hello everybody in today's video I'm going to explain the common mistakes students made in the 2024 AQA English language paper 2 exam I'll break them down here so you can avoid making them in your own exams in 2024 15% of students scored no higher than two marks in AQA English language paper 2 question 1 why did this happen for this opening question students have to read eight statements and identify four that are true now the main challenge in 2024 seemed to be that some statements were phrased using similar wording to the text but weren't actually true let's look at an example based on my language guide sample paper where question one is based on Source B by Andrew hail so let's take the first statement the writer installed double glazing as a summer job now the text reads I took a summer job working at a call center cold calling members of the public trying to sell them double glazing in the 2024 exams there was an incorrect statement that closely mirrored the wording of the text and we have the same thing here both the statement and the text describe summer jobs related to double glazing but there is a small difference the writer wasn't installing the double glazing they were selling it therefore this statement is not true now the problem is that if a student selected this one as true they're then going to just look for three more true statements but actually of course there are four to find because this one isn't one of them and this is what's happening in the exams time and time again so this isn't about the exam board trying to trick students ao1 is all about making a thorough and careful reading of the text so you must read through it with a focus that doesn't immediately latch onto something just because some of the words are the same as the text the exam report also highlighted that the statements are always presented in the same chronological order as the text and this makes it easier to methodically verify the correct answers once students believe they found the four correct statements they should reread the passage to confirm their choice the 2024 exam report pointed out that a common mistake with AQA language paper 2 question 2 was focusing on the writer's perspective or Viewpoint about the topic instead of the topic itself and we saw this in 2023 as well in our sample paper the question asked for a summary of what you understand about the different jobs the question is specifically about the jobs themselves not what the writers felt about them however what happened in the 2023 and 2024 summer exams was that students ended up writing about The Writer's perspectives on the topic rather than the topic itself for instance this would be like writing about Andrew hail's opinion of working in the call center or Aden Neil ch's viewpoint on working in the factory it's important to remember that analyzing The Writer's viewpoints and perspectives is the focus of question four in paper two it's never the question two Focus question two is not about writers viewpoints and perspectives so make sure you carefully read what the question is asking you to do and don't Don't Drift into exploring what the writer thinks about it paper 2 question three is the language analysis question and just like paper 1 question two a common mistake was taking a word or image out of context now this question is all about effect so it's helpful to ask yourself what is the specific effect the writer's trying to achieve or the reason behind their choices for instance in our sample paper about a denil chose letter how does the writer use language to describe the working conditions in the factory we should reread the lines in question and consider the overall effect the writer's aiming to achieve we might come up with words like oppressive or frustrating to describe this effect and then we want to focus in on particular words or phrases that create that effect what happened in the 2024 paper was some students made the mistake of isolating a phrase and interpreting it positively even when the whole piece was clearly not positive so the tip here is don't analyze the connotations of words in isolation always keep in mind how they fit into the bigger picture the writer creating analyzing individual words or phrases is a good idea but what you write about them has to tie in with the context in the rest of the source language paper 2 question 4 is about the writer's viewpoints and perspectives in the 2024 exam one issue was that students were able to identify the viewpoint but not go any further than that and the tip here is to follow this approach firstly what are the viewpoints and perspectives then what methods I used to present them and then why are those methods used so in our sample paper that's like picking out the a Neil Chu's perspective is that her experiences at work are harmful the method used to present this Viewpoint might be the medical terminology like remedy and suffering and why that method is used is to show that the conditions aren't just tough but actually damaging the workers's health and well-being using medical language carries with it the connotation that there's an urgent need to step in and fix things it holds a sense of moral responsibility because we all agree it's important to treat suffering and provide help now obviously this is a comparison question so You' then go on to compare with the other source but you can see from this example that identifying the perspective isn't enough it's about the method used to present it and why that method is used and that also came up in the exam report the need to write about methods the main issue with the 2024 paper 2 question 5 in the AQA English language exams were students who wrote answ that were too long often four five or six pages the exam report said that two or perhaps three pages is often enough for most students to clearly show their writing ability and hit everything they're going to hit in the March scheme remember this is a 45 minute question if we allow 5 minutes for planning and five for checking at the end we're going to write for just 35 minutes and two or three sides of well-crafted focused and structured writing is going to be a good Target to aim for here unless you have massive handwriting