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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 follow the five points of writing though. It is always good to make a plan and tick of the areas as you meet them in your writing.



Aim to develop 6 paragraphs focusing on the idea of a camera lens. Start with a wide shot of your location / idea and gradually zoom in in each paragraph. At the end Zoom back out and note new details that have appeared as you've changed your focus.


You always get 2 options of questions (don't do both) and it is worth 25 writing marks in total addressing the following objectives:

Articulate what is thought, felt and imagined.
Order and present facts, ideas and opinions.
Understand and use a range of appropriate vocabulary
Use language and register appropriate to audience and context.
Make accurate and effective use of paragraphs, grammatical structures, sentences, punctuation and spelling.

You should spend an hour on this.

Here are some potential questions:

a) Describe a busy place that has an overwhelming atmosphere.

or 

b) Describe a crowd at an event and how they make you feel.

Good Luck

Mr Milne

 

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). Then write in the margin what the main idea you get.

This will help you find information quickly when you look at the questions.

Tip Number 2 - Infer - A logical conclusion based on facts and your own experiences

Look at the question and highlight your trigger words (what the question wants you to focus on).

Skim read the source checking the key information you've noted down and think about the inferences you could make that match the trigger words.

Scan the paragraphs where the key information is and find quotations that can support your answer.

Double check your information to make sure it is the a logical inference.

Tip Number 3 - Analysis - Breaking something down into its key components and looking at the effect of them.

Here, remember to zoom in.

Find your key quotations and then zoom in - look at what the key words could indicate and suggest potential effects (being able to make a range of plausible interpretations means allows you to target the key information).

Tip Number 4 - Writing



Remember to focus on these 5 areas. You must make a little plan and try to remember to include variety in every paragraph and vary your paragraphs.

You could use devices such as Triadic Structure and Rhetorical Questions.

You can use dashes, brackets and commas for parenthesis.

Make sure you have different sentence types and lengths.

Think about the impact of your vocabulary.

We've been working on discourse markers to indicate the direction of your writing. These will be key to access the higher levels.

The best way to revise for English is to practice. There are lots of texts and questions you can focus on the blog.

Happy Revising and Good Luck
 

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 objectives of:

Articulate what is thought, felt and imagined.
Order and present facts, ideas and opinions.
Understand and use a range of appropriate vocabulary
Use language and register appropriate to audience and context.
Make accurate and effective use of paragraphs, grammatical structures, sentences, punctuation and spelling.

This tests all the elements of your writing MOT.

To complete this question fully you will need to skim read the article first to get an idea of the main information in the text.

Then you will have to scan find key information you will need to meet the parts of the question (You will always be given prompts of things you need to mention).

You will gain the most marks by:

Making inferences about the text / content / thoughts and feelings of someone rather than just stating what was in the text.

Imagine you are the parents of Jill Stark and you have been interviewed about your alcohol consumption.

Write the words of the interview with the reporter.
You should answer the following questions:

  • ·         What kind of experiences have you had with alcohol?
  • ·         Why have you decided to give up alcohol for a year?


Base the report on what you have read in Passage A and be careful to use your own words.
Up to ten marks will be available for the content of your answer, and up to ten marks for the quality of your writing.

An Extract from 'High Sobriety: My Year Without Booze' by Jill Stark, originally published in The Independent available here

The roar in my skull sounds like waves battering a shore. My head, planted facedown in a sticky pillow, feels as heavy as a waterlogged sandbag. My body is a dance floor for pain. Welcome to 2011, Starkers: a new year, a new start; same old stinking hangover.

Last night was huge. Dawn had broken by the time I staggered home. I remember cursing the light and the chirpy birds. It was, like so many before it, a party that had got away from me. It had been a ridiculously hot Melbourne New Year’s Eve: dry and oppressive, with a blasting northerly wind. I felt as if I was trapped inside a fan-forced oven. As I sipped my first drink – a stubby of beer – with friends in their backyard paddling pool, the mercury crept past 40 degrees. It was 6pm.

As the night wore on, there was champagne with strawberries, more beer, more champagne, and then even more beer. There were sparklers, dancing, and high-pitched phone calls to Scotland, where it was still the last day of the decade before. I vaguely remember a fiercely contested drawing competition with crayons, and, for reasons I can’t fathom, sitting atop a stepladder with a miner’s lamp strapped to my head.

