Dreaming Spires Revision

In my year-long writing course at Dreaming Spires Home Learning , we held a contest to see who wrote the best descriptive piece based on the topic of going on safari. Here is our winner's response: strong in atmosphere but lacking just that bit of consistency for top marks. "The safari truck trundles along the dirt road, the soft hum of the engine the only sign of civilisation. The dirt road that it travels is smooth and worn from many long years of use. Around the open-backed vehicle, the long, waving fronds of grass roll past like tiny waves in the wind, flowing like a stream. The jeep seems to be floating, sailing along the yellow-green sea. Trees stand out against the sky, a fishbowl of brightest blue above our heads. The sun shines down on us, and a drowsy heat sets in. The whole world, rippling like the grass below us, seems to be slowly drifting beneath the far away sky. Animals move in the distance, blurred shapes in the heat. The tall neck of a giraffe can be...

People are always asking me to tutor them for the CAIE literature exam and I often haven't the time, but this year, I'm going to offer 4 one-hour sessions on Wednesdays starting 1st of April, 2020, and meeting at 2 pm UK time. You can join all four or just a single one where you think your child needs most help. 1st April - unseen paper 4 8th April - poetry for paper 1, especially the anthology 15th April - prose for paper 1, especially Jane Eyre 22nd April - drama for paper 3, especially Macbeth Each session is £30 each, or all four for £100 in total.  Use this form to register, maximum is 4 students so don't delay!   Loading…

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 start...

We're entering the heavy-duty revision season again as CAIE rolls its new 2020 version off the shelves and into the exam halls. Questions are coming thick and fast from those trying to navigate what the mark scheme means about this, what the instructions mean about that, and one of those pesky little details - that is, word counts - is causing consternation amongst my current revision students. Word counts are usually just a guide for how much the board is expecting the material to merit, though it's not unusual to go over the count for Question 2 (d), the one about language analysis (in the old style exam, this was Question 2 in the Reading Paper noted as 21, 22, or 23). None of them are extremely consequential as long as you're writing enough. The one exception is Question 1(f), the summary of Text B. The summary question (Question 3 in the old style) is definitely expecting concise expression, so if (as it is now) advising "not more than 120" words,...

I'm really happy to announce that Yvonne Mason, my colleague at Dreaming Spires Home Learning , is joining the revision team for offering short courses over Easter to help hone a student's skills for their English Language IGCSE. Meeting up in Autumn Just like the CAIE course that I've run for almost a decade, Yvonne's course will go through past papers and suggest best practice, sharing tips, giving warnings of places where students often trip up. She won't, however, mark any mocks like I do for the CAIE due to time constraints this year. We can make suggestions as to someone who will mark mocks for you instead if you so wish. Both courses - my CAIE and her Edexcel - will run live, online daily during the Easter holidays starting the 15th of April. Hers will meet at 6 pm and mine at 7 pm. If this is something you want for your teen, then don't delay: we have a limited number of spaces and they're likely to fill up fast. To register for...

Students wanted a longer holiday, so we've compromised: we're now starting the crammer on the 4th of September and will run it for just four days, from 2-4 pm daily. I blame it on CIE for scheduling the exam so early this Autumn, but it is the last one of the current spec, so probably safest exam to take in the foreseeable future in terms of track record of past papers and examiners knowing how to mark it. Let me show you the way to go! (PS This isn't me in the photo, but it is my son and my dog)

We're excited to announce that, starting August this year, Dreaming Spires Revision is offering daily crammers for not just CIE English Language exams (0500), but now the CIE English Literature exam (0486), too! Both courses will be offered on a daily basis during the fortnight of 13th-24th August, and registration is now open, so grab your place before we're full. Check out the "Upcoming Courses in English Language" tab for days and times for the 0500 crammer. Check out the "New Courses in English Literature" tab for days and times for the 0486 crammer. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch via the contact form in the right-hand menu (PC), or email me at dreamingspiresrevision<at>gmail<dot>com

Students are making a hash of this question, probably over-thinking it. They can also under-think it ... by not reading the question! Almost every time, Question 3 on Paper 2 wants a list based off the insert that has been GENERALISED from the specific example in the insert. Many years ago, candidates were asked to read the insert and pick out points about characteristics of fictional detectives. Another one was about difficulties and obstacles to building the Panama Canal. Another one was about declining bee populations, and still another about Houdini. I've just been marking mock exams where the insert was about Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, but the question wanted to know what was the allure of Wild West shows in general. So where students were saying who Buffalo Bill was, and that his show once played for Queen Victoria, they weren't answering the question about how these shows in general were capturing imaginations of the populace: details lik...

