A Level Essay Answers

  Innateness is the idea t h at children have an inbuilt capacity from birth that allows fast and effortless acquisition of language.  This idea was formed by Chomsky   who believed  humans were born with a Language Acquis ition Device  (LAD)  and  this natural ability to pick up language  comes from the idea of  u niversal gramma r ,  human languages sharing properties .  This is a nativist argument and can be opposed by the nurtur e  argument: that development is based on interaction.  They oppose these ideas through   the suggestions that language is acquired by both observing and imitative behaviours of others through  reinforcement and  parental support, as suggested by Skinner. Innateness to learn English is the central line of argument on the nature debate. Nativists believe the mistakes in children’s language provide evidence of innateness because children could not have copied these. For example, in text...

  Accent, the distinctive way of speaking in a language, and dialect, the actual words in the language that people speak, is influential in certain situations in society with some being viewed as more favourable than others. These differ from different regions across the UK and are influenced by the media, social groups and gender which correlate to create a certain favourability of the way people speak.   The media plays a vital role in society which can result in certain characteristics in people’s identities and the whole idea of being more favourable can be influenced by the media. The idea of celebrities being celebrated for their accents isn’t a new concept and Susanne Williams says that this celebrity impact has shaped our taste in accents. She says that celebrities like Cheryl Cole, Ant and Dec and Ozzy Osbourne, who all have accents that aren’t viewed as particularly prestigious, have are famous and a lot of it is down to their accent and the way they speak. Both Cher...

  Both Texts A and B share fundamental similarities with both the forum and the article in the fact they’re both about driving with Text A being a group of young people on an informal chat room aimed at students, and Text B formally addressing a speeding incident which is likely to be targeted at readers of the newspaper it is printed in. However, both texts have different purposes with Text B being to inform the audience and to tell them about the speeding incident with formality  and Text A being a relaxed chat room for students to share anecdotes with one another.   An immediate difference between the two extracts is the representation of the technology used for both the content of the texts, cars, but also the form that the text is in, forum and newspaper article/court case. The language that is used in Text A use a plethora of concrete nouns for the car “handbrake”, “footbrake”, “stalled” and this creates the idea that modern cars are more complicated and difficult t...