The 100-mark paper structure, the 3,500-word Language in Action coursework, and how the June 2026 grade boundaries compare with June 2025
Book a Free ConsultationAQA A-Level English Language is specification 7702, examined across two 100-mark written papers worth 40% each and a 3,500-word non-exam coursework component called Language in Action worth the remaining 20%, for a total scaled mark of 500. First taught from September 2015, the specification last set its June 2026 grade boundaries with an A* at 432 out of 500, against 433 out of 500 the previous June.
Our expert AQA A-Level English Language tutors work through both written papers and the Language in Action coursework component by component, building a programme around your child's own AQA specification, school and target grade.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppSearch results for this exact term split into two kinds of page, and neither states a number. AQA's own subject pages carry the specification only as a downloadable PDF, so the rendered page text stops at a link. Past-paper aggregators link out to AQA's own archive without describing what is in any paper. Even the fullest third-party summary reached in this research, Save My Exams, names the two papers and the coursework without ever stating a mark, a grade boundary, an entry count, or who actually marks the coursework. This page sets out that apparatus in one place, sourced directly from AQA's own specification and results documents.
Both papers are worth 100 marks and 2 hours 30 minutes, and both count for 40% of the A-level. Paper 1, Language, the Individual and Society, opens with Section A, Textual Variations and Representations: a question requiring analysis of one text worth 25 marks, a second text-analysis question worth 25 marks, and a question requiring comparison of the two texts worth 20 marks — 70 marks in total. Section B is a single discursive essay on children's language development from birth to 11 years, worth the remaining 30 marks, with a choice of two essay questions.
Paper 2, Language Diversity and Change, is built differently. Section A offers a choice of two evaluative essays — one on language diversity, one on language change — worth 30 marks. Section B carries the other 70 marks: a question requiring analysis of how two given texts use language to present ideas, attitudes and opinions, worth 40 marks, plus a directed writing task linked to the same topic and texts, worth 30 marks.
| Paper | Section | Task | Marks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 – Language, the Individual and Society | A | Two text-analysis questions (25 + 25) and one comparison question (20) | 70 |
| Paper 1 – Language, the Individual and Society | B | Discursive essay: children's language development 0–11 years | 30 |
| Paper 2 – Language Diversity and Change | A | Evaluative essay: diversity or change (choice of two) | 30 |
| Paper 2 – Language Diversity and Change | B | Analysis question (40) plus directed writing task (30) | 70 |
Source: AQA A-level English Language specification 7702, version 1.2, 14 October 2021 (pp.10–11).
For the June 2027 series, AQA's own key-dates page sets Paper 1 (7702/1) for 10 May 2027, a morning sitting of 2 hours 30 minutes, and Paper 2 (7702/2) for 17 May 2027, also a morning sitting of the same length. The non-exam assessment submission deadline for that series (7702/C) falls in between, on 15 May 2027, although a school may set its own earlier internal deadline.
Language in Action is the coursework component: 3,500 words in total, worth 100 raw marks and 20% of the A-level. It splits into two pieces of writing rather than one — a language investigation of up to 2,000 words, excluding the data the student collects and analyses, and a piece of original writing with an accompanying commentary totalling 1,500 words. AQA's specification is explicit that the investigation topic is the student's own choice, provided it draws on the subject content the course has covered.
Unlike the two written papers, Language in Action is not marked externally. It is marked by the student's own teachers and then moderated by AQA, which checks that a school's marking sits at the correct national standard rather than re-marking every script from scratch. AQA's specification requires every student to sign a Candidate record form confirming the work is their own, and requires every teacher who marked the work to sign a declaration of authentication on that same form — both under JCQ's malpractice rules, the same framework that governs coursework across every subject and every board.
Coursework technique is easy to leave until the last term. Our AQA English Language tutors start the Language in Action investigation and original writing early, so a student is not drafting 3,500 words alongside two live exam papers.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppBecause a school marks this component first, the most useful thing a tutor can do before AQA's moderation stage is work from the same assessment objectives and mark bands the teacher is using, rather than treating the coursework as a free-standing writing exercise. Getting this component drafted, marked internally and redrafted well before Paper 1 and Paper 2 also means a student is not writing 3,500 words of coursework in the same weeks as two exam papers.
AQA's specification states plainly that its five assessment objectives, AO1 to AO5, are "set by Ofqual and are the same across all AS and A-level English Language specifications and all exam boards" — so the objectives themselves are not something one board chooses differently from another. What does vary by component is how much of each objective is tested where, and AQA publishes that breakdown in full.
| Assessment objective | Paper 1 weighting | Paper 2 weighting | NEA weighting | Overall weighting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AO1 | 14% | 8% | 4% | 26% |
| AO2 | 6% | 16% | 4% | 26% |
| AO3 | 12% | 6% | 5% | 23% |
| AO4 | 8% | 6% | 1% | 15% |
| AO5 | not assessed | 4% | 6% | 10% |
Source: AQA A-level English Language specification 7702, version 1.2, 14 October 2021 (p.26).
