IGCSE Extended Paper / Core Paper - Directed Writing Question 2 - An exam question a week

We're going to look at the second section and start with Descriptive Writing. The obvious trap to fall into here is to tell a story. You can't stray into Narrative here so need to be able to imagine your self as a camera. You can see what is going on but there is no real story behind it. Good practice is to look at something like Earth Cam and spend ten minutes watching a camera then write about what you see. You need to ensure that you......

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Year 9 Exam Revision

Welcome to the blog Year 9  2013-2014! Here are some key points to revise to help you with your exam next week. We are assessing your ability to find information, make inferences and analyse in your reading and we are testing how well you can match your writing to form audience and purpose. Tip Number 1 - Select and Retrieve Read the source and highlight the topic sentences in each paragraph (the one which tells you what the subject is about).......

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IGCSE Core Paper - Question 2: An exam question a week

Question 2 is about taking information from a source article and using it to create an imagined piece of your own. This question is worth 20 marks and you should spend about 45-50 minutes on it.The question tests the reading objectives of: Understand and collate explicit meanings (Understand the literal ideas of the text) Understand, explain and collate implicit meanings and attitudes (Make inferences) Select, analyse and evaluate what is relevant to specific purposes (Find the best information to meet the question requirements) These are worth 10 marks! Your last 10 marks tests the writing......

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AQA: An exam question a week Question 4

This question is the one that most students struggle with. It is worth the most marks in Section A and requires you to compare two texts. For any comparison question you must point out both similarities and differences. You must analyse language and language only which could link to words that build the Overall Tone, Words with specific connotations or Language devices (OWL). As you read through the texts you should also be quickly highlighting loaded phrase which relate to one of the above. If you don't have time to do this when you are going through your planning stages for Question 1 2 or......

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An exam question a week - IGCSE Core Reading Question 1 continued - a-e

Parts a-e test your understanding of what you have read. Sometimes they need you to explain in your own words or find key details. This test your ability to skim read a text, scan for details and make inferences. I would recommend that as you read the text you make a note next to each paragraph as to what it is about. You could look at topic sentences here (the sentences which tell you what the paragraph is about - usually at the beginning of the paragraph though not always). Make sure you look at the number of marks and for more than one mark make an inference related to the text. a) Explain......

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An exam question a week - IGCSE Extended Reading - Question 3

Question 3 has two parts two it and it requires you to have the ability to summarise. You will be given a specific area to focus on and must write in full sentences and in your own words and capture the 'essence' of the topic. This means your answer will not include all the article just the main points. You will have to look at two articles for this question and summarise them both. You should already be familiar with Passage A as you've answered two questions on it. Identify the trigger word that you have to focus on then: Quickly bullet point the areas you can remember from the text and scan......

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AQA Question 3 - an exam question a week.

Question 3 is another question mainly based on inference. Your planning method should be as follows: Skim read Make inferences about thoughts and feelings - Higher Level should find a change of feeling. Put a star next to where you think this is in the text to remind yourself to find a quotation. Scan the text for supporting quotations. Write up embedding quotations. You have 12 minutes to work in once you have read the text (skimming and scanning as you go along 5 minutes approximately). Make sure you are using quotations (at least 4). Here is your question: Explain some of the......

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IGCSE Core Reading Paper Question 1 continued - section i

To recap -  We're currently looking at a core reading paper, which is worth 40% of your overall grade.The core reading paper is broken into two question:Question 1 focuses on your understanding and analysis of an article then Question 2 requires you to use an article to base your own writing on.Question 1 is broken down into sub sections and we are going to deal here with sub questions  i now.Sub question i requires you to summarise the article you have read. It has the most marks for a sub question and is worth 7 of your 30 marks. The dictionary definition of  to summarise is: To......

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IGCSE Extended Reading Paper Question 2 - An exam question a week

Question 2 tests your ability to analyse a text. For this one you have to scan a prescribed paragraph of a text and pick out loaded phrases. It tests the Reading Objectives: ·         Understand how writers achieve effects It is worth 10 marks and you should spend 25 minutes working through it. You will gain the most marks by finding 3-4 quotations per part and zooming in to those quotations picking out key words and analysing the effect: 'snorted water like a horse' comes as Lennie is thirstily gulping down water with the word 'horse' particularly......

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