1. H070 Topic Title
H470/02 Dimensions
of linguistic variation

2. Guidance
This guide is designed to take you through the A level English Language H470/01 exam paper. The aim is to explain how candidates should approach the paper and how marks are awarded to the different questions. The orange text boxes offer further explanation on the questions on the exam paper. They offer guidance on the wording of questions and what candidates should do in response to them. The green text boxes focus on the awarding of marks for each question. They give further information on the percentage of each assessment objective attributed to each question. The percentage given is over the whole qualification.
This will always be a comparison based on a cultural or social situation with a clear thematic link between the situations and/or experiences
AO3 (5%)

3. Section A – Child language acquisition
You are advised to spend no more than 40 minutes on this section.
Read Text A in your Resource Booklet and answer the following question:
Using the appropriate terminology to explain your findings, examine the language development stage of both participants as evidenced in the transcript. You should identify and analyse the phonology, grammar and meaning of their utterances.
Use your knowledge of theories and concepts of child language acquisition to support
your answer.
[20]
Clear guidelines are given around timings in this section.
The text used in this question (Text A) will use the IPA.
The wording for this question will remain similar year on year
The question will always reference the “language development stage” and so will always focus on the speech of children.
AO1 10 marks / 6% of total A level
AO2 10 marks / 6% of total A level. Explicit reference to theorists forms part of the AO2 mark for this question.
Both participants in this case are children – they won’t always be and the answer must focus on the speech of the child(ren) (and not CDS).

4. Section B – Language in the media
You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section.
Read Text B in your Resource Booklet and answer the following question.
Using your understanding of relevant ideas and concepts, investigate how language features and contextual factors construct meanings in this text.
[24]
Clear guidelines are given around timings in this section.
Text B will always be a multimodal media text – as it is multimodal candidates can analyse everything in the text, including graphology
The wording for this question will remain similar year on year
AO2 12 marks / 6%of A level
AO3 12 marks / 6%of A level
Remember there are only 45 mins for this question, so candidates do not have to write about everything in the text, but what they think is significant.
“Relevant ideas and concepts” refers to Language & Power, Language & Gender and Language & Technology.
Candidates do not necessarily need to reference all 3 in their answer, but explain which ideas are dominant in the representations in the text.

5. Section C –Language change
You are advised to spend about 1 hour and 5 minutes on this section. Approximately 15 minutes should be spent reading and preparing your answer and about 50 minutes writing your response.
Read Text C and D in your Resource Booklet and answer the following question.
Using appropriate linguistic concepts and methods, analyse the ways in which language is used
in these two texts. In your answer you should:
explore connections and variations between the texts
consider how contextual factors contribute to the construction of meaning
[36]
Both texts will be thematically linked, but from different time periods. One of the texts used in this question will be contemporary and the other from a time after 1600
Clear guidelines are given around reading and writing times in this section.
The term ‘methods’ is a reference to the patterns of language and/or linguistic features that are being employed to communicate meaning.
The wording for this question will remain similar year on year
AO1 12 marks / 6% of total A level
AO3 12 marks / 6% of total A level
AO4 12 marks / 6% of total A level