Abstract/Summary

Students in England sit an important gateway examination in English at age 16. Major changes were made to this exam in 2017 resulting in more emphasis on the comprehension of unseen literary texts. This paper uses corpus linguistics methods to identify the kind of vocabulary encountered in these exam texts and compares it to vocabulary encountered in other sources of written language (classic literary fiction, biographies, poetry etc.). Results showed vocabulary in the exam texts was typically low in frequency and that older literary fiction texts contained similar types of vocabulary. This suggests that students and teachers should rely more on older literary fiction to best prepare for the exam. However, this raises ethical questions about whether an exam should dictate students’ reading experience, especially when older literary fiction is likely to be less diverse and dominated by Dead White men.