At Edusites English it is our mission to provide you with insightful and relevant English CPD to drive your team expertise and results strategy. Click below to read about GCSE English Language and Literature AQA, Edexcel, Eduqas and OCR, and IGCSE Language and Literature Edexcel and CIE.
“It’s only words...and words are all I have…to take your heart away"
Ronan crooned these lyrics back in the day. When boybands were wholesome and everyone stood up for the chorus. Before that it was the Bee Gees. With their big hair and bigger flares. Today, as we count down the days to go until the language exams, the lyrics keep spinning round and around my head.
Let’s start a brand new story…
They didn’t have the words to write with. So I changed my approach.
Phrasing and vocabulary.
Talk in everlasting words… Problem identified: lack of confidence using the vocabulary for persuading and arguing. My plan of attack was threefold:
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As part of our new blogs series from teachers who are using Edusites in their classrooms we are delighted that Helen has shared her experience of sitting timed questions with students. There is something wonderful about sitting papers along with students, not least because it causes the classroom to be filled with a group dynamic of concentrated hush...
The ability to compare and contrast is one of the most important and challenging skills to master for the GCSE and IGCSE 9 to 1 English Language and English Literature. Previously compare and contrast techniques were tested only by Controlled Assessment in one of the four units of English Literature: now it reaches across both specifications as detailed below. It takes on much greater significance because some reading passages in GCSE and IGCSE English Language and English Literature are unseen.
AQA make clear their ‘take’ on context which starts life in the DfE curriculum order of 2013: under the heading ‘reading comprehension and reading critically’ there are the following bullet points:literal and inferential comprehension: understand a word, phrase or sentence in context critical reading: identify the theme and distinguish between themes; support a point of view by referring to evidence in the text; using understanding of writers’ social, historical and cultural contexts to inform evaluation…of the text.
In English Language the section dedicated to critical reading and comprehension states that students should ‘draw inferences and justify these with evidence; support a point of view by referring to evidence within the text…’.In Assessment Objective AO2 there is the clear injunction: ‘use relevant subject terminology to support their views’. Assessment Objective AO4 asks them to ‘evaluate texts critically’: the questions for this will lead them towards such evaluation.
A sample section of Edusites English AQA Unseen Poetry Anthology. Includes an introduction around meaning, discussion points for the classroom and teaching tips for two poems. Top Examiner Tips look at what is required in answering unseen poems in terms of the assessment objectives, structuring a response, how to reference effectively and how to compare and contrast. Includes practice exam questions, using the poems, written as per AQA body structure and style.
In addition to these exam papers, Edusites has moderation videos, 360-degree analyses of how and why marks are awarded, for teacher and students to develop their skills.
Edusites English is the place to find English GCSE and IGCSE Language exams. But our exams, written by language experts, are not just about weighing the pig we have smart resources to fatten it too...
The Tibbets Paper 1 was sat in the Summer of 2018. The second of our feedback documents comes to you as a booklet which can be printed off for all of your students after sitting the exam for them to gain skills to apply in their next attempt.
GCSE English Language Exam Paper help from our expert Grainne Hallahan using a scientific method to get results! Like a juicy little nut that needs to be opened, the new Language paper landed in our inboxes in 2015, quite a different beast compared to its predecessor.
