Reading and comprehension

You currently spend all your reading time on the set texts. Redistribute it across the four demands and say what each kind of reading must produce.

1. 01The poems — closed-book reconstruction

   Output required: the shape of each poem, two exact short fragments, and one arguable claim. That is not achieved by rereading; it is achieved by writing from memory and then checking. Fifteen minutes a week per poem, from October, is enough. Rereading five poems repeatedly with the book open produces familiarity, which feels like knowledge and is not.

2. 02The short stories — the same, at greater length

   Output required: for each of the four stories, the sequence of what happens, the point at which it turns, one exact short fragment, and something to say about the author’s style. A story is longer than a poem, so the shape matters more and the fragments matter less. Again, closed-book writing is the method.

3. 03Unit 5 Section A material — research reading

   Output required: a small stock of landmarks with dates, plus LOCAL evidence you have gathered yourself. Reading here is extractive: you are looking for facts you can name and things you can have an opinion about. Three lines per source, filed by subject, is enough — the same habit the listening topic describes.

4. 04Unit 5 Section B — journalistic English

   Output required: speed and the ability to find an argument quickly. Read one substantial English news feature or comment piece a week and, in five minutes, write down its claim, its two main supports, and one thing it does not address. That is exactly the operation the examination asks for, and it is the only one of the four demands that has to be done against a clock.

5. 05Redistribute

   A workable week: two hours on the set texts, split between closed-book writing and reading; half an hour on research reading for the Package or Unit 5; twenty minutes on one English feature with the five-minute analysis. Three hours in total, and the last twenty minutes of it prepares 15% of the A level that most candidates prepare not at all.

Result: Four kinds of reading with four different outputs: reconstruction for the poems, sequence and shape for the stories, extractable facts for the society question, and timed argument-finding for the translanguaging source. Only the fourth needs to be fast, and it is the one usually left out.

The source is a comment piece arguing that rural bus services in Wales should be replaced by on-demand minibuses booked by app. Work the ten minutes and produce the four notes.

1. 01Minute one — what kind of text is this?

   It argues rather than reports, so it is a comment piece and it has a position you can agree or disagree with. Note the audience: a general newspaper readership, probably urban, probably not Welsh-speaking. That matters, because your response will be in Welsh to a Welsh-speaking audience — which is itself a difference worth using.

2. 02Minutes two to five — the claim and the supports

   Y ddadl: dylai bysiau gwledig gael eu disodli gan fysiau mini y gellir eu harchebu ar ap. (The claim: rural buses should be replaced by minibuses bookable on an app.) Y dystiolaeth: cost gwag (empty-bus cost), hyblygrwydd (flexibility), enghreifftiau o wledydd eraill (examples from other countries). Three supports, three Welsh phrases, already usable.

3. 03Minutes six to eight — the gap

   Y bwlch: dydy’r erthygl ddim yn sôn am bobl heb ffôn clyfar nac am bobl hŷn. Dydy hi ddim yn sôn chwaith am ardaloedd heb signal. (The gap: the article does not mention people without a smartphone or older people. Nor does it mention areas with no signal.) This is where your response will live — and notice that the second point is specifically about rural Wales, which the writer may not have considered.

4. 04Minute nine — choose your position

   Not simple agreement, not simple refusal. Position: mae’r syniad yn dda mewn egwyddor, ond mae’n cymryd yn ganiataol bethau nad ydyn nhw’n wir yng nghefn gwlad Cymru. (The idea is good in principle, but it takes for granted things that are not true in rural Wales.) A position with a BUT in it produces an argument; a position without one produces a summary.

5. 05Minute ten — choose the form and the audience

   The specification allows a letter, an article or an information pamphlet. A letter to the newspaper suits a response to a comment piece and gives you a natural reason to write. Decide it now, before you start, because the register follows from it. Then stop reading — you have ten minutes of notes and about fifty minutes of Welsh to write, and the marks are all in the second half.

Result: Four notes taken in Welsh — claim, evidence, gap, audience — plus a position containing a BUT and a chosen form. Ten minutes, and nothing in the notes will need translating, because none of it was written in English.

You have read one of the prescribed short stories twice with the book open and remember it in general terms. Build it into closed-book knowledge in four sittings of thirty minutes.

1. 01Sitting one — the sequence

   With the book open, write the sequence of what happens in eight numbered Welsh sentences, no more. Eight is a constraint that forces selection. Then close the book and rewrite the eight from memory. Compare. What you dropped is what the story’s shape is not yet doing for you in your head.

2. 02Sitting two — the turn and the ending

   Find the moment the situation changes and write two Welsh sentences about it: what changes, and what makes it possible. Then write two about the ending: what it resolves and what it leaves open. Four sentences, learned. These are the two places examination questions cluster, in any prose text, in any language.

