AQA A Level English NEA Language Investigation

[whethertheweather]

Any English teachers out there?

DD is struggling to get her word count below 2,000. It’s nearly there but to cut more she feels will start to eat into the points she’s trying to cover in sufficient detail.

DD says she’s heard there’s a 10% tolerance so that would give her an extra 200 words to play with. Her teacher has said there is but “strongly recommends” she doesn’t use it. What she’s not said is whether this is to teach the discipline of keeping to a word count or whether there is actually a penalty levied.

Anybody know?

I don't know the answer to your question but how many words over is it? Do you know anyone who edits for a living? I am very good at cutting copy invisibly - and so is anyone who has worked as a newspaper or magazine sub editor. I bet I could get 100 words out of it without her noticing.

That’s very generous. She’s about 120 words over now, having started at 500 over. She’s still working on it so I’m planning on leaving her to it unless she gets hugely anxious. She’s just worrying she’s taken out some of the good stuff!

I wouldn't advise that, I'm not a specialist at Eng Lit A level so I am sure she will do the exam a lot better than I would.

Apologies, I have asked for my posts on this thread to be removed, I only read the OP and not the title, think I misunderstood what was being asked.

The reason I would strongly advise students not to go over is because 95 % of the time the student is actually lowering their mark by being wordy. It means their NEA lacks focus and is poorly expressed in places.

Sometimes I've had a student with a genuinely amazing piece of coursework and they've been 10% over with no penalty.

She definitely won't be penalised for keeping within the 10% tolerance. Once students get wind of this, most use it.
In terms of cutting words, I usually advise students to look at losing a paragraph rather than trimming words and weakening the impact of the argument.

I teach this. There is no word limit but a guide. She wont be penalised unless it looks like she hasnt prioritised things to analyse. I had one student cut back from 5000 to 3000 words the other year. Plus the NEAs arent being standardised this year.

I teach this and have moderated it. There is no such thing as the 10% leeway and AQA refer to this as 'a myth' in their internal training. Candidates who go over the word-count won't be penalised as such, but to do so is said to be 'self-penalising' as, like a pp said, it is likely that the NEA will lack a clear focus or the wording might be waffly rather than concise, and that will limit the marks for one of the assessment objectives.

I always tell students not to worry about the word-count until they are happy they have got all their content in and then ruthlessly edit. I often find anxiety about making points clear leads to repetition and over-explaining, so there might well be room to make further cuts there.

But 120 words over when they're not being moderated is probably fine.

It's better that she learns now because at university they are very strict about word counts.

Like PPs, I'd say forget the 10% leeway. I know it's hard but even if she loses some subordinate clauses or rephrases bits, it will end up being more concise, which is something that the moderators are looking for.

And if worst comes to worst, can she get rid of a point/incorporate a couple of points into the same paragraph?

Thank you all for your advice. As of last night she'd got it down to 1,995, with just one more point she wanted to make, so it sounds like she'll be fine!