Daily Practice · A Level
December 1989 5-a-day
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The batch download puts all 5 tiers' December 1989 sheets in a single PDF, each tier behind its own divider page - 155 sheets in one file.
Every sheet in December 1989
The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.
- 1st December 1989What is the effect of enjambment, a line running on without punctuation into the next?
- 2nd December 1989How can flouting a Gricean maxim be an exercise of power?
- 3rd December 1989Give one risk of using a comparison grid, and how to avoid it.
- 4th December 1989What is meant by a 'structural shift' in an unseen text?
- 5th December 1989Name the linguist associated with the 'damp spoon', 'crumbling castle' and 'infectious disease' images of prescriptivist attitudes.
- 6th December 1989Identify one way this stage direction creates foreboding: 'Thunder, distant. The lamp flickers and does not right itself.'
- 7th December 1989What term describes a variety of language used in a specific social setting or for a specific purpose?
- 8th December 1989Identify the narrative structure technique where the story jumps back in time to an earlier event.
- 9th December 1989Give two of Halliday's functions of language and an example utterance for each.
- 10th December 1989Rewrite this weak sentence to earn AO2 credit: 'The writer uses a simile to describe the house, which makes it more interesting.'
- 11th December 1989Explain in one sentence why comparing structure, not just content, matters when comparing two poems.
- 12th December 1989A child calls all four-legged animals 'doggie'. What is this process called?
- 13th December 1989A poem has four-line stanzas. What is this stanza form called?
- 14th December 1989Define synthetic personalisation and give an example.
- 15th December 1989Convert this into a comparative sentence: 'In poem A the sea is a threat. In poem B the sea is a comfort.'
- 16th December 1989What should you do first when reading an unseen extract in an exam?
- 17th December 1989The word 'dog' once referred to one specific breed but now refers to the whole species. Name this type of semantic change.
- 18th December 1989In the line 'I have kept this light for twenty-six years, and the sea has never once told me my business,' identify the tone.
- 19th December 1989Give one example of a linguistic feature typical of unplanned spoken discourse.
- 20th December 1989What is the effect of a very short, simple sentence placed after a long, complex one?
- 21st December 1989Why should an answer analysing children's writing not simply list spelling errors?
- 22nd December 1989The final sentence of an extract is a fragment: 'Rain, again.' Suggest two effects worth arguing for.
- 23rd December 1989In 'I sold the lamp for scrap and kept the key,' identify the contrast being set up.
- 24th December 1989Calculate the MLU in morphemes for these three utterances: 'I want juice' (3 morphemes), 'the dog barked' (4 morphemes, counting -ed as one), 'mummy gone now' (3 morphemes).
- 25th December 1989Identify the technique in 'the silence screamed.'
- 26th December 1989Explain how an agentless passive can exercise power.
- 27th December 1989Explain why comparing subject matter alone rarely reaches the higher bands.
- 28th December 1989Give one reason subject terminology should be used carefully in unseen analysis.
- 29th December 1989The word 'nice' once meant 'foolish or fussy' but now means 'pleasant'. Name this type of semantic change.
- 30th December 1989A tragic hero's downfall is usually explained by two competing forces. Name them.
- 31st December 1989Identify which is more likely to use nominalisation and passive voice: a casual spoken chat or a formal council report.