survey responses in an appendix and provide summaries and analysis in the main body of the coursework.

Footnotes and bibliography

As we said earlier, it’s important that you always use your own words in your coursework to avoid the possibility of falling foul of plagiarism rules. However, it’s acceptable to quote from another source, as you would in any piece of academic writing, but you must make sure that you state where it is from and use quotation marks to show that it’s a quote from somewhere else. The best way of citing another work is to use a footnote; word processors will allow you to insert one, and it just puts a little number at the end of the sentence and another in the footer of the document, into which you put the name of the author and work, and the page within that work that the quote can be found. At the end of your piece of work, include a bibliography that includes a list of every external source you’ve used in the creation of your coursework. Stick to a set formula when including books. A common format is: Author Surname, Initial. (Date) – Title of Book , page number For example: Lewis, C.S. (1960) – Studies in Words , p. 45 When you get to university, you’ll be expected to include footnotes and bibliographies in all your essays, so it’s a good habit to get into and coursework gives you good practice at it.

The final pre-submission check

Having completed a first draft, received feedback from your teacher, and honed your work into a finished piece of coursework, have a final check through it before you send off your coursework for submission.

• Sense check : have a read through your completed piece of work and check that it all makes sense. Make sure you haven’t contradicted yourself anywhere, or repeated yourself, or laboured the point. If there are any facts that you may have meant to look up to double check their accuracy, do so now.
• Word count : ensure that the completed work falls within the word count, and double check whether the bibliography should be included in the word count. If you’ve exceeded it, you’ll need to work through the piece and tighten up your writing, omitting unnecessary information, reordering sentences so that they use fewer words, and so on.
• Proofread : check your spelling and grammar, and ensure that there are no typos. Don’t just use the spellcheck – go through it with a fine toothcomb, manually, and if you can, ask someone to read through it for you to see if they spot anything you haven’t.
• Formatting : check that you’ve included page numbers, and that the font and line spacing is consistent throughout the work. Ensure that the font is plain and easy to read, such as Arial or Times New Roman.
• Bibliography : check that you’ve included everything, that the format is the same for all sources mentioned, and that the right information is included for each.

Once this stage is complete, you’re ready to submit your coursework along with your declaration that it’s entirely your own work. Get ready for a feeling of immense satisfaction when you finally send off your hard work!

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AS and A-level English Language

• Specification
• Planning resources
• Teaching resources
• Assessment resources

Introduction

• Specification at a glance
• 3.1 Language and the individual
• 3.2 Language varieties
• 4.1 Language, the individual and society
• 4.2 Language diversity and change

4.3 Language in action

• Scheme of assessment
• Non-exam assessment administration (A-level only)
• General administration

The aim of this area of study is to allow students to explore and analyse language data independently and develop and reflect upon their own writing expertise.

It requires students to carry out two different kinds of individual research:

• a language investigation (2,000 words excluding data)
• a piece of original writing and commentary (750 words each).

Students can choose to pursue a study of spoken, written or multimodal data, or a mixture of text types, demonstrating knowledge in areas of individual interest.

In preparation for this, students need to study how to:

• identify an appropriate investigation topic and research questions
• select and apply a methodology for data collection and analysis
• work in greater depth and with greater range
• transcribe spoken data where appropriate
• use language concepts and ideas
• evaluate and draw conclusions on the findings of the investigation
• present findings in an appropriate and accessible way
• reference reading materials correctly
• evaluate the structures and conventions of a variety of genres
• plan, draft and redraft as part of the writing process
• reflect on the writing process using methods of language analysis.

Language Investigation

Students may choose to pursue an area of individual interest. For example, this might include studies of:

• representations of different individuals, social groups or nationalities
• regional dialect
• gendered talk
• the language of new communication technologies
• children’s language use
• norms and variations in usages of different kinds
• the language of the media
• code switching and mixing between English and other languages
• the language of different occupations or pastimes
• historical changes in English over time.

