This is the first in a series of blog posts about how to approach the NEA component of A Level English Language. My current centre uses the OCR A Level English Language specification (H470). The NEA component in this specification is referred to as the independent language investigation.
My hope is that English teachers will find this blog useful, whether you have been teaching A Level English Language for a number of years, or whether you have recently started.
Choosing a focus
As this is an independent language investigation, students should be encouraged to select a focus that interests them personally. If a student is not enjoying the investigation, because they have been forced to investigate something from a list of topics prepared by you, it could result in the student lacking motivation to complete the work.
That said, I think that sixth formers - as grown up and independent as they can be - still need guidance on what works, and what doesn’t, so that they can make informed choices about what to focus on in their investigation. Here is what I’ve found...
1. Analysing spoken data is rewarding, but incredibly time consuming.
Over the years, my students have had some excellent ideas for investigations relating to spoken language. One student said that he wanted to focus on how teachers use language within the first ten minutes of a lesson, and how this might change depending on the age of the students.
In my opinion, this is a great idea, but collecting the data represents a significant challenge. Let’s think about the steps this student would have to take:
- Find a recording device that isn’t their phone - does your centre have any dictaphones that could be used?
- Figure out which teachers they can record in their study periods.
- Get permission from teachers to record them at the beginning of a lesson. Potentially, they will also need to get written consent from those involved.
- Go and do the recordings (they would need at least two, if different age groups are being compared)
- The worst bit - transcribe the data. I cannot stress how incredibly long this takes.
Meanwhile, a student who has selected written data has already found it and started analysing it.
Please don’t let me put you off this type of investigation - they usually end up being excellent, if successfully completed. However, think carefully about the student who wishes to do it - have they given you any indication in the past that they will be able to do all of the things I’ve listed above in a timely manner? Organisational skills and a conscientious attitude are essential when undertaking this type of investigation.
I would always give students the benefit of the doubt - they often surprise you. However, be prepared to step in if no progress is being made, to recommend something else. Students choose investigations like this with the best of intentions, but sometimes have not anticipated the challenges that they will face.
2. Consider concepts
Students need to be able to write about language concepts (or theories) that are relevant to their data. In the OCR specification, we teach students about the following topics, and some concepts that relate to them:
- language and power
- language and gender
- language and technology
- child language acquisition
- language change
- accent & dialect
It is likely that students will be able to select a focus that allows them to refer to these concepts. For example, we teach a language and power theory called synthetic personalisation, by Norman Fairclough. It is likely that students whose investigations focus on texts like advertisements would be able to use this concept. This is great, as they will be able to access the marks for the assessment objective that relates to concepts/theory.
However, some students might decide to select a focus that doesn’t really relate to any of the topics listed above. One year, I had a student who wanted to do an investigation on the language used in Hip Hop lyrics. Their first draft contained no reference to relevant theories, and when I told them that this had to be addressed, their answer was that they couldn’t find any.
Once again, it comes down to knowing your students. Is the student likely to go the extra mile to find some theories online that relate to their niche topic? If the answer is no, then they will have much more success sticking to something that allows them to use the concepts that you have taught them about in lessons.
3. A bit like Lit...
Sometimes, I find that students want to complete an investigation using data that to me feels a bit too much like a literature text.
Typical choices that fit into this territory include song lyrics. I find that students want to respond to these texts in a similar vein to how they approached their analysis of poetry in GCSE English Literature, picking out examples of assonance, alliteration, rhyme, and telling me how it makes them feel.
I think that in the right hands, an investigation into song lyrics could be really great, it’s just that in my experience, this has not been the case. When I advise students on linguistic methods that they can utilise in their analysis of lyrics, such as examining clause structure, many of them struggle to conceal their disappointment - it’s the linguistic equivalent of swapping a cake with an apple.
4. Beware the questionnaire
Some students can be attracted to using qualitative data collection methods in their investigation, such as questionnaires. Whilst this is a perfectly valid data collection method in higher education, I have found that it doesn’t work well in A Level English Language investigations.
A few years ago, one of my students did a really interesting investigation that utilised a questionnaire. She wanted to explore attitudes towards different accents, to find out why some accents are favoured by the general public and others are not.
This investigation clearly has linguistic value, but we discovered that there was a problem: the data allowed little scope for utilising language methods. How do you analyse the lexical, semantic, and grammatical features of a text if... well, there isn’t a text? We ended up having to bolt on some opportunities for analysis that felt artificial, just so that the assessment criteria could be met.
These days, I advise students that a questionnaire - or other qualitative data, such as a focus groups or interviews - should be used to complement another piece of data: a text that can analysed using linguistic methods.
For example, if you were analysing transcripts of teachers talking at the start of a lesson, and you noticed that there was a pattern of teachers using imperative sentences with year 7s, but cloaked imperatives with year 13s, you could conduct an interview with the students to see if they perceive these language feature as helping to give the teacher authority.
5. Be clear on value
It’s important that your students can tell you what the value of their investigation is. By that, I mean they should have a decent answer to this question: who or what will benefit from your investigation?
The answer to this question might be something tangible. Take the idea that was previously mentioned about teacher talk in the first ten minutes of a lesson. Lots of ITT providers would love to have access to the findings of that investigation, as it could be used to help teachers know how to use language more effectively in their classrooms.
Or, it may be that the investigation is simply about adding to our understanding of an important area of language. When we cover Tannen’s Difference model in language and gender, I find that many students dispute Tannen’s observations and argue that it doesn’t relate to their own experiences. I tell these students that they can help to further our understanding of gender differences in their coursework.
So what isn’t value? Value is not because it’ll be fun, or because it’s my favourite [insert thing teenagers like here]. Scrutinise your students’ ideas in this way to weed out ideas that are likely going to fail. It will save them from wasting their time.
Once students have figured out what the linguistic value of their investigation is, they are ready to start writing their introduction - more on that next time!
The views in this blog are not necessarily shared or endorsed by the centre that I currently work at or the examining body in question.
Photo at the top of the page by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
Comments
Post a Comment