Later, at another friend’s house, we had White Russians in tumblers, and tequila in martini glasses. I remember one of my friends vomiting in the kitchen sink, and the group blithely singing over it as if this was neither noteworthy nor unusual. I remember thinking, when’s this going to stop? Then having another beer for the road.


I roll over on to my side, releasing a deathbed groan. The alarm clock comes into view, its illuminated digits stabbing my eyes. It’s 2pm. Another groan; this one seems to come from my bones. My guts churn as a tribe of African drummers pounds out a rhythm in my brain, and I pay a grudging respect to a hangover that, having been almost a month in the making, has arrived with some fanfare.
 

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 3 then spend the first 5 minutes scanning and making lists of quotations or devices which are used.

If you list these in columns then you can quickly draw lines to similarities and differences.

When comparing you should be analysing language (zooming in) and commenting on the effect this could have on the reader. At a higher level you could evaluate the success of the text in meeting the Purpose Audience or Form. You can see some more detailed thoughts on this post from last year: The Dreaded Question 4

You should be structuring your work like this:

Point
Quotation
Analysis
Evaluation of Purpose, Audience or Format
Comparative Point (similarity or difference)
Quotation
Analysis
Evaluation of Language of Purpose, Audience or Format

You must try to make 3-4 points like this using 6  - 10 textual references.

Remember you must always compare to Source 3 but can choose either Source 1 or 2.

Spend 25 minutes answering:

Compare the way writers' use language for effect. 16 Marks

Source 1 is here

Source 2 is here

Source 3 is below:

December 17, Hetta
We are in the midst of a super-cold snap, with temperatures falling below -30C. I can’t go outside for more than a few moments without fully suiting up in cold-weather gear. The insides of my nostrils crackle with frost; any hair left uncovered picks up a grey sheen, as though I’ve aged 50 years in minutes. Occasionally my eyelashes freeze together. I learn that if any part of my body sticks to metal, I mustn’t panic and wrench away, or I risk ripping the skin clean off. One of the dogs, Monty, lost half of his tongue this way as a pup when he licked a metal post. It nearly killed him, and it took months of careful nursing and hand feeding in the house before he returned to work.
But while the temperatures drop, the tourist season is hotting up. Lapland’s economy depends almost entirely on a few short weeks before Christmas when visitors flood in from overseas. Suddenly it’s all go as we try to run as many safaris as possible, often working from 7am till past midnight.
We have to sprint as we make up the dog teams – usually eight-strong, with an obedient pair up front as leaders and two of the strongest dogs at the back in 'wheel’ position: the brains and the brawn respectively.
In a rush this morning, I sped with my team out of the gates and took the first corner far too quickly. The sled flipped, dragging me through the snow on my stomach until the bar slipped out of my grip. By the time I’d jumped to my feet my dogs had overtaken the team in front and started a fight; I had had to throw myself between the two teams and wrestle them apart, growling and yelling. No harm done, but my nerves are jangling and my confidence has taken a knock.
December 21, Hetta
While freeing two dogs that have become tangled in the lines, I stupidly remove my gloves in -38C, and later find the colour has drained away from the tips of my fingers. They also have an unpleasant needling sensation. 'Congratulations,’ Pasi says. 'Your first frostbite.’ I’m thrilled and show them off to everyone.
December 25, Hetta and Valimaa
This week has been hard. We seem to be working non-stop and I haven’t seen daylight in three weeks. This is the polar night. The sun will not rise above the horizon for a further 10 days. It is dark enough to use head torches for most of the day, but at noon the skies are incredible, streaked with magenta and crimson and orange.
To tell the truth, I’m running on empty. Every waking moment for weeks has been spent feeding or harnessing or sledding or shovelling snow or shovelling shit. When, on Christmas Eve, I’m sternly told off for not cleaning kennels properly, I’m so tired and it’s so unfair that I find myself in tears, sobbing into a bucket of frozen meat as I chop it into pieces.
'Oh dear,’ Dot, another of the guides, says when she finds me. 'Feeling fragile?’ I laugh. It is a bit ridiculous.
Christmas Day itself is just as dark and cold as all the other days but it feels like we’ve turned a corner: the hardest part is over. The tourists will soon return to wherever they came from, the daylight will return from wherever it went. After a Christmas feast, five of us return to the wilderness farm. I drive; others grab some sleep while they can. When we arrive, past midnight, it strikes me how lucky we are. The air is so still and the sky is so clear, the stars so incredibly bright.
Edited from an article by Cal Flyn in The Telegraph - Full article available here
Good Luck

