AQA GCSE
English Language and English Literature Core Student Book
Series Editors: Sarah Darragh and Jo Heathcote
Sarah Darragh Phil Darragh Mike Gould Jo Heathcote
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Contents Chapter 1 • Key technical skills English Language AO5, AO6 • English Literature AO4
1.1 Words and how we spell them 1.2 Vocabulary and meaning: nouns and adjectives 1.3 Words and meaning: verbs and agreement 1.4 Sentences and their functions
1.5 Punctuation: Add meaning and clarity with punctuation 1.6 Sentences used for effect 1.7 Structure: using different sentence structures 1.8 Structure: paragraphing
Chapter 2 • Key concepts 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4
Understand literary forms Understand non-fiction genres Understand narrative perspective Understand theme
2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8
Understand structure Understand literal and metaphorical reading Understand the effect of writers’ choices Understand attitude and viewpoint
Chapter 3 • Reading, understanding and responding to texts English Language AO1 • English Literature AO1
3.1 Retrieve basic information from unseen texts 3.2 Support ideas with evidence and quotation 3.3 Show your understanding of inference and implication 3.4 Make and present inferences about people 3.5 Make and present inferences about places
3.6 Make and present inferences about ideas and attitudes 3.7 Summarise and synthesise: selecting and collating information from more than one text 3.8 Apply your skills to English Language and English Literature tasks
Chapter 4 • Explaining and commenting on writers’ methods and effects English Language AO2 • English Literature AO2
4.1 Explain and comment on writers’ use of language 4.2 Explain and comment on writers’ use of language techniques 4.3 Explain the way writers use language to create character 4.4 Explain and comment on writers’ use of structural features
4.5 Explain and comment on writers’ use of openings 4.6 Explain and comment on the ways writers create meanings and effects with structure and form 4.7 Apply your skills to English Language and English Literature tasks
Chapter 5 • Working with context English Literature AO3
5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4
Understand and define context Relate themes and language to context Relate context to language Explore setting as context
5.5 Explore the same context from different perspectives 5.6 Apply your skills to an English Literature task
Contents
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Chapter 1. Topic 1 Chapter 6 • Forming a critical response English Language AO4 • English Literature AO1
6.1 Critical evaluation: form an interpretation 6.2 Critical evaluation: gather and present evidence about language 6.3 Critical evaluation: gather and present evidence about structure 6.4 Critical evaluation: gather and present evidence about mood
6.5 Critical evaluation: construct a convincing response to literary texts 6.6 Critical evaluation: construct a convincing response to non-fiction texts 6.7 Apply your skills to English Language and English Literature tasks
Chapter 7 • Comparing texts English Language AO3 • English Literature AO2
7.1 Compare views and perspectives in nonliterary non-fiction from the twentieth century 7.2 Compare non-fiction prose texts
7.3 Compare the ways viewpoints are presented to the reader in texts from the early twentieth century 7.4 Structure a comparative response to poetry 7.5 Apply your skills to English Language and English Literature tasks
Chapter 8 • Writing creatively English Language AO5, AO6
8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4
Describe setting and atmosphere Describe people and events Structure a description Build ideas for a descriptive task
8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8
Structure narratives effectively Create convincing characterisation and voice Generate ideas for your narrative response Apply your skills to an English Language task
Chapter 9 • Point of view writing English Language AO5, AO6
9.1 What is point of view writing? 9.2 Match tone and register to task and audience 9.3 Match features to text types and conventions 9.4 Select appropriate vocabulary to make an impact
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9.5 Key techniques: varying sentences and verbs for effect 9.6 Key techniques: using punctuation for effect and impact 9.7 Shape whole texts cohesively 9.8 Shape sentences into paragraphs effectively 9.9 Apply your skills to an English Language task
AQA GCSE English Language and English Literature: Core Student Book
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C hapt er 1
Key technical skills
What’s it all about? In this chapter, you will learn about words, where they come from and the different jobs they do in sentences. You will also look at how sentences are formed and structured to create effects, as well as considering paragraphing. You will learn some of the correct technical terms to help you in your studies. The understanding of grammatical concepts and terms developed here will inform your work in later chapters, particularly Chapters 4, 6, 8 and 9. In this chapter, you will learn about •
words and how we spell them
•
•
vocabulary and meaning: nouns and adjectives
adding meaning and clarity with punctuation
•
sentences used for effect
•
words and meaning: verbs and agreement
•
structure: using different sentence structures
•
sentences and their functions
•
structure: paragraphing.
