OxfordAQA International A-Level English Language Unit 1: Language and Context — Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions. The paper follows the unit’s two-section outline in the specification (one compulsory Section A analysis, one Section B writing task from a choice of two, 25 marks each), but the marking guidance is Marlbridge’s own, not the board’s mark scheme — examination boards hold copyright in their own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available free from your board.

Related: Language and Context revision notes

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Before you start: concept check (not part of the paper, no marks)

These two warm-up questions check the concepts Section A is built on. They sit outside the practice paper below, which follows the unit’s two-section structure.

Warm-up (i). Explain what is meant by audience when analysing a text, giving two ways a text can signal who it is aimed at.

Warm-up (ii). Explain the difference between a text’s purpose and its genre.

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Section A — Understanding Texts (25 marks)

Answer the one compulsory question in this section.

Read the two texts below, both concerned with the same theme: a company’s move to a four-day working week.

Text A (an internal staff announcement, posted on the company intranet):

“Effective from 1 September, all staff will move to a four-day working week, with Fridays no longer a standard working day. This trial follows extensive consultation with department heads and is intended to improve staff wellbeing while maintaining current levels of client service. Employees are asked to direct any questions to their line manager in the first instance.”

Text B (a social media post written by an employee):

“Guess what?? No more Friday shifts for us from September!! Honestly can’t believe it took this long lol. A bit worried about fitting everything into 4 days tbh, but I’ll take a 3-day weekend any day 😅”

1. Analyse how the language of Text A and Text B reflects the audience, purpose, genre and mode of each text. You should refer to both texts in your answer. [25]

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Section B — Directed Writing (25 marks)

Answer one question from this section, using ideas and information from Text A and/or Text B above. Credit is given for sustaining a style appropriate to the task throughout – there is no separate commentary on this unit.

EITHER

2. Using ideas from both texts, write the opening of a short spoken induction talk, to be delivered to new starters, explaining the new four-day week policy and how existing staff feel about it. [25]

OR

3. Using ideas from Text A, write a diary entry from the perspective of an employee describing their first four-day week. [25]

The paper totals 50 marks: 25 for the Section A question and 25 for the one Section B question answered.

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Answers

Warm-up (i). Audience is the reader, listener or viewer a text is designed for – who a text is “aimed at”. This can be signalled through register and vocabulary choice (technical jargon signals a specialist audience; simple, everyday lexis signals a general one), or through assumed shared knowledge – a text that explains basic terms is written for non-specialists, while one that uses them without explanation assumes prior expertise.

Warm-up (ii). Purpose is what a text is trying to achieve – to inform, persuade, entertain, or some combination of these. Genre is the category or type of text it belongs to, recognisable through conventional features such as headlines, salutations or hashtags. The same purpose can be pursued through different genres, and the same genre can serve different purposes, so the two must be analysed separately.

1. How to mark this practice answer (25 marks). The question is marked as a whole against the quality of the analysis, not by counting points. This practice guide (written for Marlbridge, not the board’s own mark scheme) uses five bands: 21-25 perceptive, sustained analysis of how specific language choices in both texts create audience, purpose, genre and mode, with precise terminology; 16-20 clear, developed analysis covering all four aspects across both texts; 11-15 some analysis of language, but uneven across the aspects or the two texts; 6-10 mostly identification of features with limited explanation of their effect; 1-5 a few relevant remarks, largely descriptive; 0 nothing creditable. Indicative content a strong answer might develop:

• Audience. Text A is aimed at all staff at the company, a mixed but institutionally-defined audience; this is signalled by the formal, impersonal address (“Employees are asked to…”) and the assumption of shared workplace context (referring to “department heads” and “client service” without explanation). Text B is aimed at the poster’s own social circle or followers, a personal and informal audience; this is signalled by the casual, conversational opening (“Guess what??”) and the assumption that the reader already knows who “us” refers to.
• Purpose. Text A’s purpose is primarily to inform staff of a decision and its practical implications, with an underlying purpose to reassure (framing the change as the result of consultation and aimed at wellbeing). Text B’s purpose is primarily to share a personal reaction and entertain its readers, mixing genuine relief with a joke about the practical difficulty ahead – both texts address the same policy, but one manages an institutional relationship while the other maintains a social one.
• Genre. Text A follows the structure of a formal announcement: a clear statement of the change, followed by its rationale, followed by a practical next step (who to contact), reflecting its genre’s expectation of clarity and completeness. Text B follows the loose, associative structure of a social media post: an attention-grabbing opening, an exclamatory reaction, and a closing aside, reflecting a genre that prioritises immediacy and personality over completeness.
• Mode. Text A is in written mode, using the complete sentences, formal connectives and impersonal tone typical of planned institutional writing. Text B is written but shows features of speech – for example, the non-standard punctuation and multiple exclamation marks (“Guess what??”, “September!!”) mimic spoken emphasis and intonation, and “tbh” and “lol” are written abbreviations that originate in, and imitate the informality of, spoken conversation.

2 and 3. Marked as a whole out of 25 on how well the writing sustains a style appropriate to the task, audience and form chosen; see the model approach below.

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Model approach: Section B

Question 2 (spoken induction talk) needs a register that is formal enough to represent the company but warmer than Text A’s memo, since it will be delivered aloud to a room of new starters. A workable shape: open with a direct, welcoming address to the audience; state the policy change clearly, drawing on Text A’s factual content; then acknowledge, in a lighter register drawn loosely from the spirit of Text B, that existing staff have had mixed practical reactions to the change, so new starters know what to expect. Because this is a spoken text, techniques such as direct address (“you’ll notice…”), rhetorical questions and a clear signposted structure (“First… Second…”) help it read aloud naturally, in a way that simply reading Text A’s memo aloud would not.

Question 3 (diary entry) needs a personal, reflective voice distinct from both source texts: more introspective than Text B’s public post, and far less formal than Text A’s announcement. Draw on Text A only for the factual detail of what has changed, then invent plausible personal detail (how the first four-day week actually felt) rather than lifting Text A’s institutional phrasing into a diary entry, where it would sit awkwardly against the form’s private, first-person conventions.

In both cases, the credited skill is sustaining the chosen register and form consistently across the whole response, not switching back toward the source text’s own register partway through.

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A note on register: field, tenor and mode

When a text’s language use switches register mid-way – for example, an otherwise formal announcement suddenly using a casual aside – identify precisely which register variable has shifted. Field is the subject matter or activity a text is about (a four-day week policy, a graduation ceremony); it does not itself carry a formal or informal charge. Tenor is the relationship between the participants, and it is tenor – not field – that governs how formal or informal the language is. Mode is whether the language is spoken, written, or a hybrid of the two. A sudden shift from formal to casual phrasing within one text is a tenor shift (the writer is treating the reader with less formal distance than the surrounding text implies), possibly combined with a mode shift if the new phrasing borrows features of speech – it is not a shift in field, since the underlying subject matter has not changed.

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Where marks are usually lost

• Confusing purpose with genre, or describing one while claiming to analyse the other.
• Identifying a feature of audience, purpose, genre or mode without explaining how the specific language of the text signals it.
• Treating an informal register shift as a shift in field rather than tenor.
• In Section B, lifting phrasing from the source text into a form where it does not fit the new register.
• Writing a commentary or justification of choices – this unit credits a sustained, consistent style in the writing itself, not an explanation of it afterwards.
• Losing the chosen register partway through a Section B response.