Programme of Study & Syllabus
Contents
The Syllabus, Examinations and Assessment
How Your Work is Assessed on the Course
The Transition from (I)GCSE to AS and A Level - Some Tips
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Welcome to your Wolsey Hall Cambridge AS English Language course. Please take the time to read carefully through this page as it explains how the course is structured, how to get the most out of your studies and how your work will be assessed. At the end of this page, you will find details of the reading you will need to do from your textbook and set texts and also how each module links to the CAIE syllabus and the final examinations.
This course will lead you step-by-step through the syllabus by way of resources, video and audio links, assignments and, of course, the textbook, so that by the end, you will be confident and fully prepared for your final examinations.
Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. Language is the vehicle by which we communicate, express our individuality, share ideas, argue our case, sell products, critique the world around us, inspire and entertain one another and lead revolutions. It is constantly evolving to reflect the world in which we live and it both reflects, and shapes, society. It is one of the defining characteristics of being human and, from great novels to text messages, our ability to manipulate it in infinite ways distinguishes us from other species. In this subject, anything and everything you might read or hear is a text.
The Cambridge AS and A Level in English Language allows you to develop a critical understanding of a wide variety of texts, both written and spoken. These are taken from a range of sources including journalism, advertisements, speeches, biographies, diaries, letters, blogs and fiction. You will learn the key characteristics and conventions of each and the critical vocabulary needed to dissect these.
At AS, you will be guided through the fundamental building blocks of language and its use: grammar, structure and style. Your analytical skills will develop as you break texts down, learning how writers and speakers create particular effects for specific audiences and purposes. You will also apply these skills to your own writing, crafting a range of directed writing pieces for a variety of different audiences and purposes, reworking source material in a new style to achieve specific effects. Evaluative skills are crucial in this subject, and you will compare and contrast the methods used in a variety of different texts, including your own, in order to reflect on how key purposes are achieved.
By the end of the course, you will be able to:
- Analyse a range of unseen texts, both spoken and written, with confidence;
- Use appropriate technical terminology to describe and explore writers’ methods;
- Be able to identify the characteristic conventions of a wide range of different text types;
- Explain analytically how writers’ choices of language, form and structure shape meaning;
- Write clearly and concisely, explaining your ideas in full and developing your argument effectively;
- Write your own texts, in different styles, for a range of different audiences and purposes;
- Reuse material from a source text to achieve a new purpose, shaping language accordingly;
- Compare and contrast key stylistic and linguistic elements of texts;
- Evaluate and reflect on your own writing and its effects.
The Syllabus, Examinations and Assessment
This Wolsey Hall course is designed to prepare you for the Cambridge AS English Language examinations which you will sit at a Cambridge exam centre. It is vitally important that you become familiar with the syllabus which can be found below:
READ - Syllabus 2024-26 (CAIE) Download READ - Syllabus 2024-26 (CAIE)
READ - Syllabus 2027-28 (CAIE) Download READ - Syllabus 2027-28 (CAIE)
The examination code for AS and A Level English Language is: 9093
For the AS Level in English Language you will sit two papers:
- Paper 1: Reading – This paper is worth 50% of your AS grade and 25% of your overall A Level grade. Length: 2 hours and 15 minutes.
This paper carries 50 marks in total and candidates answer two compulsory questions: Question 1 in Section A and Question 2 in Section B.
- Paper 2: Writing – This paper is worth 50% of your AS grade and 25% of your overall A Level grade. Length: 2 hours.
This paper carries 50 marks in total and candidates answer two questions: one compulsory question from Section A and one question from a choice of three in Section B.
All components are externally assessed.
The syllabus is examined in the June and November examination series. This syllabus is also available for examination in March for students in India only.
Assessment Objectives
The assessment objectives (AOs) for AS and A Level English Language are as follows:
- AO1: Understanding
Read and demonstrate understanding of a wide variety of texts.
- AO2: Writing
Write effectively, creatively, accurately and appropriately for a range of audiences and purposes.
