Beverley Jennings (third-year part-time PhD student) gave a presentation, titled ‘Vocabulary, reading and the GCSE English language exam’, which formed part of the virtual researchEd Surrey 2020 conference on Saturday 17th October 2020. The event was organised to provide evidence-informed CPD for teachers and Beverley was one of 25 presenters. It was a great opportunity for her to share early research findings with practitioners and there was interaction remotely on Twitter under the hashtag #rEDSurrey2020.
Beverley’s presentation was drawn from her PhD research which sets out to explore adolescent reading practices. Using the corpus linguistics approach to analyse 50+ GCSE exam extracts (around 33,000 words), Beverley hopes to answer research questions, such as ‘What are the linguistic demands of the English language GCSE examination texts?’ and ‘What is the linguistic make-up of typical secondary school students’ reading materials?’. Beverley hopes that her research will contribute to providing empirical data to inform and guide students’ reading practices and lead to improved attainment in the new English language GCSE examination. Her supervisors are Dr. Holly Joseph and Dr. Daisy Powell.
Beverley’s presentation can be accessed here.
