Functional Skills English
Reading, writing, and speaking and listening, assessed as three components and taught through the writing our learners already do: game guides, scripts, reviews, character stories and the pitch deck for their own game.
Refer a learner for EnglishThe three components
Each is its own paper or task. At Level 2 they can be sat separately, so a learner only sits what is missing.
Reading
Why writers write, text types, presentational and language features, finding and navigating sources, fact versus opinion, formality and bias, point of view and line of argument, comparing texts.
Writing
Purpose and audience, context, form and presentational features, organisational markers, grammar, tenses, punctuation, spelling, planning an answer and finalising it.
Speaking, listening and communicating
Extracting information, asking and responding, contributing to a discussion, using evidence, adapting to the audience, keeping a line of argument. Assessed as a live task, not a written paper.
Entry 3 covers the same three components with simpler texts and tasks: spelling, key and detailed points, finding meaning, punctuation and grammar, planning for an audience, and taking part in a conversation. Level 1 bridges the two.
How we teach it
Story, character and the words around a game do the work a textbook never managed.
Reading
Two reviews of the same game, one glowing and one scathing, a patch note, a studio job advert, a forum argument. Bias, purpose and comparing sources are the skills the paper tests.
Writing
A game pitch deck, a design document, character bios, quest text, patch notes, a complaint to a publisher, a review, a Discord announcement. Planning, structure and proofreading are taught on the learner's own work first, then on exam-style tasks.
Speaking and listening
Pitch the game to the group, run a design review, narrate a playthrough, argue a balance change. The assessed task is prepared with the mentor and run in a setting the learner is comfortable in.
Reading and writing are sat as separate online papers under invigilation; speaking, listening and communicating is a live assessed task. Pass or fail, results in 2 to 6 working days. The mentor does not book a paper until the mocks say the learner is ready.
The pitch deck, design document and reviews written for Functional Skills also evidence NOCN creative units and AQA unit awards, so one piece of work can count twice.
Start with a free assessment
The initial assessment finds the right level in English. Everything after that is built around the learner.