Mr Milne

 

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 why the writer woke up feeling unwell. 2 Marks

b) What detail does the writer give as to why the previous night was uncomfortable? 1 Mark

c) Give two reasons why the writer describes the night as huge. (Lines 9-16) 2 Marks


  • _______________________________________________________________________________
  • _______________________________________________________________________________
d) Explain using your own words what the writer does on New Year's Eve. (Lines 4 - 16) 2 Marks

e) Explain using your own words the pain that the writer feels. 3 Marks





An Extract from 'High Sobriety: My Year Without Booze' by Jill Stark, originally published in The Independent available here

The roar in my skull sounds like waves battering a shore. My head, planted facedown in a sticky pillow, feels as heavy as a waterlogged sandbag. My body is a dance floor for pain. Welcome to 2011, Starkers: a new year, a new start; same old stinking hangover.

Last night was huge. Dawn had broken by the time I staggered home. I remember cursing the light and the chirpy birds. It was, like so many before it, a party that had got away from me. It had been a ridiculously hot Melbourne New Year’s Eve: dry and oppressive, with a blasting northerly wind. I felt as if I was trapped inside a fan-forced oven. As I sipped my first drink – a stubby of beer – with friends in their backyard paddling pool, the mercury crept past 40 degrees. It was 6pm.

As the night wore on, there was champagne with strawberries, more beer, more champagne, and then even more beer. There were sparklers, dancing, and high-pitched phone calls to Scotland, where it was still the last day of the decade before. I vaguely remember a fiercely contested drawing competition with crayons, and, for reasons I can’t fathom, sitting atop a stepladder with a miner’s lamp strapped to my head.

Later, at another friend’s house, we had White Russians in tumblers, and tequila in martini glasses. I remember one of my friends vomiting in the kitchen sink, and the group blithely singing over it as if this was neither noteworthy nor unusual. I remember thinking, when’s this going to stop? Then having another beer for the road.


I roll over on to my side, releasing a deathbed groan. The alarm clock comes into view, its illuminated digits stabbing my eyes. It’s 2pm. Another groan; this one seems to come from my bones. My guts churn as a tribe of African drummers pounds out a rhythm in my brain, and I pay a grudging respect to a hangover that, having been almost a month in the making, has arrived with some fanfare.
 

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 the topic sentences (the sentence in each paragraph that tells you the main topic - usually the first sentence of a paragraph though not always: be careful of this) to double check you have got everything. You could write down what each paragraph is about along side it and cross out paragraphs that are not relevant.

Then turn your attention to Passage B. Skim read this article quickly and jot down the main points related to the question. Then go back again and scan each topic sentence writing down what each paragraph covers beside it. Make sure you have got only the main points related to the question - nothing more.

You get 15 marks for the content of your writing and 5 marks for your writing and are assessed on:

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)

The writing objectives of:

Articulate what is thought, felt and imagined.
Order and present facts, ideas and opinions.
Understand and use a range of appropriate vocabulary
Use language and register appropriate to audience and context.
Make accurate and effective use of paragraphs, grammatical structures, sentences, punctuation and spelling.

So here is your question:

Summarise:

a) The first experiences at base camp on Aconcagua as described in Passage B


b) The environment  as described in Passage A

Your summary must be in continuous writing (full sentences; not note form). Use your own 
words as far as possible.

Aim to write no more than one page of A4.



Passage B

Graham explained that Aconcagua is the highest walk in the world, with no head for heights needed – just an aptitude for altitude. Unaccountably, he failed to mention that the exercise would involve living in a tent for three weeks on a series of desolate plateaux and a diet of reconstituted cardboard. I secretly relished the prospect of walking to the sort of heights where planes normally cruise. And thus I found myself plunged into the utterly alien world of high-altitude antics.
If yachting equates to standing under a shower tearing up £10 notes, then serious mountaineering resembles walking upstairs 1,000 times while ripping up £20 notes. To reduce the risk of frostbite nibbling your toes, you need double-plastic boots – just as uncomfortable, and twice as expensive, as you might imagine. I rented them. For £100. Each. Still, as I stepped from the plane into a sunny afternoon in the pretty Argentinian city of Mendoza, it was difficult even for me not to feel excited and optimistic. I would have had a spring in my step were it not for the fact that I had been wearing double-plastic boots all the way from London in order to save on baggage charges. Yet the maddening footwear seemed to have bought – or at least rented – some credibility. At the transit lounge at Buenos Aires, a fellow passenger had hailed me with a single word: “Aconcagua!” He was Brazilian and was flying to the Andes to tick the mountain off his list of the Seven Summits.

