Daily Practice · A Level
January 2012 - A Level 5-a-day
Every A Level sheet published in January 2012, with answers. A Level - discourse, register, framework analysis and language change.
Printing for a group?
The batch download puts all 5 tiers' January 2012 sheets in a single PDF, each tier behind its own divider page - 155 sheets in one file.
Every sheet in January 2012
The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.
- 1st January 2012Give one risk of using a comparison grid, and how to avoid it.
- 2nd January 2012What is meant by a 'structural shift' in an unseen text?
- 3rd January 2012Name the linguist associated with the 'damp spoon', 'crumbling castle' and 'infectious disease' images of prescriptivist attitudes.
- 4th January 2012Identify one way this stage direction creates foreboding: 'Thunder, distant. The lamp flickers and does not right itself.'
- 5th January 2012What term describes a variety of language used in a specific social setting or for a specific purpose?
- 6th January 2012Identify the narrative structure technique where the story jumps back in time to an earlier event.
- 7th January 2012Give two of Halliday's functions of language and an example utterance for each.
- 8th January 2012Rewrite this weak sentence to earn AO2 credit: 'The writer uses a simile to describe the house, which makes it more interesting.'
- 9th January 2012Explain in one sentence why comparing structure, not just content, matters when comparing two poems.
- 10th January 2012A child calls all four-legged animals 'doggie'. What is this process called?
- 11th January 2012A poem has four-line stanzas. What is this stanza form called?
- 12th January 2012Define synthetic personalisation and give an example.
- 13th January 2012Convert this into a comparative sentence: 'In poem A the sea is a threat. In poem B the sea is a comfort.'
- 14th January 2012What should you do first when reading an unseen extract in an exam?
- 15th January 2012The word 'dog' once referred to one specific breed but now refers to the whole species. Name this type of semantic change.
- 16th January 2012In the line 'I have kept this light for twenty-six years, and the sea has never once told me my business,' identify the tone.
- 17th January 2012Give one example of a linguistic feature typical of unplanned spoken discourse.
- 18th January 2012What is the effect of a very short, simple sentence placed after a long, complex one?
- 19th January 2012Why should an answer analysing children's writing not simply list spelling errors?
- 20th January 2012The final sentence of an extract is a fragment: 'Rain, again.' Suggest two effects worth arguing for.
- 21st January 2012In 'I sold the lamp for scrap and kept the key,' identify the contrast being set up.
- 22nd January 2012Calculate 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).
- 23rd January 2012Identify the technique in 'the silence screamed.'
- 24th January 2012Explain how an agentless passive can exercise power.
- 25th January 2012Explain why comparing subject matter alone rarely reaches the higher bands.
- 26th January 2012Give one reason subject terminology should be used carefully in unseen analysis.
- 27th January 2012The word 'nice' once meant 'foolish or fussy' but now means 'pleasant'. Name this type of semantic change.
- 28th January 2012A tragic hero's downfall is usually explained by two competing forces. Name them.
- 29th January 2012Identify which is more likely to use nominalisation and passive voice: a casual spoken chat or a formal council report.
- 30th January 2012Identify the technique in this phrase: 'the silence pressed against the windows like a living thing.'
- 31st January 2012Define a virtuous error and explain why it matters theoretically.