Which AOs are covered?
English Language GCSE
English Literature GCSE
AO5 Communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively, selecting and adapting tone, style and register for different forms, purposes and audiences. Organise information and ideas, using structural and grammatical features to support coherence and cohesion of texts
AO4 Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation
AO6 Candidates must use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation How will this be tested?
You will be asked to complete writing tasks under timed conditions. You will need to show accurate spelling and organisation and be able to punctuate varied sentences to create effects as well as paragraph your work accurately and effectively.
Reading questions will ask you to analyse and comment on the overall text, paying attention to the language, the structure or the literary techniques being used by the writer to communicate meanings and create effects.
Some reading questions will ask you to focus in detail on particular words and phrases. Others will identify an area of a text and ask you to look closely at the meanings and techniques being used.
In writing your responses you will need to show you can do so in a clear and organised way, using accurate spelling and punctuation to help make your meaning clear. Chapter 1: Key technical skills
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Chapter 1 . Topic 1
Words and how we spell them
Learning objective You will learn to • explore how English spelling has evolved and how we can use this to help us recognise spelling patterns. Assessment objectives • English Language AO6 • English Literature AO4
How do you improve your spelling of more complex words?
Getting you thinking English is made up of a whole host of different words from different languages. These words have become part of our language at different times through our very varied history. 1
Consider the following questions and jot down your ideas. a Do you know who the Vikings were and when they invaded our country? b What do you know about the Romans and Anglo-Saxons in Britain? c Have you heard of the Norman Conquest?
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AQA GCSE English Language and English Literature: Core Student Book
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1.1 d Can you name any places that England has ruled in the past? e Can you think of any ways these different peoples, events and places have affected our language? If English is a patchwork quilt of different languages, each one brings with it different patterns and ways of spelling. 2
Look up these words in a dictionary to find out which language they originally came from:
pyjamas adventure
cake parliament history coffee
tragedy expensive jeans guitar icon
umbrella shampoo
Explore the skills Many of our everyday words come from Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse (brought by waves of invaders who settled in Britain, including the Saxons and later the Vikings). These words are short, monosyllabic and logical to spell. They ‘sound out’ easily when we come to write them down and include many of the nouns, basic verbs and pronouns we use every day. 3
Look at the words in the box which follows. Using only the words in the box, write a short poem or description of a natural scene.
house love you she he I this that can eat sleep live water leaf moon food as and so on in down to when where day night shall sun day winter spring friend evil cold then we us under up to heart grass water have do be sky weak die get give take Your poem or description is made up of very familiar words – all of which are Anglo-Saxon or Norse in origin. Some of our more complex words, however, tend to come from Latin: the language brought to England by the Romans in 55 BC. The Romans stayed for over 360 years and brought order and organisation. Their words are very organised too. Our Latinate vocabulary is often made up of a root word or word stem. For example: norm The root word changes in meaning very slightly when we add prefixes or suffixes to the beginning or ends of the stem. e+norm+ous ab+norm+al
Key terms prefixes: added at the beginning of words in order to turn them into other words suffixes: ‘endings’ − used at the end of words to turn them into other words
Chapter 1: Key technical skills
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Chapter 1 . Topic 1 4
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The following table lists some common suffixes which often cause confusion when spelling words. Read the golden rule in the table, then add the correct endings to the root word. Confusing suffixes
Golden rule
Stem words
−cious and −tious
If your stem ends in –ce, then lose the –ce and add −cious. If the stem ends in any other letters just add −tious.
grace space caution ambition
−ation and −able
If your stem ends in –ce or –ge, keep the –e before adding –able. Words which end in –ation can usually also use −able.
adore notice enjoy consider
New words
Look at these words ending in the prefix –ible. horrible
forcible
visible
terrible
a Work out the stem word and write some golden rules to help you remember these suffixes. b Think of some more –ible words to try out your rule.
