AS Level English Language: Genre in Language Studies

One of the things that candidates find hardest to get hold of when trying to analyse passages is some structured sense of how they might define a passage. The question often helps by telling them (a novel, a magazine article etc). Almost any passage printed on Paper 1 can be broken down using the key words on the left. Of course, theres a lot more to do too, but many candidates never show that they have a firm grasp of what sort of writing they are engaging with in the first place, and this can lead them simply to feature spotting without any coherent sense of what the piece of writing is trying to do as a whole. Similarly, when candidates are tackling the B section of Paper 2, they would do well to spend some time thinking about the type of writing they have been asked to reproduce. In other words, candidates need to show awareness of what linguists call discourse structure, both in their own writing and in that of others. So lets take as an example the idea of writing a letter to a paper to complain about something. A candidates thinking should go along the following lines:

Author Audience Situation Physical form Format requirements Topic Level of formality Style Written language Pattern/ Structure Requirements

Member of the public Editor of the newspaper and the wider public A local/ national paper A piece of paper (the exam booklet may need to be set up to look like this Address, editors address, salutations etc A developing range of points of relevance to readers of this paper Formal without being stilted Typed, first person Mostly full sentences, probably using conventional but not necessarily complex vocabulary (depending on the paper) Moves through a range of points using evidence and making a case Must be signed, contact details etc given

When candidates start to move on to A2, they will find that they also need to have some concept of genre and discourse structure in spoken language. Thats the subject for another paper, however.