The table above is worth reading before a mock result causes alarm. AO5, which covers how students engage with different methods of language analysis, carries no weighting at all on Paper 1 — so a low AO5 comment on a Paper 1 script says nothing about the final grade on its own; it is Paper 2 and the coursework that assess it.
The three components are also not equivalent in how their raw marks convert to the final grade. Each paper's 100 raw marks are doubled to 200 scaled marks, so together the two papers make up 400 of the 500 total. The coursework's 100 raw marks are not doubled — they convert straight to 100 scaled marks.
| Component | Raw marks | Conversion | Scaled marks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 – Language, the Individual and Society | 100 | ×2 | 200 |
| Paper 2 – Language Diversity and Change | 100 | ×2 | 200 |
| Language in Action (NEA) | 100 | ×1 | 100 |
Source: AQA A-level English Language specification 7702, version 1.2, 14 October 2021 (p.27). Total scaled mark: 500.
That conversion is why a coursework mark and a paper mark reported side by side, both "out of 100", are not directly comparable: the coursework's 100 raw marks are worth half as much toward the final grade as either paper's 100 raw marks.
My son was low in confidence after COVID and the gaps in learning were building up. Using this service helped plug those gaps, rebuild confidence, and improve his ability to learn properly again.
We arranged maths and English tuition ahead of GCSEs and both tutors were brilliant. My daughter's grades improved, and by results day she achieved two grades higher than in her mock exams.
I attended an English bootcamp with Leading Tuition and the experience was excellent. The teacher gave focused attention to the small group while keeping the lessons interactive and engaging.
AQA publishes grade boundaries and entry statistics for every series. Set against each other, the June 2025 and June 2026 series for 7702 show a mixed picture rather than a single direction of travel.
| Series | Entries | A* | A | B | C | D | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 2026 | 9,305 | 432 | 397 | 343 | 290 | 237 | 184 |
| June 2025 | 8,765 | 433 | 397 | 341 | 285 | 229 | 174 |
Source: AQA A-level Subject grade boundaries and Exam results statistics, June 2026 and June 2025 series. Maximum mark 500 in both series.
Read boundary by boundary, the A* mark fell by one, from 433 to 432; the A boundary held exactly still at 397; and every boundary from B downward rose — B by two marks, C by five, D by eight, E by ten. A single "boundaries moved up" or "boundaries moved down" headline would misdescribe every one of these except the bottom four.
Entries also grew: 9,305 candidates sat the June 2026 series against 8,765 in June 2025, a rise of 540 — 9,305 minus 8,765 — or 6.16% (540 divided by 8,765). AQA's cumulative achievement figures moved with that larger cohort: the share reaching A* rose from 2.4% to 2.7%, and every other cumulative threshold (A-and-above, B-and-above, C-and-above, D-and-above) held within a few tenths of a percentage point of the year before, with E-and-above rising slightly from 99.1% to 99.3%.
Taken together, the A* boundary as a share of the total 500-mark scale moved from 86.6% in June 2025 (433 divided by 500) to 86.4% in June 2026 (432 divided by 500) — a fall of 0.2 percentage points. On its own, a one-mark shift on a 500-mark scale is ordinary series-to-series variation in how a boundary is set, not evidence of a deliberate grading change; it is well within the kind of movement grade boundaries show from one series to the next. The more informative figure here is the achievement percentage, which actually rose over the same period — a slightly larger cohort reached A* in June 2026 than in June 2025, even though the mark needed to get there was very slightly lower as a share of the maximum.
Reading a mock result against these boundaries is easier with a tutor who marks AQA English Language papers regularly. Our tutors use the current 7702 mark scheme to show a student exactly where marks were lost, paper by paper.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppAQA's own subject listing for English names five separate qualifications, and only one of them is A-Level English Language on its own: 7701 (AS English Language), 7702 (A-level English Language — the specification this page covers), 7707 (A-level English Language and Literature), 7712 (A-level English Literature A), and 7717 (A-level English Literature B). Checked against AQA's own 7702 specification page, 7702 has no parallel A-level Language specification running alongside it in the way some other AQA subjects run two live specs at once.