My First Hours on Aconcagua comprised a learning experience akin to the team-building ­exercises on which some companies spend a fortune. Gina, Graham and I posed for a picture at the trailhead on the Saturday after Christmas. While the sign didn’t quite invite those who passed the threshold to “abandon hope”, it could well have said “abandon all norms of daily life”.

After that single step, the subsequent 10,000 paces that afternoon took us past a lovely lake edged with flowers and patrolled by chirruping songbirds 10 sizes down from the mighty condor. Rapidly, though, life was squeezed out of the landscape. The climax of the Andes resembles the outcome of a battle of the gods, with the Earth’s crust crushed, up-ended and casually stacked at odd angles. We strode through a desolate canyon towards a wall of ice and snow, and into a new way of living. Water does not emerge on demand from a tap; you painstakingly harvest snow to melt. Human waste has to be collected and saved throughout the climb, to be presented for inspection by the lucky park rangers at the end. And while a train of mules shuttles wearily between the park entrance and Base Camp, bearing ­everything from four-season sleeping bags to 2012 Malbec, for the main climb you are on your own.

“Welcome to my world,” Graham said. “You feel rubbish. It’s cold, it’s windy. I can’t imagine getting to the summit.”

His pessimism was warranted, judging by the estimates of how many attempts fail. For most climbers, Aconcagua turns out to be Mount Disappointment. Of the 1,400 people who tackle the peak during the brief summer window between December and March, between two-thirds and three-quarters fail. And an average of nine of them die. Those, at least, are the figures discussed at Base Camp – the  platform at 11,500ft that looks, from a distance, like a badly sprung mattress due to the muddle of tents and latrines poking from it.

We spent five long days at Base Camp, acclimatising while swapping yarns with other climbers (though with only an ascent last summer of 735ft Box Hill in Surrey under my belt, I just listened).

Edited from Simon Calder's article in the Independent available here


Passage A
My winter on a husky farm in the Arctic Circle
Just over a year ago, I left my job at a national newspaper to work on a husky farm, 130 miles within the Arctic Circle in the far north of Finland. I handed in my security pass, packed away my notepads and prepared for a winter in darkness and under snow. My reasons for leaving, I realised, as I tried to explain my decision to friends and colleagues, were unclear. But, at 26, I was restless. I was dreaming of Arctic landscapes, cold and bleak expanses, perhaps in reaction to the noise and intrusion of London. Crowded living, urban alienation; they make films about that, don’t they? So I found a farm near the village of Hetta, deep in Finnish Lapland, that agreed to take me on as a dog handler for a busy winter season.

November 6, London
In my suitcase: one down-filled jacket, one PrimaLoft insulating jacket, four fleeces (varying heaviness), three pairs waterproof salopettes, two pairs fleece trousers, numerous base layer tops and long johns, many pairs thick socks (£21 a pop), head lamp, liner gloves, over-mitts, under-helmet balaclava, two polar Buffs, climbing knife, three Christmas puddings, one bottle Russian vodka. In summary, I’ve spent most of the money I’ve saved, and I haven’t left London yet.
On my flight from Heathrow I find myself staring blankly at a page of more than 100 husky mug shots I printed out before I left; I am meant to have memorised their names by the time I get there, but I am distracted and panicky. I put the page down and look out of the window instead.

