Cyfryngau a Diwylliant (Media and Culture)

Show what comparing across media actually produces, using an event reported in four ways, and connect it to the AO2 clause it satisfies.

1. 01Collect the four

   Take any story of moderate size and find it in four places: a radio or television bulletin, an online news item, a newspaper or magazine piece, and — if the story involves an institution — the press release or statement it issued. Half an hour's work. This is the raw material for the collate-compare-evaluate clause and it cannot be got from a textbook.

2. 02Compare the facts included

   Line them up and mark which facts each contains. They will not be the same set. The bulletin will have three or four; the longer piece will have context the bulletin had no room for; the press release will have facts favourable to its issuer and may omit others. Noticing that the SETS differ, and why, is the collating half of the clause.

3. 03Compare the language on the same fact

   Find one fact all four contain and compare the sentences. The bulletin's will be shortest and most active. The press release's will most likely use an impersonal or institutional construction. The magazine's will carry a judgement the bulletin's does not. That is register doing visible work, and it is the clearest demonstration available of what the specification means by appropriateness of language and style.

4. 04Ask what each medium's conventions cost

   Every convention buys something and costs something. The bulletin buys comprehension at first hearing and pays in nuance. The press release buys a controlled account and pays in credibility. The long piece buys context and pays in immediacy. Saying what a form costs is evaluation rather than description, and evaluation is the third verb in the AO2 clause.

5. 05Where this pays in the examination

   Directly in Unit 6 Section B, where you will be asked to produce one of these forms and the marker will know what it should look like. Indirectly but substantially in the Unit 4 oral, where the synoptic requirement admits works you have SEEN. And in the NEA, where four of the ten Task One formats are media formats. Half an hour's comparison, done a dozen times over two years, prepares all three.

Result: Four versions of one story: the fact SETS differ, the language on a shared fact differs by register, and each convention buys something at a cost — comprehension against nuance, control against credibility, context against immediacy. Saying what a form costs is the evaluation the AO2 clause asks for, and it prepares Unit 6B, the Unit 4 oral and the NEA at once.

Take any piece of contemporary Welsh media and analyse it for register in five moves, so that the analysis is repeatable on anything.

1. 01Who is receiving this, and how?

   Reading or listening; alone or in company; able to go back or not; with prior knowledge or without. Four questions, answered in ten seconds, and every subsequent observation depends on them. A listener who cannot go back is the reason broadcast sentences are short, and starting from the receiver rather than from the text means you will explain the conventions rather than merely list them.

2. 02Measure the sentences

   Count the words in the first ten sentences. Broadcast copy will average markedly shorter than print; institutional writing will average longer and will contain more subordination. This is the fastest objective measurement available and it is evidence rather than impression, which is what a claim about register needs.

3. 03Find the verbs

   Are they active or impersonal? Institutional Welsh reaches for cyhoeddwyd, penderfynwyd, nodir; broadcast Welsh reaches for mae, bydd, cafodd. The proportion of impersonal forms is one of the clearest markers of register in Welsh and it is countable in a minute.

4. 04Note the lexis and the borrowings

   Which words come from the technical vocabulary of the field, which are fully naturalised borrowings, which are code-switches? And crucially: is the borrowing doing something the Welsh word would not — signalling informality, quoting a source, naming an institution that has an English name? Borrowings are evidence about register, not errors, and treating them as evidence is the more intelligent reading.

5. 05Say what the form costs

   End on the evaluation: what does this register's efficiency buy and what does it pay? A bulletin's clarity costs nuance; an institutional statement's caution costs directness; a community paper's familiarity costs accessibility to outsiders. That sentence turns a description into an analysis, and it is the same move that turns any observation in this qualification into a claim.

Result: Five moves, repeatable on anything: identify the receiver and the mode; measure the first ten sentences; count active against impersonal verbs; classify the borrowings by what they are doing rather than dismissing them; and close by saying what the register buys and what it costs.

You have seen a staging of the prescribed play, or a recording of one. Turn that into examinable material rather than an experience.

1. 01List what was decided

   Every production decides things the text leaves open: the period and the look, whether anything is cut, how each part is cast and therefore how old and how sympathetic each character seems, the pace, what happens during silences, and where the emphasis falls in a speech. Write down five decisions you noticed. Each of them is a reading of the text made concrete.

2. 02Find one decision that changes the meaning

   Most decisions are neutral; one or two will not be. A cut that removes a justification, a casting that makes a relationship look different, a silence held long enough to become an answer. Identify the one that most changes how the play reads, and be able to state what the text permits and what the production chose.

3. 03Evaluate it as an interpretation

   “Mae'r cynhyrchiad yn dewis darllen y tawelwch yna fel cydsyniad, ac mae hynny'n gwneud golygfa'r ail act yn llawer llymach. Mae'r testun yn caniatáu hynny — ond mae'n caniatáu'r gwrthwyneb hefyd.” That is rung four or five of the interpretation ladder: the reading stated, its consequence traced, and the text's own openness named.