Students are not obliged to restrict themselves to those areas that are formally taught, as the basis of the investigation is the value of student-led enquiry supported by open learning. Therefore, any area seen by supervising teachers as yielding interesting questions about language in use may be chosen. Students can ask a number of fruitful questions, which can be generated by questions such as the following:

• A genre-based investigation: what are the distinctive features of this type of language use?
• A function/use-based investigation: what is the language used to do?
• An attitudes-based investigation: how do people feel about this language?
• A user-based investigation: who uses this type of language?

Students will need to decide what kind of data they collect:

• spoken language
• written language
• multimodal language
• word lists (ie lists of new words etc)
• attitudes to language
• uses of language
• views about language.

Underpinning this piece of research is the challenge that, in consultation with their supervising teacher, students should collect their own data as the basis of their study, as well as select their own approach for analysis.

Investigations need a specific focus, for example:

• the writing of two children aged 8
• features of the Devon dialect, based on a survey
• the language of wedding ceremonies from two different cultures
• the language of teachers’ reports
• the language used in three different advertisements for a particular product
• how stories are told in a particular comic
• how travel guides represent a particular community
• the language of sports commentary
• how turntaking works in real-time writing online
• language patterns in the names of shops.

The list above is neither definitive nor prescriptive.

The investigation should contain the following sections:

• brief discussion of the reasons for choosing the investigation focus
• what the investigation is trying to find out (aims).

Methodology

• an evaluative account of how the data was collected and organised for analysis
• approaches to analysis.
• analysis and interpretation of the findings, responding to the aim of the investigation
• critical consideration of relevant concepts and issues surrounding the topic area
• analysis of the contextual influences upon the data collected.
• interpretation of the findings of the investigation linked to the aim/focus of the investigation.
• a list of all sources used (paper and web-based).
• clean copies of the collected data
• evidence to support quantitative approaches.

Original writing

Students will produce one piece of original writing based on one of the following three areas:

• The Power of Persuasion
• The Power of Storytelling
• The Power of Information

and one accompanying commentary.

In preparation for the writing, students will study a range of style models before selecting and analysing one style model in detail. Students will select their own style model in consultation with their supervising teacher. Students will then use this research to inform their own piece of original writing.

The commentary will allow the student to consider and evaluate the style model, the writing process and the effectiveness of the final piece of writing.

The folder submitted should contain:

• a piece of original writing
• an annotated style model
• a reflective commentary
• references (paper and web-based).

Examples of pieces of writing students could consider:

The power of persuasion

• a piece of investigative journalism
• a speech delivered on a controversial topic
• a letter to an MP.

The power of storytelling

• a short story
• an extract from a biography
• a dramatic monologue.

The power of information

• a piece of travel journalism
• a blog focusing on social issues
• a piece of local history.

Methods of language analysis

Both the investigation and original writing will have a distinctive approach to analysis that is shaped by the particular needs of the research pathway or theme chosen. However, underlying any analysis will be coverage of some relevant aspects of the language levels, as follows:

• phonetics, phonology and prosodics: how speech sounds and effects are articulated and analysed
• graphology: the visual aspects of textual design and appearance
• lexis and semantics: the vocabulary of English, including social and historical variation
• grammar, including morphology: the structural patterns and shapes of English at sentence, clause, phrase and word level
• pragmatics: the contextual aspects of language use
• discourse: extended stretches of communication occurring in different genres, modes and contexts.

Take your English language teaching career to the next level

Published: 08/04/2024

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• learners and teachers, and the teaching and learning context,
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• planning and resources for different contexts,
• developing teaching skills and professionalism.

Your assessment is via a teaching practice portfolio and written assignments. No prior teaching experience is assumed. The course is delivered by experienced academic staff from the Nottingham Institute for Language and Intercultural Communication (NILIC) at NTU.

The course costs £1,590. NTU students and alumni receive a 20% discount. The fee includes your Cambridge assessment fees. Optional accommodation on campus is available for an additional fee.

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