AS Language Paper 2 possible forms to write in for opinionated pieces

Examliciousnesses,

an article for a newspaper is obviously the most likely - remember you have to choose, and state,  an audience so have an idea if you want to write for conservative readers in a broadsheet like The Telegraph or Times or if you want to write for a more liberal audience e.g. in The Guardian -The Guardian is likely to be suitable for broadsheet articles where accents and dialects are valued, more feminist perspectives are suitable etc but the occupation topics might be more flexible in terms of what you want to write about and what would interest each type of reader.

If you go tabloid, you can be more sensational but you may find it harder to include the depth of theory that will hit the higher levels.

Other straightforward forms would be a speech (remember to say more about who would attend the speech, where etc when stating your audience), a blog post (don't forget to include a range of conventions e.g. hyperlinks to show you understand what affordances the form offers) or a magazine article, e.g. for a men's, women's, local magazine etc.

They might throw a spanner in the works with an unusual form e.g. a letter to your local MP (there are some basic conventions here but you would need to find a way to break down any possible opposition your MP might have for taking your concerns seriously e.g. about schools banning dialect and slang or the need for a gender neutral pronoun or the need for businesses to take language diversity seriously etc.).

Here are some other left-field ideas:

• A letter to a friend about his decision to take elocution lessons to remove his accent
• The conclusion of a report for a local business about whether they use too much jargon
• An infomercial for a course for women on how to speak more assertively

I only throw these out there because Lang Lit were asked to write a handbook for new teachers on how to relate to their students and it was NOTHING like any of the sample tasks we had been given. Can anyone else think of tasks that are a bit more 'out there'? It's a useful intellectual exercise to stretch yourself with one (or more) of these and it actually shows you can transform the research you know about for wildly differing purposes, which is not only what the exam board want you to be able to do, but what I want you as language users to leave the course being able to do.