December 17, Hetta
We are in the midst of a super-cold snap, with temperatures falling below -30C. I can’t go outside for more than a few moments without fully suiting up in cold-weather gear. The insides of my nostrils crackle with frost; any hair left uncovered picks up a grey sheen, as though I’ve aged 50 years in minutes. Occasionally my eyelashes freeze together. I learn that if any part of my body sticks to metal, I mustn’t panic and wrench away, or I risk ripping the skin clean off. One of the dogs, Monty, lost half of his tongue this way as a pup when he licked a metal post. It nearly killed him, and it took months of careful nursing and hand feeding in the house before he returned to work.
But while the temperatures drop, the tourist season is hotting up. Lapland’s economy depends almost entirely on a few short weeks before Christmas when visitors flood in from overseas. Suddenly it’s all go as we try to run as many safaris as possible, often working from 7am till past midnight.
In a rush this morning, I sped with my team out of the gates and took the first corner far too quickly. The sled flipped, dragging me through the snow on my stomach until the bar slipped out of my grip. By the time I’d jumped to my feet my dogs had overtaken the team in front and started a fight; I had had to throw myself between the two teams and wrestle them apart, growling and yelling. No harm done, but my nerves are jangling and my confidence has taken a knock.

December 21, Hetta
While freeing two dogs that have become tangled in the lines, I stupidly remove my gloves in -38C, and later find the colour has drained away from the tips of my fingers. They also have an unpleasant needling sensation. 'Congratulations,’ Pasi says. 'Your first frostbite.’ I’m thrilled and show them off to everyone.

December 25, Hetta and Valimaa
This week has been hard. We seem to be working non-stop and I haven’t seen daylight in three weeks. This is the polar night. The sun will not rise above the horizon for a further 10 days. It is dark enough to use head torches for most of the day, but at noon the skies are incredible, streaked with magenta and crimson and orange.
To tell the truth, I’m running on empty. Every waking moment for weeks has been spent feeding or harnessing or sledding or shovelling snow or shovelling shit. When, on Christmas Eve, I’m sternly told off for not cleaning kennels properly, I’m so tired and it’s so unfair that I find myself in tears, sobbing into a bucket of frozen meat as I chop it into pieces.
'Oh dear,’ Dot, another of the guides, says when she finds me. 'Feeling fragile?’ I laugh. It is a bit ridiculous.
Christmas Day itself is just as dark and cold as all the other days but it feels like we’ve turned a corner: the hardest part is over. The tourists will soon return to wherever they came from, the daylight will return from wherever it went. After a Christmas feast, five of us return to the wilderness farm. I drive; others grab some sleep while they can. When we arrive, past midnight, it strikes me how lucky we are. The air is so still and the sky is so clear, the stars so incredibly bright. 

Edited from an article by Cal Flyn in The Telegraph - Full article available here


Good Luck
 

AQA Question 3 - an exam question a week.

Question 3 is another question mainly based on inference.
Your planning method should be as follows:
  1. Skim read
  2. 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.
  3. Scan the text for supporting quotations.
  4. 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 thoughts and feelings of Cal Flyn about her experience working on a Husky Farm.
December 17, Hetta
We are in the midst of a super-cold snap, with temperatures falling below -30C. I can’t go outside for more than a few moments without fully suiting up in cold-weather gear. The insides of my nostrils crackle with frost; any hair left uncovered picks up a grey sheen, as though I’ve aged 50 years in minutes. Occasionally my eyelashes freeze together. I learn that if any part of my body sticks to metal, I mustn’t panic and wrench away, or I risk ripping the skin clean off. One of the dogs, Monty, lost half of his tongue this way as a pup when he licked a metal post. It nearly killed him, and it took months of careful nursing and hand feeding in the house before he returned to work.
But while the temperatures drop, the tourist season is hotting up. Lapland’s economy depends almost entirely on a few short weeks before Christmas when visitors flood in from overseas. Suddenly it’s all go as we try to run as many safaris as possible, often working from 7am till past midnight.
We have to sprint as we make up the dog teams – usually eight-strong, with an obedient pair up front as leaders and two of the strongest dogs at the back in 'wheel’ position: the brains and the brawn respectively.
In a rush this morning, I sped with my team out of the gates and took the first corner far too quickly. The sled flipped, dragging me through the snow on my stomach until the bar slipped out of my grip. By the time I’d jumped to my feet my dogs had overtaken the team in front and started a fight; I had had to throw myself between the two teams and wrestle them apart, growling and yelling. No harm done, but my nerves are jangling and my confidence has taken a knock.
December 21, Hetta
While freeing two dogs that have become tangled in the lines, I stupidly remove my gloves in -38C, and later find the colour has drained away from the tips of my fingers. They also have an unpleasant needling sensation. 'Congratulations,’ Pasi says. 'Your first frostbite.’ I’m thrilled and show them off to everyone.
December 25, Hetta and Valimaa
This week has been hard. We seem to be working non-stop and I haven’t seen daylight in three weeks. This is the polar night. The sun will not rise above the horizon for a further 10 days. It is dark enough to use head torches for most of the day, but at noon the skies are incredible, streaked with magenta and crimson and orange.
To tell the truth, I’m running on empty. Every waking moment for weeks has been spent feeding or harnessing or sledding or shovelling snow or shovelling shit. When, on Christmas Eve, I’m sternly told off for not cleaning kennels properly, I’m so tired and it’s so unfair that I find myself in tears, sobbing into a bucket of frozen meat as I chop it into pieces.
'Oh dear,’ Dot, another of the guides, says when she finds me. 'Feeling fragile?’ I laugh. It is a bit ridiculous.
Christmas Day itself is just as dark and cold as all the other days but it feels like we’ve turned a corner: the hardest part is over. The tourists will soon return to wherever they came from, the daylight will return from wherever it went. After a Christmas feast, five of us return to the wilderness farm. I drive; others grab some sleep while they can. When we arrive, past midnight, it strikes me how lucky we are. The air is so still and the sky is so clear, the stars so incredibly bright.
Edited from an article by Cal Flyn in The Telegraph - Full article available here
 