3. 03Sitting three — two fragments and the style

   Choose two short exact quotations and check them character by character. Then write two Welsh sentences about the author’s style — the specification asks for the author’s style explicitly in Unit 6 Section B — naming one feature and saying what it achieves. Not ‘the style is simple’, but a named feature with an effect.

4. 04Sitting four — the closed-book write

   Fifteen minutes, book shut, on a question you have not seen before. Then open the book and mark yourself. Expect to find two or three errors and one or two things you avoided. Fix them, and the text is ready — which took two hours in total, spread over a month.

5. 05Then keep it alive

   A text made ready in November is not ready in June unless it is revisited. Fifteen minutes a month, closed book, on each prescribed text keeps all nine live for the price of about two hours a month by the end of the course. That is far cheaper than relearning four short stories in May.

Result: Eight sequence sentences, four on the turn and the ending, two fragments and two on style, then a timed closed-book write — about two hours per text, spread out, and fifteen minutes a month to keep it. Familiarity is replaced by something that can be produced without the page.

You have read a short Welsh-language report about a community buying its village pub. Extract five constructions worth keeping and show how to convert each into something of your own.

1. 01The impersonal past

   Cynhaliwyd cyfarfod yn y neuadd nos Fawrth. (A meeting was held in the hall on Tuesday night.) This is the standard opening move of a Welsh news report and it needs no subject, which is exactly why journalists use it. Your own: Cynhaliwyd arolwg yn yr ysgol y llynedd. (A survey was carried out in the school last year.)

2. 02Attribution

   Yn ôl cadeirydd y pwyllgor, mae’r cynllun yn debygol o lwyddo. (According to the chair of the committee, the plan is likely to succeed.) Yn ôl plus a person is how a Welsh writer attributes a claim without endorsing it, and it is invaluable in the translanguaging task where you must handle somebody else’s argument. Your own: Yn ôl yr erthygl, mae’r gwasanaeth yn rhy ddrud.

3. 03The passive with cael

   Cafodd y dafarn ei phrynu gan y gymuned. (The pub was bought by the community.) The periphrastic passive with cael plus a possessive — note ei phrynu, with the aspirate mutation because tafarn is feminine — is the alternative to the short impersonal and is commoner in speech. Having both lets you vary, which is the ‘range of linguistic resources’ clause.

4. 04The expectation construction

   Disgwylir i’r gwaith ddechrau yn y gwanwyn. (The work is expected to begin in the spring.) Disgwylir i plus a subject plus a soft-mutated verbnoun is a fixed and very useful shape for anything about the future. Note ddechrau, softened after the subject. Your own: Disgwylir i’r ysgol gau ymhen dwy flynedd.

5. 05The concessive

   Er gwaethaf y gost, mae’r pentref o blaid y cynllun. (Despite the cost, the village is in favour of the plan.) Er gwaethaf is a composite preposition and it does the work of acknowledging an objection in three words — which is what a balanced argument needs and what the Appendix A grid rewards. Five constructions, and every one of them is now available for your own factual writing.

Result: Five constructions stolen from one short report: the impersonal past, attribution with yn ôl, the cael passive, disgwylir i, and the concessive er gwaethaf. Each was rewritten once in a sentence of your own, which is what turns a noticed construction into an owned one.

Construct the operations list. For five representative operations, give two Welsh phrases each and say where in the qualification you would use them.

1. 01Stating a position

   Yn fy marn i (in my opinion); Dw i am ddadlau bod (I want to argue that). Used in: the Unit 3 poetry essay, the Unit 6 story answer, the Unit 5 Section B response, and both orals. Note ddadlau, softened after am — a phrase learned with its mutation already attached is a phrase that cannot go wrong.

2. 02Attributing without endorsing

   Yn ôl yr erthygl (according to the article); Mae rhai’n dadlau bod (some argue that). Used in: Unit 5 Section B above all, where you must handle somebody else’s argument, and in any answer that must acknowledge another interpretation.

3. 03Conceding

   Dw i’n cytuno i raddau (I agree to an extent); Mae hynny’n wir, ond (that is true, but). Used in: everywhere. Conceding is what the balanced-conclusions clause of AO1 and the ‘other interpretations’ clause of AO2 both require, and two phrases cover almost every occasion.

4. 04Contrasting

   Ar y llaw arall (on the other hand); Yn wahanol i (unlike). Used in: the comparison of characters in Unit 1 and Unit 4, the pairing of poems in Unit 3, the synoptic question in Unit 6, and the Section C conversation.

5. 05Concluding

   I gloi (to conclude); Ar y cyfan (on the whole). Used in: the end of every written answer and, more valuably, at the end of an oral section, where a deliberate summary demonstrates the third AO1 clause. Ten phrases here, thirty more to build — and between them they cover the operations every unit of this specification asks you to perform.

Result: Five operations, ten phrases, and every one of them usable in at least three units. Compared with a list of nouns, an operations list is the highest-return vocabulary work available in a qualification where five of six units forbid a dictionary.