Dreaming Spires Revision

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...

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.

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 ...

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...

I don't know why students don't want to use the bullet points available to them on Question 1 on Paper 2, but I can assure you, they're there for a reason. These three bullet points are your friends! Three's the magic number on Question 1 Use each one of the bullet points as a paragraph with information that comes from the insert. It may mean you have to search throughout the insert for what to include in each of the bullet points, but that will only show off your ability to re-organise your thoughts. In the main, these bullet points are generally asking the same three things: What are some of the obvious things in the insert that show your comprehension is good? What are some of the implications of details, ie, how well do you read between the lines? Often this will include someone's thoughts and feelings, perhaps based on another character's actions and behaviours. All four of these items - thoughts, feelings, actions, behaviours - should be add...

Another common question I get asked is about how many mock papers a student should do in preparation for the exam. Work, work, work ... but best? The answer is slightly complicated by the need to practise questions vs practising a whole paper. Ever since CIE changed its spec starting June 2015, the papers before then aren't very useful for taking as a complete mock. However, they still offer a number of great opportunities to practise certain skills that you find in the current style of exam. For example, I think it's great to do a lot of practice with the old Question 3s from Paper 2. There won't be 15 facts to find as there are in the current papers - maybe only 7 or 8 -- but practising the skill of identifying "salient facts" continues to be relevant, and not just for Question 3, but even for Question 1. I know you'll probably want to do some Question 3s for the new spec, too, though, so how do you choose which ones to do only in part, and whi...

The CIE English exam cares about your punctuation, spelling, grammar, and sentence structures - not as much as it used to, but enough that you need to spend time revising these aspects of your skills. A lot of people try to do this via workbooks, short answer, quizzes, and exercises, but I think the best way to cover all these aspects of "mechanics" is something called "copywork". I still do copywork, too! Essentially, copywork is taking a classic book like The Hobbit or A Tale of Two Cities or something poetic like selections from Hardy or Frost, and copying their words - word by word, comma by comma - for ten to fifteen minutes a day. It's not a quick-fix by any means, but an organic process that will strengthen all your writing skills in one activity. One of the ways it works is that it forces you to pay close attention to the words that you're copying. If, for example, you were to copy just the sentence I wrote before this, you would probab...

Here's another question that's asked frequently on the various home-education boards on Facebook: which iGCSE board should you use, CIE or Edexcel? The truth of the matter is that most people don't have a choice - you have to choose the board that's offered at your nearby exam centres. If your exam centre offers both, then you will need to weigh up the style of exam, learning style of your teen, exam dates, and other factors to make your decision. For example, these exams vary in how long each session is for taking the papers. CIE's exam is two different papers at 2 hours each. Edexcel has two options: Spec A which is also 2 papers but of 2 hours 15 and 1 hour 30, and part of this Spec requires knowledge and preparation of an anthology beforehand, whereas Spec B has no anthology but is a single paper of 3 hours' duration. Second, CIE changed its spec back in June 2015, so it isn't due any overhaul or alteration in the near future, whereas Edexcel is go...

Most students who register for my crammer courses have already been studying past papers with a fine-tooth comb. (See the Exam Tip about Finding Past Papers HERE .) It's not unusual to see students get burned out with this repetition. Plus, they sometimes feel that they stall in their studies and stop forward progress. Indeed, they even come to the correct conclusion that just cramming the paper over and over isn't enough for what they want to achieve. So, I'm often asked what else can they do to strengthen their skills in English that will be useful for the exam? Personally, I think this is letting the tail wag the dog. Gratuitous photo of a dog with a tail Performance-related testing is killing students' love, interest, and mastery of almost all subjects, leading them instead to prefer knowing just what's on the test and not bother about the transferable skills and life lessons one could get if one studied a subject properly. But I realise that'...

