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

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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 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.

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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 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

Read more »

AQA An exam question a week - Question 2

Question 2 is the first of your analytical questions it always asks you to:

Explain how the headline, sub headline and picture are effective and how they link to the text.

This requires you to analyse the Headline (sometimes subheadline) and link it to the text and state how evaluate the impact of the headline and picture to access the higher levels.

To begin with you should scan the headline for loaded phrases (phrase which immediately catch your eye). These could be simply connotations of key words or they could be more sophisticated devices such as pun / paradox etc. You could also comment on any use of punctuation (Colons and dashes are ones to look out for here). Think about what tone is being set here (it is something you can link to later in your work) or is there any contrast / paradox set up that need to be clarified in the text?

Then scan the subheadline (if there is one) doing the same as above and the picture.

The picture is particularly interesting - it can set or contrast the tone. Look for what the picture could indicate about the article - are the characters confident / nervous / what about scale and colour?

Once you are at this point you can tackle the text. Scan the text for things that link to the headline  - this could be repeated words, things that elaborate on something from the title or contrasting information (the headline could lead you one way and the article take you another).

There are lines which could describe the picture, words that highlight what the picture shows or lines which have a similar tone.

As you write, you should be aiming to link 4 points in the headline / picture to the text and at a higher level be using some more evaluative phrases such as:

Effectively
Successfully
Subtly
Clearly
Efficiently

You have 12 minutes to work in once you have read the text (skimming and scanning as you go along). Make sure you are using quotations (at least 4 from the text and one or two from the headline - make references to the picture).

So here is your question:


Explain how the headline, sub headline and picture are effective and how they link to the text. 8 Marks

Your link is here


Good luck.

Mr Milne

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IGCSE Core Reading Paper - An Exam Question a week

We're going to look 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 f, g, and h.

As you read you need to be able to skim an article for the main information but also highlight any phrases with interesting use of language. Sub questions f,g and h deal with the writer's use of language and part g will give you sections of the text to look at. These three questions are worth 13 marks in total so make up a large chunk of the 30 marks available in question 1.

Tip One

Star the paragraph that part f directs you to.

Tip Two

Read the questions and highlight any section part g asks you to look at. Look at the phrase in the context of a full sentence.

Tip Three

Highlight interesting phrases linking to part h.

You either have to explain what phrases mean or their effect. Make sure you read the question carefully so you answer the question giving the correct detail.

If it asks you what the phrase means - highlight the key nouns / verbs which allow you to understand the words fully (be careful to check if they are metaphors).

Here are your questions and the article to look at is posted below. You can post your answers in the blog or give them to your teacher to mark.

Good Luck

f - Which phrase in the opening paragraph is used to emphasise the pain of a hangover headache? 1 Mark

g - Explain, using your own words, what the writer means by:

i) 'Dawn had broken by the time I staggered home' 2 Marks

ii) 'I roll over on to my side, releasing a deathbed groan' 2 Marks

iii) 'has arrived with some fanfare.' 2 Marks

h - Re-read lines 12-22. Choose three short phrases, which the writer uses to describe the party.

Explain how each of the phrases creates a picture of the party.

Phrase - 

Explanation:


Phrase - 

Explanation:



Phrase - 

Explanation



6 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.

Read more »

IGCSE Extended Reading Paper Practice Question 1 - A practice Question a week

As part of your revision you should be carrying out a practice question every week. Below is a practice question for the IGCSE Extended Reading Paper.

Question 1 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 15 marks!

Your last 5 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 3 or so 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 Cal Flyn and are being interviewed by a reporter about your daughter's adventures. Write the words of the interview with the reporter. You should answer the following questions: ·         What kind of experiences has your daughter had? ·         What kind of person is your daughter? ·         What are your thoughts and feelings about your daughter’s adventures? Base the report on what you have read in Passage A and be careful to use your own words. Up to fifteen marks will be available for the content of your answer, and up to five marks for the quality of your writing.

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

Read more »

AQA Week One - An Exam Question a week until the exam.

We will start at the very beginning - a very good place to start.

Question 1 on the surface looks very straightforward but it is often one that is completed in a rush (at the end of the exam or to try and save time at the beginning) and therefore you don't achieve the marks that your skill set should.

I'm going to walk you through the process and then let you loose on a question.

First of all the question itself:

It is always a 'What do you understand about the x and y'.

Before you jump in, make sure you know what you are looking for.

Understand - is more than just the facts but it involves your inference as well.

X - is one of the things you should be focusing on.

Y - is another. Nothing other than these two things.

These are your trigger words from the question. They tell you that you need to Skim and Scan the text. (Skim = a quick read through to get the information from the article. Scan = focusing in on the quotations that link X and Y).

The question may often talk about issues - You should scan for facts, figures, quotations, annecdotes,

It also can describe experiences - look for 'I' and adjectives.

It is an 8 mark question and you should be taking 12 minutes to complete this. To adequately meet the requirements of the task you will need to make 4 good points with supporting textual detail embedded, some inference and to cover each part of the question (not necessarily equally).

Your inferences identify you as a higher level candidate showing you don't just focus on the obvious. If an article states '4 in 10 people' are overweight then you can infer that an issue will be health problems and that those health problems will put a strain on the NHS. This develops your higher level inference.

So as a check list when writing:

Summarise the key points that address each of trigger words in the question (5 or 6).
Embed some supporting quotations (4 + )
Make developed inferences - look beyond the obvious.

So here is your question:

What do you understand about Frankie Mullin's experiences of being deaf and the issues of being deaf in society?

Your text is here

I would like you to write the trigger words at the top of your answer.

Happy Revising

Mr Milne

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