Six lessons that turn the strangest exam paper in English — one 45-mark essay about a talking toddler — into a subject you can read like a linguist and write like a top-level candidate.
The exam's shape, the transcript symbols, the phonetic slashes — and the Golden Rule that separates passing answers from failing ones: development, never deficit.
Five patterns explain almost every child pronunciation: substitution, cluster reduction, weak syllable deletion, elision, reduplication — plus the paradox of the perfect dinosaur name.
The four developmental stages, stretchy word meanings, and the brilliant logic of "I goed" — why a child's errors are the best evidence of intelligence in the whole subject.
Skinner, Chomsky, Bruner, Halliday, Tomasello — each with the data that supports it AND the data that challenges it, plus the theory courtroom where you argue every side.
Six scaffolding moves every parent makes without knowing — modelling, expansion, reformulation and more — and the child's own conversation skills that answer the exam's question.
The 10-minute annotation method, the five-part paragraph engine, weak-versus-strong model answers, and a timed flight on fresh data with a full feature key to mark yourself against.
The same exam's other written paper: two 30-mark comparative essays on identity and language change. Six lessons — the comparison habit, the identity concepts, and both essays built step by step.