Develop the skills By thinking carefully about the word stem, we are often able to find the key to spelling other words in the same family. For example, take the word finish, meaning the end or the limit of something. finish ➞ add a new ending ➞ finite If you can spell finish, you can also spell finite by changing the ending and you can then spell infinite by adding a prefix. You can also spell definite by adding a different prefix. Then, by adding a further prefix, you can create indefinite. 6
How does the meaning of the word shift slightly in each of these examples? Check in a dictionary for any words you are not familiar with.
What does not change, however, is the spelling of the stem ‘fini’. 7
Using the prefixes and suffixes in the following table, try to build ten more words from these Latinate stems. equal – meaning: even or level cure – meaning: to care form – meaning: to shape
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AQA GCSE English Language and English Literature: Core Student Book
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1.1 Examples might be: equal: un + equal = unequal, equal + ity = equality Common prefixes ad dis un
ac in
as per
Common suffixes bi pre
con re
de trans
−able –ence −sion
–ible −acy −tion
−ant −ate
–ance −ity
−ent –ite
Apply the skills 8
Read the extract from Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby, and work out the missing words by adding prefixes and suffixes to each stem. Then check with a dictionary.
Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with the countenances of old men, (form) with irons upon their limbs, boys of (stunt) growth, and others whose long, meagre legs would hardly bear their (stoop) bodies, all (crowd) on the view together; there were the bleared eye, the hare-lip, the (crook) foot, and every (ugly) or (distort) that told of (nature) aversion conceived by parents for their offspring, or of young lives which, from the (early) dawn of (infant), had been one horrible (endure) of (cruel) and neglect. Charles Dickens, from Nicholas Nickleby
Check your progress: I can form and use complex words which do not always follow regular patterns. I can recognise, use and spell more complex words. I can recognise, use and spell basic words accurately.
Chapter 1: Key technical skills
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Chapter 1 . Topic 2 Learning objective You will learn to • explore some key word classes (nouns and adjectives) and how they create meaning.
Vocabulary and meaning: nouns and adjectives
Assessment objectives • English Language AO2, AO5 • English Literature AO2, AO4
What jobs do words do?
Getting you thinking Nouns
Key terms
Some of your first words were the names of things around you – teddy, ball, cup. This is how you learn to make sense of the world, by labelling and naming the things you see.
nouns: labelling and naming words – teddy, ball, cup
The words that do the job of labelling and naming are called nouns. To test whether a word is a noun, see if you can put a determiner in front of it. The most common determiners are a, an and the.
determiner: a word that goes in front of a noun such as a, an and the adjectives: words that describe nouns – a tennis ball, a pink teddy
Adjectives As you developed your skills with language, you probably needed to be able to recognise more specific things and to describe specific things – you may have needed to ask for your brown teddy rather than a pink one, a football rather than a tennis ball, and a clean cup rather than a dirty one. The words that do the job of describing nouns are called adjectives. 1
Organise the following words into two columns headed Nouns and Adjectives. black wispy
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house web cat moon
silvery haunted
chilly breeze
door rain
Now look at your lists. Pair up each noun with the most appropriate adjective from the list. An example has been done for you below.
haunted house If we add a determiner to this pairing, we create a noun phrase.
the haunted house – a haunted house
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torrential creaking Key term noun phrase: a noun phrase is a phrase (a group of connected words) with a noun as its main word; a noun phrase can normally be used in place of a noun within a sentence
AQA GCSE English Language and English Literature: Core Student Book
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1.2 3
Create noun phrases from all of your pairings by adding ‘a’ or ‘the’.