The qualification most often confused with 7702 is 7707, English Language and Literature — a genuinely different, combined subject rather than a variant of Language on its own. The scale of the two qualifications makes the difference concrete: 7707's June 2026 grade boundaries run on a maximum mark of 250, exactly half of 7702's 500. A results slip naming 7707 is not a Language result at all in the sense this page describes; it is a blended qualification assessed across both disciplines.
Similarly, 7712 and 7717 are AQA's two separate English Literature specifications — A and B — and neither is a Language qualification under a different name. A student sitting A-Level English Literature at AQA is on one of those two codes, not 7702.
If your child's results slip names a different code — 7707, 7712 or 7717 — our tutors cover those AQA English specifications too, and we will confirm which one applies before a first session.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppNo — the two qualifications are structured differently, not just pitched at different levels. The clearest example sits in the coursework. A-level's Language in Action investigation and original writing carries 100 of the specification's 500 scaled marks, 20% of the final grade, and is marked and moderated as described above. By contrast, on our own analysis of AQA's GCSE English Language specification (8700), the equivalent spoken-language element is a separate endorsement carrying a 0% weighting of the GCSE grade — it is reported on its own as Pass, Merit or Distinction and contributes nothing to the 160 scaled marks that decide the grade. See our GCSE English page for that specification's own assessment structure in full.
That single difference has a practical consequence worth knowing before a family assumes A-level is simply "GCSE, but harder": a strong GCSE grade built entirely on the two exam papers gives no signal at all about how a student handles a substantial piece of independent, teacher-assessed coursework, because GCSE never assesses one for a grade.
AQA's A-Level English Language is specification 7702, version 1.2, published 14 October 2021. It is for teaching from September 2015 onwards, with AS and A-level exams from 2016 onwards. The specification is split into two written papers worth 100 marks each and a non-exam coursework component called Language in Action, also worth 100 raw marks. A tutor or a school that cites a different version number is working from an older printing; check the front page of the PDF against these dates before you rely on it.
Both papers are worth 100 marks and 40% of the A-level, and both run for 2 hours 30 minutes. Paper 1, Language, the Individual and Society, splits into two text-analysis questions worth 25 marks each, a comparison question worth 20 marks, and a 30-mark discursive essay on children's language development. Paper 2, Language Diversity and Change, splits into a 30-mark evaluative essay and a Section B worth 70 marks across an analysis question and a directed writing task.
Language in Action is marked by the student's own teachers and then moderated by AQA, rather than being externally marked like the two written papers. Every student signs a Candidate record form confirming the work is their own, and every teacher who marked it signs a declaration of authentication on the same form, under JCQ malpractice rules. Because moderation adjusts a school's marking to a common national standard rather than re-marking each script individually, a query about a specific mark should start with the school, not with AQA directly.
No. 7707 is a separate combined subject called English Language and Literature, and its June 2026 grade boundaries run on a maximum mark of 250, against 7702's 500. A parent reading a results slip should check the four-digit code before assuming which specification a grade belongs to: 7701 is the AS-only Language qualification, 7702 is the full A-level Language qualification this page covers, 7707 is the combined Language and Literature subject, and 7712 and 7717 are AQA's two separate English Literature specifications, A and B.
Out of a total scaled mark of 500, AQA's June 2026 boundaries for 7702 were: A* at 432, A at 397, B at 343, C at 290, D at 237 and E at 184. The equivalent June 2025 boundaries were A* at 433, A at 397, B at 341, C at 285, D at 229 and E at 174 — so the A and B boundaries moved in opposite directions between the two series, by four marks apart, which is the kind of detail a single averaged "boundaries went up" headline misses.
9,305 students, up from 8,765 in June 2025 — a rise of 540 entries, or 6.16% (our own calculation: 540 divided by 8,765). The share of that cohort reaching A* rose too, from 2.4% in June 2025 to 2.7% in June 2026, even though the A* boundary itself sat one mark lower as a share of the total (86.4% of 500 against 86.6% the year before). A one-mark move on a 500-mark scale is ordinary series-to-series variation, not evidence of a grading shift; the achievement figures are the more informative number here.
80% comes from the two written papers and 20% from the Language in Action coursework. In scaled marks that is 400 out of 500 from Paper 1 and Paper 2 combined (each raw mark out of 100 is doubled to 200 scaled marks) and 100 out of 500 from the coursework, whose raw marks are not doubled. That is also why a coursework mark and a paper mark reported in the same "out of 100" form are not directly comparable without applying this conversion first.
Our specialist tutors work from AQA's own 7702 mark schemes and grade boundaries, on both written papers and the Language in Action coursework. Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews, and 91% of our students go on to achieve their desired grades. Read more about our approach on the GCSE English page or explore A-Level tutoring across every subject.
Book a Free Consultation