Subject terminology obviously breaks down to two words, subject and terminology. So, the subject in this case is obviously English because that's the subject you're studying where you're seeing the mark scheme. So, subject terminology will mean something different in science or maths or geography to what it means in English. And the word terminology is basically the special words that you use in that subject. So, maths has divide and Pythagoras and pi. For English, subject terminology just means the terms that you're using to analyse a text. And you would have learned a whole host of different terms. And as soon as I say them to you, you're probably like, "Oh, yeah, of course. Metaphor, verbs, narrative viewpoint."
All those different things count as subject terminology because you use that language in English. It's kind of like those people who complain and say, "Oh, I'm never going to talk about personification in my real life." And it's like, "Yeah, mate, that's cuz it's subject terminology. You're only supposed to really talk about it in English." That was the whole point of that term. There are three main types of subject terminology in English and it's really important to be aware of these for reasons I'll explain in a moment. But, the three types are language, structure, and form. Now, the reason it's important to understand the distinction between them is not every question you're dealing with in your English exam is testing you on all three of those.
Sometimes it might be just a question on language. For example, I'm thinking of like AQA paper one question two, you're just analysing language. Sometimes it might just be a question on structure. So, there I'm thinking AQA paper one question three. And then other times it might be a question testing your ability on form. So, that is typically found in like English literature when you're studying plays or when you're studying poems and things like that. Language terminology is all about the words and syntax. So, think of language as like a huge umbrella and underneath it is a huge range of different terms. Things like metaphor, personification. I keep saying those two. My brain is clearly like feeling very limited today in the actual techniques I can think of.
But also all the different word classes that you know. So, concrete noun, abstract noun, dynamic verb, semantic field, lexical field, all that kind of stuff. It also counts for syntax. Now, syntax refers to the order in which we put words and how we can do that for effect. So, that's going to be things like your short sentences, your longer sentences, repetition, things like that. There's a kind of grey area between language and structure. So, I personally put sentence level structure. So, that's things like repetition and parallelism, juxtaposition, things like that that are happening on a sentence level. I put those under language cuz it's still quite small scale and affecting specific words rather than whole text.
On the other hand, structure is more about the whole text, the narrative order of the story. What order is the story told? How is it told? Is it a first-person narrative viewpoint, third-person narrative viewpoint? All that good stuff and how that affects the way the story is told. And then form are the techniques that are specific to text type. So, again, there is a kind of Venn diagram overlap between these. Form are techniques that are found in specific text types. Like, for example, with a play, you get staging and you get stage directions. In a poem, you get rhyme and you get enjambment. However, rhyme and enjambment are also the structure of a poem. And stage directions can also be analysed from a language point of view as well.
So, it's kind of like that all fingers No, not all fingers are thumbs, but all thumbs are fingers saying. It's like that kind of thing. All form techniques are language or structure, but not all language and structure techniques are form. Again, to go back to the technique I seem to be obsessed with today, metaphor, a metaphor can be found in a novel, in a play, in a poem, whatever. On the other hand, stage directions are exclusive to plays. It's that kind of distinction there between it's found in that text type exclusively. Now that we understand what subject terminology is, we need to understand what we need to know about it in order to do well in our English GCSEs. And this advice applies across exam boards, across English language and English literature, and across all of the different types of questions that you can be asked in the exam.
The first thing you need to know, and this is going to be specific per question, is what type of subject terminology do you need to cover? And I've already mentioned that before. So it's is this a language only question? Is this a structure only question? Or am I expected to know language and structure and form? This is a really important distinction because, for example, in the Edexcel GCSE, they specify language, structure, and form. And not only that, there's a slight distinction in the list between the different levels of the mark scheme. So it can be like language and or structure and or form at a lower end of the mark scheme, but at the higher end of the mark scheme, it's language and structure and form.
So it's that distinction of at the higher levels, they expected you to have covered everything, whereas at the lower levels, it's okay if you've kind of picked and chosen what you should choose to talk about. So it's really important to pay attention to that distinction in your mark scheme. Does it specify? Sometimes the exam boards don't specify in the body of the mark scheme. Again, I'm thinking of AQA, they just say subject terminology, but actually instead they specify in the assessment objectives for the question. So the assessment objective will be testing your ability to analyse language, testing your ability to analyse structure. If you do AQA, pay attention to the assessment objective cuz the mark scheme is copy and pasted everywhere.
It just says subject terminology, but it's the assessment objectives that specify what terminology they want you to cover. The second thing you need to know is how to accurately identify and analyse the terminology. This in the mark scheme is the other thing that makes the big difference. If you call something personification when it's actually a metaphor, if you call something a verb when it's actually an adjective, those kinds of mistakes can cost you a little bit. What costs you more is not analysing that terminology, which links heavily to my third thing that you need to know, and that is to never feature spot. Exam boards have been very, very explicit about how much they hate feature spotting.
And essentially, if you're not familiar with what that is, it's what it sounds like. This is an adjective. This is a metaphor. This is personification. This is a tricolon. This is a rhetorical question. And that's all you do. You just identify the techniques. You never actually break down what effect those techniques are creating. You never explain how they link to the question, what effect they have on the reader, none of that. You don't do anything. You just identify them. Another classic mistake is mismatching the technique you've identified with the analysis that you do. A classic, classic one I see all the time is students will identify a technique, let's say like alliteration, but then what they actually analyse is the connotations of the adjective.
They're not analysing the fact that each word starts with the same letter. They're analysing the meaning of the words themselves. So that mismatch where you've identified this, but actually you've analysed that. A really important thing to keep in mind about subject terminology is that it is not the most important part of a mark scheme for any of the exam boards. By far the most important thing is the analysis itself. If you can analyse a technique, but you can't name it, that's okay. If you can name a technique, but you can't analyse it, that's not okay. So, put more focus and priority into the actual analysis itself, rather than just being able to name a bunch of fancy techniques. Exam boards have also said they don't like it when students go and research really random, obscure terminology that no one has ever heard of, just to throw it in there for the sake of sounding incredibly impressive and fancy.
Don't waste your time with stuff like that, either. It is useful to keep in mind, though, that one of the keys to getting a grade nine and full marks in these questions is being able to bring everything together. So, yes, you're analysing because yes, you've got fantastic quotes, and yes, in that analysis, you have accurately identified a range of subject terminology. So, even though subject terminology isn't the most important, for those of you going for those grade nines and the full marks wherever you can, it absolutely has an important part to play.
