Exam tips

Revisingnesses,

with the mocks coming up, I thought I'd give you a quick reminder on exam techniques:

• follow the timing recommendations on the front of the paper
• when you've read the question, note down quickly anything you might be able to crowbar in that you know and then check you've included those things on your plan when you've finished planning
• read the context (in the question, at the top and bottom of texts) and then predict what you are going to find - that way you read more actively and you will spot linguistic features that suit the context as you read the text; you will also notice anything surprising and that will always be worth exploring
• skim-read texts first (in under a minute) to get an idea of the subject, register, structure, then read and annotate in detail
• look for quotes that you can comment on using terminology from a range of frameworks e.g. the pun (lexis) is which word class (grammar) and is a cataphoric reference (discourse) to what?
• look for quotes that show patterns of language use by the producer and use more than one example (three, ideally), analysed with terminology and how the techniques suit the context
• check your plans meet the AOs - terminology, essay structure, context, theory content (if relevant), connecting/contrasting in every paragraph (if relevant) etc.
• explore ambiguities, offereing alternative explanations/interpretations that are linked to context e.g. it could be that the use of the paralinguistic feature "hahaha" in the Amelia email is meant to use orthography to covey genuine laughter and work with other features to reassure her family and friends that she is happy and well, or it could be sarcastic and a mixed-mode affordance to convey her idiolect and personality in a way that might make the recievers hear her voice strongly and not miss her so much - the audience would probably have a pragmatic understanding of which it is meant to be as they know her well.
• in theory essays, give examples and attach terminology to them e.g. talking about how the past-tense suffix 'ed' is overgeneralised by children to irregular verbs to form neologisms they couldn't be imitating e.g. 'runned', 'flied', or the plural suffix to irregular count-nouns e.g. 'foots'
• in opinion pieces, ensure that you have explained theories well to a non-specialist but included enough depth and detail to get a good AO2 mark - use examples here too and write in an engaging way that is suitable for the audience you have decided on
• leave time for proofreading and editing - quality is always preferable to quantitiy in terms of the mark scheme - have you used enough terminology, examples, clear discourse markers, theory, context? Aim for at least 3 terms per paragraph - the example on the Amelia text above uses 7 in reference to a single quote (paralinguistic, orthography, mixed-mode, affordance, idiolect, recievers, pragmatic understanding)