Child language acquisition — AS & A Level English Language (9093) questions by topic
Child language acquisition questions give you real transcriptions, such as a two-year-old's video messages to grandparents or two five-year-olds playing with a friend at school, and ask you to analyse how the child and adult are using language in that specific conversation. Analyse, deduce, explain and draw all point toward close reading of features like turn-taking, recasting and phonological competence rather than general theory recall, in a 25-mark response.
16 questions from 2023 to 2025 make up this set. Because analysis here is marked on linking specific features in the transcript to what stage of acquisition they show, drafting a full response and submitting it for marking checks whether named features, such as adjacency pairs or diminutives, have actually been explained rather than just spotted and labelled from the transcription key.
What examiners look for
- A recurring criticism is candidates merely describing a limited selection of characteristic features, or using the transcription key to identify items, without further analysis of how and why those features were used.
- Examiners note confusion in weaker responses over which Piagetian stage applied, despite an egocentric utterance clearly pointing to the pre-operational stage.
- Reports flag that analysing each interlocutor separately becomes repetitious, since features such as prosody, pause and paralanguage are often relevant to more than one speaker at once.
- Strong answers, according to the reports, analysed features including the mother's questioning technique, onomatopoeia, prosodic features, diminutives, imperatives and recasting as components of child-directed speech.
- Examiners praise responses that made a careful selection of features across the whole transcript and rooted the analysis firmly in a linguistic standpoint, judging precisely which developmental stage a child's utterance revealed.
May–June 2025, Paper 31
Read the following text, which is a transcription of a conversation between Izzy (age 3 years) and her mother. They are at home. Analyse ways in which Izzy and her mother are…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2025, Paper 32
Read the following text, which is a transcription of a conversation between Faizal (age 2 years) and his mother. They are at home. Analyse ways in which Faizal and his mother are…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2025, Paper 33
Read the following text, which is a transcription of a conversation between Otto (age 5 years), Felix (age 8 years) and their mother. They are at home, playing a board game.…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2024, Paper 31
Read the text, which is a transcription of a conversation between Samir (age 4 years) and his mother. Samir is having a bath. Analyse ways in which Samir and his mother are using…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2024, Paper 32
Read the following text, which is a transcription of a conversation at nursery school between Annie, Rohit, Rosie and Oscar (all age 3) and their teacher Miss Hope. They have been…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2024, Paper 33
Read the following text, which is a transcription of a conversation between Katya, Gerhardt, Stefan and Vidya (all age 5) and their teacher at school. Analyse ways in which the…
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2024, Paper 31
Read the following text, which is a transcription of a conversation between Maria (age 2 years 6 months) and her mother. They are unpacking Maria's toys from a toy box. Analyse…
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2024, Paper 32
Read the following text, which is a transcription of a conversation between Joshua (age 5 years) and his mother Nadia. They are looking out of their window at a breakdown truck…
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2024, Paper 33
Section B: Child language acquisition. Read the following text, which is a transcription of a conversation between Maria (age 2 years 6 months) and her mother. They are unpacking…
Answer this question and get it marked →February–March 2023, Paper 32
Read the following text, which is a transcription of a conversation between James (age 4 years) and his mother. They are at home, playing with toy houses and characters. Analyse…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2023, Paper 31
Read the following text, which is a transcription of a conversation involving two boys called Alfie and George, a girl called Lily, and their teacher. The children are all 5 years…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2023, Paper 32
Read the following texts, which are transcriptions of two parts of a conversation between India (age 1 year and 10 months) and her mother. They are at home, playing with some toy…
Answer this question and get it marked →May–June 2023, Paper 33
Read the following texts, which are transcriptions of extracts from two video messages from Ella (age 2 years) and her mother. The messages were recorded for Ella's grandparents.…
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2023, Paper 31
Read the following texts. Extracts 1 and 2 are transcriptions of conversations between Dylan and Isaac (both age 5 years), who are playing with their friend Jayden at school.…
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2023, Paper 32
Read the following text, which is a transcription of a conversation between Tyree (age 4 years) and his mother. They are at home. Analyse ways in which Tyree and his mother are…
Answer this question and get it marked →October–November 2023, Paper 33
Read the following texts. Extracts 1 and 2 are transcriptions of conversations between Dylan and Isaac (both age 5 years), who are playing with their friend Jayden at school.…
Answer this question and get it marked →