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 Summarise - to give a brief statement of the main points.

This means that in your own words you need to write the main parts from the article you have read which trests you on objective:

  • Understand and collate explicit meanings (Understand the literal ideas of the text)

The most effective way to do this is to skim read for meaning and scan for the topic sentences of each paragraph (the sentence which tells you what the paragraph is about). 

Decide which ones relate to your question.

You have seven marks so you should aim to pick out the 7 most important pieces of information.

Finally you need to write it up in your own words.

Try the one below:

i -  Reread the whole passage. Write a summary of why the writer chose to give up alcohol for a year.

Write a paragraph of about 50-70 words
 7 Marks

An Extract from 'High Sobriety: My Year Without Booze' by Jill Stark, originally published in The Independent available here

The roar in my skull sounds like waves battering a shore. My head, planted facedown in a sticky pillow, feels as heavy as a waterlogged sandbag. My body is a dance floor for pain. Welcome to 2011, Starkers: a new year, a new start; same old stinking hangover.

Last night was huge. Dawn had broken by the time I staggered home. I remember cursing the light and the chirpy birds. It was, like so many before it, a party that had got away from me. It had been a ridiculously hot Melbourne New Year’s Eve: dry and oppressive, with a blasting northerly wind. I felt as if I was trapped inside a fan-forced oven. As I sipped my first drink – a stubby of beer – with friends in their backyard paddling pool, the mercury crept past 40 degrees. It was 6pm.

As the night wore on, there was champagne with strawberries, more beer, more champagne, and then even more beer. There were sparklers, dancing, and high-pitched phone calls to Scotland, where it was still the last day of the decade before. I vaguely remember a fiercely contested drawing competition with crayons, and, for reasons I can’t fathom, sitting atop a stepladder with a miner’s lamp strapped to my head.

Later, at another friend’s house, we had White Russians in tumblers, and tequila in martini glasses. I remember one of my friends vomiting in the kitchen sink, and the group blithely singing over it as if this was neither noteworthy nor unusual. I remember thinking, when’s this going to stop? Then having another beer for the road.


I roll over on to my side, releasing a deathbed groan. The alarm clock comes into view, its illuminated digits stabbing my eyes. It’s 2pm. Another groan; this one seems to come from my bones. My guts churn as a tribe of African drummers pounds out a rhythm in my brain, and I pay a grudging respect to a hangover that, having been almost a month in the making, has arrived with some fanfare.
 

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 important in de-humanising him as a character.

See how in the above example I've returned to the quotation to show I understand deeper meanings. If you can show this skill over 3-4 quotations per part you will do very well.


Re-read the descriptions of:
(a) the cold spell in paragraph 3, beginning ‘We are in the midst…’;
(b) the tiredness in paragraph 9, beginning ‘To tell the truth…’.

Select words and phrases from these descriptions, and explain how the writer has created
effects by using this language.
Write between 1 and 1½ sides, allowing for the size of your handwriting.