4. 04Bring it into the oral properly

   In the Unit 1 discussion, a production is one of the most useful things to have, because two other candidates may not have seen one and the specification names production as its own heading. But keep it to a sentence or two: a candidate who describes a production at length has stopped discussing the play, and the play is what is prescribed.

5. 05The general principle

   A production is evidence about what the text permits. That is the frame that keeps it useful: you are not reviewing a performance, you are using somebody else's reading to show that the text is open at a particular point. Framed that way, a production becomes an argument about the play, which is what the examination wants.

Result: List five decisions the production made, find the one that changes the meaning, and evaluate it by naming what the text permits against what the production chose. Frame it as evidence about the text's openness rather than as a review — then it is an argument about the play, and one or two sentences of it is enough in a shared oral.

You meet an English word inside a piece of Welsh prose. Work out what it is doing before deciding what to think about it.

1. 01Is it naturalised?

   A great many words in everyday Welsh came from English or Latin long ago and are simply Welsh words now, taking Welsh plurals and mutations. If it inflects like a Welsh word, it is one. Calling such a word a borrowing is historically true and synchronically misleading, and it is not evidence about the writer's register at all.

2. 02Is it an institutional name?

   Organisations, titles, products and legislation often have official English names that are used inside Welsh prose because they ARE the names. That is not code-switching; it is accuracy. A press release that translated an institution's legal name would be worse Welsh, not better.

3. 03Is it filling a gap?

   In newer technical domains a borrowing may be in use because no Welsh term has settled, or because several are competing. That tells you something about the domain rather than about the writer, and if you are writing in that domain yourself, it tells you which term your audience will recognise — which is a register decision, not a purity one.

4. 04Is it doing something?

   A borrowing can be deliberate: signalling informality, quoting somebody, marking a register the writer is standing outside, or making a joke. The English title of the prescribed poem DIY is a use of this kind — an English phrase used as the title of a Welsh poem is a choice, and asking what the choice does is a better question than asking whether it should have been made.

5. 05Only then, is it a lapse?

   Sometimes it is: a code-switch that fills a gap in the writer's preparation rather than in the language, where a perfectly ordinary Welsh word exists. That does happen and it is worth avoiding in your own writing. But it is the LAST hypothesis, not the first, and a candidate who reaches it first will misread most of the contemporary Welsh they encounter.

Result: Five questions in order — naturalised, institutional name, gap-filling in a new domain, doing something deliberate — and only then, a lapse. Reaching the last hypothesis first misreads most contemporary Welsh; reaching it last means that when you do reach it, the judgement is worth something.

You are starting the course. Build a plan that uses the unitised structure rather than ignoring it, and identify the three decisions that matter.

1. 01Autumn of year one — start the NEA

   Task One's subject and format, and Task Two's controversial question, settled with your teacher before half term, with the different-subject rule checked in writing. Task One drafted by Christmas so that the four passes can be spread across January. The reason is the no-redraft rule: the mark exists when the teacher corrects it, and the only way to protect that mark is to finish before submitting.

2. 02Spring of year one — the oral and the paper

   The Unit 1 examiner visits in the weeks around Easter, so the film and play work has to be finished by March, not by June. That is earlier than candidates expect and it is the second commonest planning failure. Unit 3's paper is in the summer series, so the grammar drilling and the twelve poems run through the spring alongside the oral preparation.

3. 03Summer of year one — bank three units

   Units 1, 2 and 3 sat and cashed in as an AS if the centre enters for one, or simply banked as uniform marks. That is 200 uniform marks and 40% of the A level settled, and it clears the second year for the three A2 units, which are individually heavier.

4. 04Year two — the A2 units and the A* condition

   Unit 4's oral is again in the weeks around Easter, so the novel must be finished by March. Units 5 and 6 are summer papers. Write 270 of 300 at the top of the plan: the A* condition means these three units carry the top grade on their own, and a candidate who reached grade A on the AS units has bought nothing towards it.

5. 05The three decisions that actually matter

   First, the two NEA subjects, settled early and genuinely different, because that is the one decision that cannot be repaired later. Second, whether to enter for a unit before you are ready, given that a third attempt forces a fresh start in which nothing earlier counts. Third, how the second year divides between three heavy units — and the honest answer, from the AO weightings, is that Unit 5 needs the most reading and Unit 6 the most writing practice.

Result: Autumn year one: NEA subjects settled and Task One drafted, because of the no-redraft rule. Spring year one: Unit 1's oral is at Easter, so the film and play finish in March. Summer: bank 200 uniform marks. Year two: Unit 4's oral again at Easter, and 270 of 300 written at the top of the plan — the A2 units carry A* alone.