- AO3: Analysis
Analyse the ways in which writers’ and speakers’ choices of form, structure and language produce meaning and style.
- AO4: Conceptualisation*
Demonstrate understanding of linguistic issues, concepts, methods and approaches.
- AO5: Data handling*
Analyse and synthesise language data from a variety of sources.
*AO4 and AO5 are only assessed at AL.
Wolsey Hall offers a unique model of offline and online resources to our homeschooling students – a model which we have developed based on our many years’ experience of providing homeschooling courses to students.
Textbook
Each subject specialist team carefully selects the best textbook for you to use as you study. The textbook for your AS English Language course is as follows:
English Language for Cambridge International AS & A Level Coursebook by Mike Gould and Marilyn Rankin (2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 2019); ISBN: 9781108455824
Resources
In addition to your textbook and set texts, we have sourced a range of additional resources to support your learning. The resources are clearly marked out in the module pages and you should make use of these alongside your textbook to ensure that you get the very best out of your course.
You will also find a range of key resources in the General Resources section of the course. These are items which relate to the course as a whole, rather than to specific modules, and as such, you should make regular use of them. For AS English Language these are:
- The CAIE English Language Learner Guide
- AS Glossary of Terminology
- AS Language Frameworks
- Overview of Paper 1: Reading
- Overview of Paper 2: Writing
- Generic Mark Scheme for Paper 1: Reading
- Generic Mark Scheme for Paper 2: Writing
- Optional Further Reading List
You should also make use of the extensive exam preparation material at the end of the course to help you to prepare for your final examination.
All the files required for your course are uploaded onto our Learning Management System, Canvas. Once you have read through this page and downloaded the Programme of Study (POS) then you are ready to begin the course.
The key course content is covered in eleven core modules, each of which has an assignment at the end of it. These modules will help you to get the most out of your textbook and set texts.
Module Twelve, at the end of the course, is focussed on revision and exam practice. It contains tips and tasks for you to work on once you have completed the course.
Each module is subdivided into topics so that you can study the course in manageable chunks. The topics contain the following elements, as appropriate:
- Read and Make Notes – these sections include the page references for reading and note-making from your textbook.
- Tasks – these sections identify activities and exercises that build up your core knowledge and understanding as you learn new material.
- Consolidate – these sections identify tasks which draw together key skills you have learnt.
- Links – throughout the course there are links to a range of resources that will enhance your understanding of key concepts and your set texts.
- Top Tips – these sections include advice to help you make the most of what you have learnt and to help you approach your assignments and exams in the most effective way.
- Terminology – you will keep track of key linguistic terminology by making flashcards for revision as you progress through the course.
How Your Work is Assessed on the Course
Your progress will be assessed by completing an assignment at the end of each of the eleven core modules. We recommend that you do NOT look at the assignments until you've studied all the topics in the module. This will ensure that you focus on everything you need to know for the exam. If you focus only on what you need to know to do well in the assignment, you will miss important elements in each module that you need to know and understand.
The assignments have been designed to help you prepare for your final examination. Aside from Assignment One, which is designed to test your understanding of core concepts in Module One, all of the questions are based on past exam papers. Answering exam-style questions is crucial in developing your exam technique, understanding exactly what the examiner is looking for in each case and ensuring you are confident when you tackle the real exams. In English Language, we do not expect you to complete your assignments without referring to your notes. However, we encourage you to rely less on these as you progress through the course.
There are several different types of question that you will encounter in the two AS English Language exam papers and different combinations of skills are tested in each; some questions are analytical, some are comparative, some involve producing your own texts and others require you to evaluate a piece of your own writing alongside a source text. This course is structured in such a way that you will tackle each type of question at least twice. It’s therefore very important to reflect on the feedback you receive and how you can improve your marks generally, but especially so before tackling the next version of the same kind of question. Use the advice provided on the assignment sheets and in the generic mark schemes to make sure you know exactly what is being tested in each task.
