Can someone help me with English Lang please?

I’m a secondary English teacher bored on maternity leave. PM me his exam board, the question and his answer and I’ll send you some more detailed feedback.

English language is a bit of a crap paper andVERY formulaic. You have to answer in the way the board wants in order to get the mark.

Got interrupted part way through:

Paper 2 Lit:
Modern text - choice of 2 questions. AO1/2/3
Comparison poetry - compare the printed one to another of your choice. AO1/2/3
Unseen poetry A - AO1/2
Unseen B -AO2

We also don't have sets!

Me :)
I mark Lit too!
Paper one: Shakespeare and pre-1900 text
Extract linked to the whole text
AO1 - answer the question
AO2 - write about the methods used to present the thing
A03 - context

Paper 2: "modern" text, comparison poetry and unseen poetry

Watch Mr Bruff on YouTube

@Lougle

Genuine question: if it's so nailed down, and the same each year, why do teachers (schools, I guess) weave language and literature in together when they teach? Why don't they say "Today we're going to look at this skill which is needed to answer paper 2, question 2."?

That's exactly how it's set up in my school. We teach Lit as Lit and Lang as Lang.

I think that is something I really noticed with college. Because their sole aim is to turn 3s into 4s they were really able to cut down advice to that required to pass. It meant there was less to remember
Definitely.
I find the same when I went from teaching mixed ability GCSE to a GCSE and functional skills class.

It's a different teaching focus and the focus isn't about promoting a holistic understanding of English. It's about rote learning a set of structures that will probably get the candidate over the threshold if they make a reasonable attempt.

That's really helpful, thank you.

To get the higher bands the students need to be able to select the most interesting quotation and making thoughtful comments about the text, which you don't get if your teaching content is driven by PEA/SQUID.

I think that is something I really noticed with college. Because their sole aim is to turn 3s into 4s they were really able to cut down advice to that required to pass. It meant there was less to remember.

Genuine question: if it's so nailed down, and the same each year, why do teachers (schools, I guess) weave language and literature in together when they teach?
Why don't they say "Today we're going to look at this skill which is needed to answer paper 2, question 2."?

In my experience we do that even when weaving the two subjects together. They work well as two subjects, and teaching English Language as a series of questions structures one after the other is highly boring for teachers and students.
I also find that where a scheme of work is driven by paragraph structures rather than appreciating a range of texts, students focus on write a point sentence, now I write a quotation, now I'll say something about it and the focus is on following a writing frame, not generating interesting ideas. To get the higher bands the students need to be able to select the most interesting quotation and making thoughtful comments about the text, which you don't get if your teaching content is driven by PEA/SQUID.

Teaching English Language in a scheme with English Literature means that I can select relevant non-fiction that will enrich the understanding of the ideas in the literature texts. It means students can learn the structures from Paper 1 using fiction extracts that work nicely with the poetry anthology. It's an enjoyable way to teach and students end up, in my experience, more well rounded as a result.

Genuine question: if it's so nailed down, and the same each year, why do teachers (schools, I guess) weave language and literature in together when they teach? Why don't they say "Today we're going to look at this skill which is needed to answer paper 2, question 2."?

This is pretty much exactly what DC's school does (certainly by the time they get to this point in Year 11!!). Separate English Language and Literature classes and a lot of sessions aimed at exactly how you answer question x on paper y.

It's very dull though. I'm fairly sure my DS had stopped listening by Year 11, which is probably the actual reason he didn't know how to answer the questions.

Most of the knowledge I have is from exam marking. It helps make you a better teacher (in English and my experience) as I know what the questions want for answers

@Lougle I used to think like you re DD1. I came to the conclusion however that the teachers were saying all this stuff well enough for 95% of the class, but just not as direct and explicit as my DD needed (she was undiagnosed at the time which wouldn't have helped.) Also if they just 'said' it but didn't write it down in clear powerpoints stuck into the book, it would get forgotten by her anyway.

Genuine question: if it's so nailed down, and the same each year, why do teachers (schools, I guess) weave language and literature in together when they teach? Why don't they say "Today we're going to look at this skill which is needed to answer paper 2, question 2."?

DD2 should be taking her exams soon. Instead she is resitting year 10, in a different school, in large part because she couldn't grasp what her English teacher was asking her to do. She's autistic (no learning difficulties) and expecting her to pick out what technique she should use based on the question text was just impossible. She would have been grand if someone had said to her "For question 2 use SQuID. For question 4 use PEA." Or, if they'd said "If it says 'how' do this. If it says 'compare' do this."

It may well be that she would have been moved on to that by year 11, but by then any shred of confidence left was destroyed and she was incapable of learning.

As it is, she's doing Functional Skills 2, English Language and will probably not do Literature. But it's such a shame when I read such clear advice on a thread like this, that she couldn't have had teaching that made it clear for her.

I'm glad DD has a year 'off' doing Eng Lang GCSE.
It's a bad day when I recognised the English extract.

Good luck to your DS, OP. If he fails he can take it again. And again. And again .....

Don't be sorry: these questions are quite literally my job!

I'm really not understanding when he should use PEA and Squid and how he would know
The questions are always in the same order and usually schools/teachers will teach their students a structure for each question.

Paper 2 Question 2 is an inference question so whatever structure he uses he needs to have quotations from the text and some inferences. It doesn't matter of he uses SQuID, SQI, or another inference structure. They're just a way of remembering what to do.

Questions that have the word 'how' in them (such as paper 1 q2, paper 2 q3) are asking him to analyse language. In these questions he will need to focus on on specific words and phrases, then comment on the effect. Again, it doesn't matter whether he does PEA or another structure as most of them are different ways of teaching the same thing.

If you ask him which questions he is unsure off and post here, the MN teachers will probably be happy to advise.

No. The questions are always the same in the same order. The mark schemes are therefore fixed. So he needs to learn how to answer each one and then stick to it.

Different questions have different mark schemes so required different things. I'm happy to email you some stuff that should make it clear.