Hey, everybody -- if you have a student who is doing the CIE iGCSE 0500 English Language exam in the near future (that's the higher tier option), then you'll want to get on board the raffle for a free copy of my revision guide. If you're not doing it, could you please share this giveaway on your social media?  The link below will take you to the giveaway site and tell you what you need to do, or go to our Facebook page to enter it from there:  https://www.facebook.com/dreamingspiresrevision/app/228910107186452/ a Rafflecopter giveaway

I'm a current examiner for CIE and find myself with a few spare days over half term when I could mark some CIE English Language iGCSE 0500 (higher tier) mock exams. How would you like me to mark your child's practice papers so you can get some encouragement and last-minute tips? Well, this is one of those rare chances! Costs are £20 for one paper (that is, Paper 2 or Paper 3), or £30 for 2 papers (could be 2 x Paper 2, or 2 x Paper 3, or one each of Paper 2 and Paper 3). NOTE: I don't mark Paper 1. The only limitations are: Your child is taking the exam THIS autumn (if you're taking it in the Spring, please wait) Only a maximum of two papers per student You can choose which papers you sit as long as they're summer 2015 or later.  Don't submit any papers that the student has already practised, or the results will be skewed. Check Xtreme Papers for numerous versions you could use. Contact me on the blogger form ASAP to receive further details, ...

The response for this year's crammer course has been the best ever -- fifteen registered students even with a month to go! Welcome Packs to all those fully paid were posted yesterday, and probably to their horror, they have been give homework already! If you are hoping to join us for Easter but haven't contacted me yet, please do so ASAP. I have some wiggle room with class limits, and if demand is evident, it's possible that a second group could be started at a different time. Is your child still a year or two away from taking the English iGCSE? Then why not consider our sister course, Dreaming Spires Home Learning . Combine literature with our writing add-on for all the the skills of iGCSE English. Courses have started for 2015, but you can choose mid-term entry after Christmas for 2016 if you'd like to.

If you want to prepare your child for the CIE iGCSE English Language (First Language) exams -- known as the 0500 syllabus -- then what better way than to sign up for an online two-week crammer course over the Easter holidays with an experienced CIE examiner? For the third year, I'm offering my ten-hour crammer course where we meet online daily for an hour's live webinar, plus you get email contact, short homework assignments, and a marked mock exam -- all in good time for the early May exam dates. Best of all, I have frozen the course fee at £75 for 2015, and siblings get a 50% discount. Referrals get a 10% discount. Space is limited to fifteen students, eight places of which are already booked up -- so don't delay in contacting me and reserving a place for your child. Details of Easter 2015 Crammer Course for CIE iGCSE in English Language: Dates: 30 March - 10 April, daily Time: 3-4 pm BST Cost: £75 Dr Kat Patrick has a PhD and PGCE in English, examines fo...

Many of us in the homeschooling community in the UK have been on tenterhooks after learning that the Government had ruled out iGCSEs in English Language as an accepted qualification to study free at FE colleges. This meant that homeschooled students in the near future were going to have to either do one of three things: find an exam centre that would not only offer GCSE exams to private candidates, but also provide a way for them to satisfy the moderated speaking/listening portion of English exams; or take GCSE English in the FE college at post-16; or take the iGCSE as per usual, but hope that it wasn't further eroded as a qualification at, say, university. So, I can't express my appreciation enough to our hard-working colleagues (and presumably, plenty of independent schools who also take iGCSEs) who have finally broken through the stalemate and received word that the Government has u-turned on this. Here is an extract from the ruling: We have decided, foll...

This is my first foray into running Dreaming Spires as a short course -- that is, over a 2-day tutorial rather than the usual 10 days. My clever attempt to show Dreaming Spires as a "short" course Needs must when students are otherwise booked up and unable to fit the usual schedule, and that, of course, is the beauty of dealing with an individual tutor rather than an institution that's not flexible. If you were hoping to sign up for an iGCSE tutorial but just couldn't fit it in, then why not either jump on tomorrow's two-day version, or talk to me about setting up the short version for yourself and some friends?