Up to 10 marks are available for the content of your answer.



Passage A
My winter on a husky farm in the Arctic Circle
Just over a year ago, I left my job at a national newspaper to work on a husky farm, 130 miles within the Arctic Circle in the far north of Finland. I handed in my security pass, packed away my notepads and prepared for a winter in darkness and under snow. My reasons for leaving, I realised, as I tried to explain my decision to friends and colleagues, were unclear. But, at 26, I was restless. I was dreaming of Arctic landscapes, cold and bleak expanses, perhaps in reaction to the noise and intrusion of London. Crowded living, urban alienation; they make films about that, don’t they? So I found a farm near the village of Hetta, deep in Finnish Lapland, that agreed to take me on as a dog handler for a busy winter season.

November 6, London
In my suitcase: one down-filled jacket, one PrimaLoft insulating jacket, four fleeces (varying heaviness), three pairs waterproof salopettes, two pairs fleece trousers, numerous base layer tops and long johns, many pairs thick socks (£21 a pop), head lamp, liner gloves, over-mitts, under-helmet balaclava, two polar Buffs, climbing knife, three Christmas puddings, one bottle Russian vodka. In summary, I’ve spent most of the money I’ve saved, and I haven’t left London yet.
On my flight from Heathrow I find myself staring blankly at a page of more than 100 husky mug shots I printed out before I left; I am meant to have memorised their names by the time I get there, but I am distracted and panicky. I put the page down and look out of the window instead.

December 17, Hetta
We are in the midst of a super-cold snap, with temperatures falling below -30C. I can’t go outside for more than a few moments without fully suiting up in cold-weather gear. The insides of my nostrils crackle with frost; any hair left uncovered picks up a grey sheen, as though I’ve aged 50 years in minutes. Occasionally my eyelashes freeze together. I learn that if any part of my body sticks to metal, I mustn’t panic and wrench away, or I risk ripping the skin clean off. One of the dogs, Monty, lost half of his tongue this way as a pup when he licked a metal post. It nearly killed him, and it took months of careful nursing and hand feeding in the house before he returned to work.
But while the temperatures drop, the tourist season is hotting up. Lapland’s economy depends almost entirely on a few short weeks before Christmas when visitors flood in from overseas. Suddenly it’s all go as we try to run as many safaris as possible, often working from 7am till past midnight.
In a rush this morning, I sped with my team out of the gates and took the first corner far too quickly. The sled flipped, dragging me through the snow on my stomach until the bar slipped out of my grip. By the time I’d jumped to my feet my dogs had overtaken the team in front and started a fight; I had had to throw myself between the two teams and wrestle them apart, growling and yelling. No harm done, but my nerves are jangling and my confidence has taken a knock.

December 21, Hetta
While freeing two dogs that have become tangled in the lines, I stupidly remove my gloves in -38C, and later find the colour has drained away from the tips of my fingers. They also have an unpleasant needling sensation. 'Congratulations,’ Pasi says. 'Your first frostbite.’ I’m thrilled and show them off to everyone.

December 25, Hetta and Valimaa
This week has been hard. We seem to be working non-stop and I haven’t seen daylight in three weeks. This is the polar night. The sun will not rise above the horizon for a further 10 days. It is dark enough to use head torches for most of the day, but at noon the skies are incredible, streaked with magenta and crimson and orange.
To tell the truth, I’m running on empty. Every waking moment for weeks has been spent feeding or harnessing or sledding or shovelling snow or shovelling shit. When, on Christmas Eve, I’m sternly told off for not cleaning kennels properly, I’m so tired and it’s so unfair that I find myself in tears, sobbing into a bucket of frozen meat as I chop it into pieces.
'Oh dear,’ Dot, another of the guides, says when she finds me. 'Feeling fragile?’ I laugh. It is a bit ridiculous.
Christmas Day itself is just as dark and cold as all the other days but it feels like we’ve turned a corner: the hardest part is over. The tourists will soon return to wherever they came from, the daylight will return from wherever it went. After a Christmas feast, five of us return to the wilderness farm. I drive; others grab some sleep while they can. When we arrive, past midnight, it strikes me how lucky we are. The air is so still and the sky is so clear, the stars so incredibly bright. 

Edited from an article by Cal Flyn in The Telegraph - Full article available here
 
 
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