Do you know what a "meeple" is? It's a game--playing piece in the shape of a person, and coming to realise how you, an exam candidate, are like a meeple is important in your psyche for the exam, especially the CAIE English Language version.
It's simple, really. Each question on the exam has a set of "rules" - the way it's asked, the way you answer, and what the mark scheme is looking for. There's a game to play here.
Quite typically, the questions with longer answers will set a task along the lines of "You are the little girl" or "You are the father" or "You are the mayor" or some other kind of persona.
In each case, "you" is not going to be ... well ... you. It's going to be the persona you adopt for answering the question as the game wants you to.
This is particularly important in Paper 2, Question 1, where the task includes evaluating some texts. Personally, you may quite like the idea of starting later in the school day, or banning electronics in the home, or adding encouraging young people to try extreme sports, but you have to set "you" aside and find the stronger argument in the texts you're given.
You play the game. The headteacher thinks starting later is too disruptive to the rest of the world; the parent thinks electronics are less the problem than bad parenting skills; the reader of the article is appalled to think that anyone would encourage, even glamourise, something as dangerous and irresponsible as extreme parkour.
So remember this: the exam is like a board game, and you are a meeple who's trying to win it.
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