Please, please, please, please, please ... Are you listening???  Good. I'm going to say this just one more time. So even if the exam task for descriptive writing asks you to include thoughts and feelings, it doesn't mean to digress into interior monologue about how you felt about something, about your thoughts, your flashbacks, your back story, what you hope to find in the future. In order to REVEAL your thoughts and feelings in a DESCRIPTION, you overlay value to the objects you choose to focus on, you add atmosphere to the moment. How about an example? A long time ago, there was a descriptive task about being on a cable car that suddenly stopped. Here's how you DON"T show your thoughts and feelings for a description: We were stuck sky-high on a cable car and I was hoping that someone would come get us soon. My phone's battery was dead, though, and the lady next to me seemed to be about a hundred-thousand years ...

We're just two days away from the Autumn sittings for the CIE English Language IGCSE exam, and I'm already looking ahead to Spring by opening up registrations for the LIVE AND ONLINE weekly January course as well as the daily Easter crammer to help students prepare for their exams for the summer of 2018. Dreaming Spires Revision time??? I'm so excited!!!! We'll be looking at the summer exams from last year, and taking advantage of my years of experience with this exam and what examiners are looking for.  So why slog through reinventing the wheel when I can point your teens to exactly the way to focus on each question, AND mark a mock for them to help them see where they can revise more efficiently? This course is delivered live and online, and is open to students from all over the world. We regularly have people attend from New Zealand, India, Singapore, and throughout Europe. If the weekly course doesn't suit your time zone, then let me know that...

Come enter the Rafflecopter giveaway of a FREE paperback copy of my exam revision guide for the CIE 0500 English Language IGCSE exam. This guide will walk your student through each question on the higher-tier papers, giving tips, tricks, short-cuts, and advice, while also warning of pitfalls to avoid. Enter as often as you like - no string attached! Use this link:  http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/85f3ef824/?

Do you feel stressed about the CIE 0500 English Language exam that's coming up this Autumn? Come along to our daily crammer and get all the strategies to make you feel more prepared, focused, and confident. After taking Dr P's crammer course, "Wilfred" felt in control. Now taking student registrations for the daily course that's starting 2nd of October,  meeting at 8 am because nobody has anything planned then but a few extra zzzzzzs!!! What: Dreaming Spires Revision crammer course for CIE 0500 IGCSE in English Language (higher tier) Where: On your computer - it's live and online When: 2nd-6th, and 9th and 10th October, 8 am daily. Cost: £80 including mocking a mark exam (2 papers) How: Register here to receive details of sending payment Who: Only 20 of you, so don't miss the chance to get live tuition from Dr P, author of "How to Ace the English Language IGCSE" , available on ebook and paperback from Amazon.

Usually, I think descriptive questions in Paper 3 of the CIE 0500 IGCSE are easier than narrative questions, but this year was an exception. I thought they were rather difficult, and invited narrative approaches which, of course, would limit a student's success on it. Earlier this summer, I was discussing this in a private Skype with one of my students, and we decided to have a challenge. Each of us would write our version of the descriptive piece based on the actual exam question. His parents joined in, too. Here are the results of that little game that we played, published on the  Facebook Page.    In the next post, I'm going to try to tease out the process I used for tackling a hard descriptive question like this, and make some systematic suggestions should this trend for vague and narrative continue. Enjoy! PS Why not respond in a comment with YOUR descriptive answer, or pop over to the FB page and add yours there? It would be fun! FROM FB PAGE: Her...

Ever wondered which were the most straightforward, confidence-boosting CIE IGCSE 0500 English Language exam papers to choose from all the options out there? Well, my answer is ... THESE! There's a light at the end of the tunnel! If you're looking for a last set of mock papers to try that won't crush any confidence that was starting to emerge at this late stage, then look at these two papers. One of them is a Paper 2 from October/November 2015, and the other is Paper 3 from November 2016. Here's a link to the papers: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qMpLJGZEzKi5owTFq1NjkvHDMbyVwSHM?usp=sharing  Just remember: BREATHE! I mean, literally: breathe! It will get oxygen going to your brain, and you'll think more clearly.