The assignments allow you to think critically about what you have learned and will enable your tutor to see how well you are progressing. Your tutor will mark your assignments and provide you with detailed feedback. Once you have had your marked assignment returned, you will be able to access the mark scheme and/or a specimen answer (an A-grade piece of work). You should always reflect carefully on your tutor’s feedback and apply it in your future assignments.
You should read the assignment questions carefully and answer them to the best of your ability, providing relevant examples where necessary. If you don’t do well in your first assignment, don’t worry; your tutor is there to provide advice.
We ask that you do not submit multiple assignments at the same time. For you to see a steady improvement in your marks, it is very important that you reflect on your tutor’s feedback before beginning each new assignment, so that you can incorporate their tips for improvement into each new piece of work.
To get the best out of your course, before submitting each new assignment, you must:
- Complete all the reading, notes and activities in the preceding module;
- Read carefully through all of your tutor’s comments on your last assignment;
- Use the mark scheme and/or any exemplar or specimen answers provided to help you plan for the next assignment.
We cannot guarantee that tutors will be able to mark multiple assignments within 3-5 days and your work may be returned to you to complete again in light of more recent feedback.
All assignments are submitted via Canvas – you should consult the Canvas Guide for more information.
The Transition from (I)GCSE to AS and A Level - Some Tips
- At AS and A Level, you will be expected to develop and extend your critical vocabulary, by learning and using a wider range of linguistic terminology in your analysis of language than you did at (I)GCSE. You will still be expected to use the terminology from (I)GCSE, such as ‘metaphor’ and ‘simile’, but you will add to these and should therefore make regular use of the glossaries provided.
- You aren’t expected to remember all the new terminology in one go, but using it regularly and learning new terms as you go along will give you a huge advantage.
- Your answers will need to be longer than before and the structure of these is important. This varies slightly according to the type of task you are completing. Make sure you read the advice given on how to approach each new kind of assignment and that you always plan your answers. Note that you MUST include a plan for each task when you submit Assignments Two to Eleven.
- When analysing texts, you need to establish the genre, audience, subject and purpose in your introduction (GASP). This gives you a really solid foundation on which to build. Pay close attention to these four elements as they are explained in Module One. You will also use them when planning directed writing tasks.
- Any points you make in analytical essays must be illustrated with evidence, in the form of quotations, from the text. You will still be expected to use the Point, Quotation, Comment (PQC) or Point, Evidence, Explain (PEE) structure in your responses, but your analysis should become more developed and detailed as you move through the course.
- It goes without saying that AS and A Level essays need to be written in good, clear and accurate English and that you should use a suitably formal tone and vocabulary in any academic essay.
- Make sure you work very carefully through the basic principles of language covered in Modules One and Two. This core material will be important to you throughout the AS course and also at AL, so you need to be confident you have understood it before moving on. You should return to these modules and their resources frequently to keep developing your knowledge of grammar and your close textual analysis skills as you work through the course.
- There is a big step up from (I)GCSE to AS and A Level, but don’t worry; you will develop the right skills during the course if you follow your tutor’s feedback and make use of all the resources and materials available to you.
When you study a Wolsey Hall course, you are never alone. There are lots of people who are willing to help you. Everyone is on your side!
- Tutors: At Wolsey Hall, all our tutors are friendly and knowledgeable. They are subject experts and you should not be shy about asking them questions about your course. You will meet your tutor at the start of your course and you should contact them via Canvas messaging if you have any questions.
- Student Progress Managers: You have already been assigned a Student Progress Manager who can help with your Assignment Schedule.
- Exams Officers: Wolsey Hall’s Exams Officers are here to help students with any queries regarding exam centres.
- Canvas Help Desk: Canvas is a great virtual learning environment, but we understand that sometimes, even the best things can go wrong! If you have any problems with Canvas (e.g. uploading assignments or unable to access resources) you should submit a Canvas Help Ticket.
For information about how to create and submit a Help Ticket, please refer to the Canvas Guide.
We hope you’ll enjoy your course and studying at Wolsey Hall. We wish you the best of luck in your studies and success in your examinations. Please do let us know how you get on when you receive your examination results!
The Wolsey Hall Team