Language Paper 2: the scheme in five minutes

Transcript

Introduction0:00

This is Between the Lines, and this is the walkthrough of our Language Paper 2 scheme of learning. I'm Hannah.

The scheme at a glance0:07

Language Paper 2 is written for AQA English Language Paper 2, writers' viewpoints and perspectives, in the format examined from June 2026. It's 20 lessons of sixty minutes, about five weeks, with three levels of support throughout. The lessons run in four sequences: Reading non-fiction, lessons 1 to 5; Comparing writers, lessons 6 to 9; Writing viewpoints, lessons 10 to 15; The exam, lessons 16 to 20. There are four assessment points. Three are Feedback Loop kits, each tied to one exam question: Lesson 5 on Question 3, language, Lesson 9 on Question 4, comparison, and Lesson 15 on Question 5, viewpoint writing.

One lesson0:51

Let me show you with Lesson 3, Words with a purpose. The big question is: How does language in non-fiction persuade as well as describe? Apply is about fifteen minutes, and it has two parts. First you explode one quotation together. In this lesson it's "Houselessness would walk and walk and walk". Before you reveal anything, students try the four empty boxes on the first explode slide: method, zoom in, effect, purpose. Then you think aloud through the full version. The method is personification and repetition, because Dickens turns himself into a figure called Houselessness. The words to zoom in on are "walk and walk and walk", one verb repeated three times, with no place to arrive at. The effect: the sentence feels as tired and endless as the walking, so the reader feels the hours drag. The purpose: by naming himself after the condition, Dickens stands in for everyone with nowhere to sleep, and asks readers in warm beds to imagine one night of it. That is the whole analytical move the reading questions reward, done out loud, once a lesson, for the whole scheme. Then the hinge question, on mini-whiteboards. Dickens writes "A good fire and a good great-coat and a good woollen neck-shawl". Why does he repeat "good"? The right answer is B: to pile up warmth and comfort, so the reader feels what the houseless walker lacks. And this is the bit I'd ask every teacher to use. The handbook tells you what each wrong answer means. A student who picks A reads "good" as a judgement of the toll-keeper's character, so you show that each "good" goes with an object, a fire or a coat, and start them on Securing. A student who picks C treats the repetition as a mistake, so you model how a writer repeats a word on purpose. The hinge question is how you decide, in thirty seconds, who starts on which level of support. That's what it's for.

Three levels of support2:49

Master is the last twenty-five minutes, and it's where the three levels do their work. Everyone in the room answers the same task. In Lesson 3 it's in the style of the exam: You now need to refer only to the second paragraph of the source. How does the writer use language to describe walking the streets at night? In the style of Paper 2 Question 3, twelve marks. Securing, aiming for a 4, gives a choice of exact quotations, here "the interminable tangle of streets", "Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping" and "like a man who defied the night", a worked example on a different quotation, and sentence starters for What, How and Why. Strengthening, aiming for grades 5 to 6, gives prompts instead of starters: a clear point for What, then for How, choose a quotation from the second paragraph, name the method, personification, repetition, onomatopoeia or simile, and zoom in on one word, with a checklist. Soaring, aiming for grades 7 to 9, gives a debatable statement to argue with: Dickens's night walk is more about the reader's comfort than the walker's suffering. How far do you agree? Two paragraphs, the second beginning with an alternative reading. Same source, same question, same standard. Only the scaffolding changes.

Feedback Loop kits4:07

Three times in the scheme, the Master phase is a Feedback Loop kit: a twenty-five minute progress check that fits inside the lesson, and each one practises one exam question. You place the paragraph in one of AQA's four levels for that question, using our indicative content. There is no raw mark, and that's deliberate. A four out of eight tells a student one thing, that they got four. A level, in AQA's own words, tells them what the answer does now and what the next one asks for.

Every scheme, the same shape4:36

That's the Language Paper 2 scheme. The same structure runs through every Between the Lines scheme, so a teacher who has taught one has taught the shape of all of them, and a student who moves classes mid-year lands in a lesson they recognise. Lesson 3 of every scheme is free at btl.education if you want to show a colleague what a lesson looks like before they open the folders. Thank you for watching, and good luck with the paper.