English Language challenges students both to analyse texts and to write their own. In doing so, they develop their own original writing skills and the ability to analyse both written and spoken language varieties. Students are also encouraged to collect their own research data for highly rewarding individual projects. Course Content: The first examined unit, ‘Exploring Language’, assesses students’ ability to analyse ‘real-world’ texts – looking in detail at their lexical and grammatical choices in relation to contextual factors. Students will learn how to identify patterns in texts and to explore their effects on readers. This unit also involves students writing about topical language issues, such as how technology impacts on language, or how gender influences speech. Students also learn to compare and contrast texts from different nonfiction genres – including spoken transcripts featuring different accents and dialects. The second unit, ‘Dimension of Linguistic Variation’, leads to students investigating how children acquire language, how language is used in the media and how language has changed over the course of time. This analytical unit is also examined externally. The coursework unit, ‘Independent Language Research’ is a fantastic opportunity for students to explore a topic of their own choice through their own collection of linguistic data. Topics might range from ‘The Language of Barack Obama’ to ‘The Language of American Sitcoms’. This is a rewarding and motivating experience for students, as they transcribe and then analyse their own data. The project is accompanied by a piece of creative writing that students produce, which turns the investigation into something more mainstream; it tests students’ ability to distil the detail of their investigation into core features and findings.