Language II (English)
Language II (English) is a 30-mark section. It tests English comprehension, grammar, vocabulary and phonology, and the pedagogy of teaching English as a second language. The paper expects standard English, so distractors often test a single form or meaning difference.
Core areas
- Comprehension: main idea, detail, inference, and tone.
- Grammar: tense and aspect, subject–verb agreement, articles, prepositions, pronouns, question tags.
- Phonology: sounds versus letters; vowel and consonant sounds, stress and intonation.
- Pedagogy: communicative and task-based activities, LSRW integration, and meaningful context rather than isolated rules.
Worked example: Choose since or for: “She has been teaching here ___ 2018.” The tense is present perfect continuous. Since marks a starting point in time; for marks a duration. 2018 is a point, so the answer is since. If the sentence were “___ six years,” the answer would be for. Reasoning: identify the time expression first, then match it to the preposition.
Traps: confusing since and for; treating letters as sounds (English has 26 letters but around 44 phonemes); choosing a grammatically correct option that does not fit the passage; teaching English only through translation.