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Look again at the noun phrases you have created. What type of story might you be reading if you found these noun phrases in it? Can you explain why?
Explore the skills Now look at what happens if you change the adjective in a noun phrase. a lonely house a summer house This is known as modification. When you change the adjective, you change the picture. When writers use modification, they are trying to give you a precise picture. 5
Look at these noun phrases. How does each one change the mental picture you have of a house? Jot down what you see in your mind’s eye for each one. • a newly built house • an imposing house • a dilapidated house • a seaside house • the family house
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Look at this extract from a poem called ‘Space Poem 3: Off Course’ in which the writer uses noun phrases to describe a space mission.
the turning continents the space debris the golden lifeline the space walk the crawling deltas the camera moon the pitch velvet the rough sleep the crackling headphone the space silence Edwin Morgan, from ‘Space Poem 3: Off Course’
Choose four of the noun phrases and write down what you see in your mind’s eye. Chapter 1: Key technical skills
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Chapter 1 . Topic 2 7
Imagine you are on the space mission in the poem. a Replace all of the adjectives in your four chosen noun phrases with ideas of your own. b How does this modification change what you might see in your mind’s eye? For example:
the turning continents
the distant continents
Develop the skills You are now going to read the whole of the poem.
Space Poem 3: Off Course the golden flood the weightless seat the cabin song the pitch black the growing beard the floating crumb the shining rendezvous the orbit wisecrack the hot spacesuit the smuggled mouth-organ the imaginary somersault the visionary sunrise the turning continents the space debris the golden lifeline the space walk the crawling deltas the camera moon the pitch velvet the rough sleep the crackling headphone the space silence the turning earth the lifeline continents the cabin sunrise the hot flood the shining spacesuit the growing moon the crackling somersault the smuggled orbit the rough moon the visionary rendezvous the weightless headphone the cabin debris the floating lifeline the pitch sleep the crawling camera the turning silence the space crumb the crackling beard the orbit mouth-organ the floating song Edwin Morgan
In some cases in the poem, the same noun appears two or three times with a different adjective each time. For example: ‘the golden flood’ becomes ‘the hot flood’. This change of adjective suggests something that was beautiful and ‘golden’ – perhaps the light of the sun − has become dangerous and a threat, ‘the hot flood’.
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1.2 8
Can you find an example in the poem where the same noun has been used more than once? What does the different adjective suggest about what is happening in the poem?
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a In other places, the same adjective has been used more than once. What does it suggest in each case about the noun it is describing? For example: ‘the crackling headphone’ becomes ‘the crackling somersault’. b Find one more example of your own and explain what you think might be happening.
Words can do more than one job. The place that words appear in a sentence is the factor that gives them their technical term. 10
Look at these three noun phrases from the poem. the orbit wisecrack
the smuggled orbit
the orbit mouth-organ
a What do you notice in each case about the use of the word ‘orbit’? b What job is the writer making the word do in each phrase? 11
Write two noun phrases for each word in the following list: one where the word is used as the adjective, one where the word becomes a noun. An example has been done for you.
village: the village green/the country village flower house
star dress
thunder television
Apply the skills 12
Now read the following task. Check your progress:
Think about a place or a person you know well. Construct a poem in the style of ‘Off Course’ in which you describe that person or place in noun phrases only. Be as precise as you can in putting your noun phrases together. Experiment with using words in different places and repeating words to create different pictures for your reader. An example has been given here of a student describing their house to help you get started.
The glittery path The glassy expanse The greeting warmth
I can recognise that the place a word is used gives it its word class and, that by modifying nouns, we create different meanings. I can recognise nouns, adjectives and noun phrases and have learned what modification is. I can understand what the terms noun, adjective and noun phrase mean.
Chapter 1: Key technical skills
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