AQA A-Level English Language 7702: Paper 1 — Revision Notes

Condensed for the final weeks. For the full explanation, use the Language, the Individual and Society study guide.

Where Paper 1 sits in the A-level

Component	Time	Marks	Weighting
Paper 1: Language, the Individual and Society	2 h 30	100	40%
Paper 2: Language Diversity and Change	2 h 30	100	40%
NEA: Language in Action	—	100	20%

At AS (7701) the same paper is 1 h 30 and 70 marks, without the final question.

Paper 1 question structure

Question	Task	Marks
1	Analysis of one text	25
2	Analysis of a second text	25
3	Comparison of the two texts	20
4	Data-based question on spoken, written or multimodal language	30

Note the weighting: comparison is worth 20 and the data question 30 — together half the paper. Practising those two is worth more than polishing single-text analysis, since they carry more combined marks than either single-text analysis question alone.

The analytical frameworks — use the terminology

Level	What to look for
Phonology	Sound patterning, alliteration, accent features in transcripts
Graphology	Layout, typography, images, use of space
Lexis and semantics	Word choice, semantic fields, connotation, formality, jargon
Grammar and syntax	Word classes, sentence types and length, voice, mood, modality
Pragmatics	Implied meaning, presupposition, politeness, deixis
Discourse	Structure, cohesion, openings and closings, turn-taking

Every point: name the feature with correct terminology → quote it → explain the effect in relation to audience, purpose and context. A feature named without an effect scores nothing — this three-step structure is the single habit that raises a Paper 1 answer from descriptive to analytical.

Mode, register and representation

• Mode is a spectrum from spoken to written; digital forms sit between (a text message is written in medium, often speech-like in character).
• Register varies with formality and field.
• Idiolect — an individual’s distinctive usage. Sociolect — a social group’s variety.
• Representation — how language constructs a version of people or events. Interrogate naming choices, modifiers, and whether agency is expressed or hidden (passives delete the actor). Three tools carry most of the marks: modification (adjectives/nouns attaching evaluative qualities before a group is even named — “young offenders”), transitivity (whether a group is the agent doing an action or the patient it happens to, controlling whether they seem active/responsible or passive/vulnerable), and semantic field (a cluster of related lexis — a warfare field frames a debate as conflict, an illness field frames it as something to be treated).
• Audience positioning — a text constructs a role for its reader without stating a view outright, through presupposition (building a claim into a sentence’s structure), inclusive pronouns (“we”, “our”) that enrol the reader, selection and omission of which voices are quoted, and naming choices (“protester” vs “activist” positions the reader differently towards the same person).

Children’s language development

The other half of the Paper 1 content. Know the stages (babbling, holophrastic, two-word, telegraphic, post-telegraphic) and the competing theories:

• Behaviourist (Skinner) — imitation and reinforcement.
• Nativist (Chomsky) — an innate language acquisition device; evidence from virtuous errors (“goed”, “sheeps”) that children cannot have copied.
• Cognitive (Piaget) — language follows conceptual understanding.
• Interactionist (Bruner) — child-directed speech and social interaction scaffold acquisition.

Virtuous errors are the standard evidence against pure imitation — a reliable point in any acquisition essay.

Mode in practice. A scripted news bulletin is written to be spoken: planned, edited, dense with information, complete sentences, no interaction or repair. A live radio phone-in is spontaneous speech: fillers, false starts, overlaps and self-repair, with structure negotiated between participants in real time rather than fixed in advance.

Exam traps

• Feature-spotting without explaining effect.
• Ignoring mode, audience and purpose.
• Treating theories as settled fact rather than competing positions to evaluate.
• Confusing accent (pronunciation) with dialect (grammar and vocabulary).
• In the comparison question, dealing with each text in turn instead of comparing by point.
• Analysing content rather than language.

Self-test

1. How long is Paper 1 and what percentage of the A-level is it?
2. How are the 100 marks distributed across the four questions?
3. Name the six language levels.
4. What is a virtuous error, and which theory does it support?
5. Distinguish idiolect from sociolect.
6. Name the three tools that carry most representation marks.
7. Give two ways a text can position its reader without stating a view explicitly.

Answers: 1. 2 hours 30 minutes, 40% of the A-level. 2. 25 + 25 for the two single-text analyses, 20 for the comparison, 30 for the data question. 3. Phonology, graphology, lexis and semantics, grammar and syntax, pragmatics, discourse. 4. A grammatically logical but non-standard form such as “goed” or “sheeps”; the child cannot have imitated it, so it supports the nativist account of an innate rule-forming capacity. 5. Idiolect is one individual’s distinctive language use; sociolect is the variety shared by a social group. 6. Modification, transitivity and semantic field. 7. Any two: presupposition built into a sentence’s structure; inclusive pronouns such as “we”; selective quotation of some voices over others; naming choices that carry different connotations for the same referent.