PETER KING teaches English at Wisbech Grammar School, and before the summer holiday, reviewed AQA’s publications about its new English specification. Here, he gives his verdict on the books…
The authors of these hefty tomes, designed to steer students through the latest version of GCSE English language, are firm advocates of patterns of three.
So here is a triplet to sum up the new exam that is being foisted on all of us: a nightmare for teachers, a predictably elaborate set of hoops for the first wave of guinea pigs to negotiate and a money-spinning field day for the AQA-approved pundits who hold all the keys to the manifold mysteries.
The first thing you notice about these books is their weight and you can see why the publishers marketing this ‘indispensable’ material are determined to pump up the volume and spawn another major industry, if they can get away with selling teacher guides at £100 apiece and English skills builder interactive books at, yes, £500.
Tucked away between the mug shots of celebrities and the ephemeral output of the tabloid press there is some sound, solid advice: close analysis of student responses with detailed breakdowns on how to turn them into answers which would attract a higher grade; the chance to complete good responses and tips on how to develop points in a mark-winning way.
And there are lines that stay with you, ranging from feet on the ground stuff – ‘It is better to write a lot about a little than to write a little about a lot’ – to the ‘I don’t believe it’ variety – ‘You need to use irony appropriately and selectively to help you get an A/A* grade.’
There is even advice that seems to cap the most profound lesson for life offered by Polonius to Laertes in Hamlet: ‘Remember, above all, to match the style and form to your purpose and audience and you won’t go far wrong.’
But the new set of hoops also requires a juggernaut of jargon which the authors have garnered during their privileged encounters with the cognoscenti on the cloudy heights of Parnassus: ‘persuasive connectives’, ‘sidebars’, ‘situational irony’, ‘multi-modal talk’, ‘pull-quotes’ and, of course, ‘semantic field’, which, in the case of hairdressing, means ‘trim’, ‘bob’ and ‘highlights’.
However, the obscurity which the students will find even harder to swallow is the examiners’ speak for the summit that they should be striving to attain.
Take the assessment objective for writing: the candidates must be able to ‘organise information and ideas into structured and sequenced sentences, paragraphs and whole texts, using a variety of linguistic and structural features to support cohesion and overall coherence.’ And it appears to be the fervent wish of the authors that youngsters will be sucked into mouthing mantras moulded from this private language themselves. When they reach the pinnacle of the grades they will be able to join heartily in the catalogue of chants that have been prepared for the highest achievers: ‘I can understand the subtle shifts in status and power between speakers in any given situations.’
If you have doubts that your pupils will ever go in for this style of proud boasting, try eavesdropping on their break-time conversations during the coming academic year and you will be amazed at their Eliza Doolittle-like transformations.
Nevertheless, the ex-heads of English who have compiled this material are in danger of being hoist by their own petard when they quote examiner feedback on spelling errors and then proceed to use ‘adaapting’ as a heading – or employ ‘most’ for ‘more’ or treat collective nouns as plurals.
One other piece of examiner feedback may also come back to haunt these GCSE gurus. In textbooks where the po-faced language of the English establishment sits side by side with the cheeky-chappie inventiveness of The Sun, the comment, ‘Occasionally the language is a little dull’, may prove a tad too close for comfort.
English GCSE for AQA: English Language Targeting Grade A/A* Student Book; English Language Targeting Grade C Student Book by Keith Brindle and Mike Gould. Published by Collins