No matter how many times I teach my crammer students that a certain CIE question is best answered with five distinct steps, they will still insist on doing the steps out of order or leaving some of them out. Today, my son helped me make a video to stress the importance of doing things in the right order. You can find it at this link here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZUG4GKkdEk If there's a recipe, follow the steps in the right order At the risk of over-explaining the video, I'm going to describe what's happening in it. (The time-lapse feature means sometimes it's hard to follow) First, he tries to make porridge by putting the bowl in the microwave -- empty! Then he puts in the milk, and while I'm getting the oats, he also adds honey. I give him a fresh bowl, and he pours all the oats into the bowl. I mean, ALL the oats! So, we take oats back out and pour in only the right amount. (This is important for the specific question, which wants only ...

I'm a huge believer in routines, just for life and living in general. However, when it comes to academics in our household, routine is one of our foundational principles. Regular times for school help concentration This is partly because we are followers of the Charlotte Mason method, and Miss Mason's motto was "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life." In other words, she includes routine - or "discipline" - in the very basis of her educational theories, and I've found that a regular routine of working on academics together in our home school has a huge impact on our successes or our relative failures. When we sit down to read our books together every day at 10 am, but kids come ready to learn, to concentrate, to discuss, and to focus. If we fall out of this routine, the kids really struggle to learn on the same level. They get a bit silly, they interrupt, they're distracted. We lose the thread of our books and have to review thing...

Getting that good night’s sleep the night before an exam — impossible, right? Well, here are some ideas that might help. It looks so easy, doesn't it? One of the things that will help get to sleep is eating foods that contain the amino acid tryptophan, since these will in turn help your body manufacture the sleep hormone, melatonin. These include dairy products like cheese, yoghurt, milk, as well as nuts, seeds, meat, and even tofu. On the other hand, bright flashing lights and back-lit screens from television, tablets, and other electronic devices have been shown to suppress melatonin production. They emit "blue light" which your brain interprets as daylight, so turning these off nice and early - say, 5 pm - would be a good idea if you’re wanting to get to sleep early. Electronics can inhibit sleep hormones To my mind, though, one of the key things to do is start a regular bedtime routine in the month before the exam period. It doesn't take l...

Here's a question that was recently posed on one of the exam chat boards: what's the best pen to use for the exams. Beautiful but not really practical! With the English Language exam, it's really important that you have a a nice strong line with a fine nib and no bleed through. I've just been marking my crammer students' mocks, and those with a weak line are very hard to read. This will necessarily hurt a student's grade, because much of what an examiner is looking for is fluency of expression. If instead he/she is having to decipher each word, the fluidity of the sentence is compromised. On the other hand, a pen that bleeds through is equally bad. Exam scripts are now scanned into a computer for examiners to mark on the screen, and if a student has bleed-through on the script, it's also really hard to read (and they're hard enough on the computer as it is!). Basically, the more clarity with a student's answers in terms of handwriting a...

If I had only one tip to give a student, it would be this one: read the question ! Even though I give my revision students a mantra about remembering to read questions carefully, they will still create or manufacture their own version of what the question is asking, and thus, end up NOT answering the question at all. Just a slight alteration to the starting point can mean you miss the goal entirely! It happens all the time in the exam. The question can be about an early morning stroll through the town, but students will write instead about what it's like at night, or what it's like to walk into the country from the city, or write about the city in two different seasons. Or, it can ask what a father should do about his child's experience at school, but the answer is turned into a diatribe against modern educational practices. For an exam that tallies 50 out of 100 marks for how well you can read, it would make sense to avoid sabotaging your grade by breezing over...

When I mark exams, I have to be honest that I like to start with the last question and work my way back to Question 1, whether it's the reading or the writing paper. I'm not sure why I like to do this. I think it's because all the other questions are more cut-and-dried or enjoyable, while the Question 1s sometimes feel like nails on a chalkboard to me. For the exam candidate, there are some good reasons for freeing yourself from the normal conventions. In the reading paper, for example, that Question 3 listing is something you can do in a fairly short time frame, and the subsequent summary should be churned out just as fast as you can write. Free yourself from convention Both these parts of Question 3 get easier and faster the more you practise them, so I just keeping thinking: why not grab some quick points in a short time frame, and leave yourself to ponder the more laborious Question 1 with some points already in the bag? There are more complex and detailed ...