Dreaming Spires Revision

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...

Returning for January 2017, the weekly crammer course is making an appearance again. Running on Mondays at 1 pm from the 16th of January, it spreads the 8 sessions over a longer period of time. We're also running the Easter crammer as usual -- eight straight days starting the 10th of April, at 7:30 pm. Either one is £80 to get tutored in person by the author who wrote the book "How to Ace the CIE iGCSE English Language exam." The basis for both it and the Easter crammer will be last summer's exam, so if you're revising on your own already, you might want to avoid doing that one so you come to it fresh.

I've just closed the window on the last live webinar for the August crammer course. The students have been inundated with Dos and Don'ts from examiner's reports, mark schemes, and my own experience on "the other side". Even before the week had ended, people were asking when I'm next offering the course. That would be the Easter holidays next year, 2017. Easter is really late this year, so a crammer at that point will really be the final polishing before exams start in May. If you want to get a head start on what to study, then buy my revision guide: there are plenty of examples there of good practice, tips for revision, and ways to improve your writing in advance of taking the crammer. Buy it here from Amazon, either as a Kindle book or paperback:  http://tinyurl.com/hr8bmyl What would it add to your child's study to attend the crammer if you've got the book? New examples, for one. A chance to have homework and questions marked by me, with my e...

Sometimes, students get worried that the CIE syllabus for Question 1 the Reading Paper (known as Paper 2) will test whether they can do magazine articles, interviews, reports, letters, and journals, but this isn't really what the exam is testing at all! The exam board basically wants to know four things: Do you know what the Reading Insert selection is saying -- just the facts, the details, the basic idea? Do you know what the Reading Insert selection is implying -- what's between the lines, behind the details? Can you take the point of view and style of the Reading Insert selection, and modify it to a different point of view and style? For example, if Pete is shopping with Veronica at the garden centre and complains about it throughout the text, can you take on the point of view of Veronica, and write a journal entry about Pete's behaviour instead? Can you write this journal entry in competent English -- meaning good vocabulary, variety of sentence structures, dec...

Dreaming Spires Revision topped out at twenty student this year! Dreaming Spires hit the maximum this year! Dr Patrick taught the twenty iGCSE students from her home-town of Texas over the fortnight of Easter holidays, using the break from her other tutorial classes to visit her ailing father at the same time. However, the internet allows people to attend from all over -- Austria was on the list, too! Except for the threat of a thunderstorm and a powercut, the ten daily lessons went without a hitch. Dr Patrick even worked out how to record each class and load it onto the unlisted YouTube channel. (It helped that the house where she was staying had super-fast broadband.) Some of the famous sayings from the course were "Rolling on the Bed Laughing", "That's just the say it is," and "I know! That's bonkers!!!". ROTBL Now all the students have taken their mock exams and Dr P has returned them. Some really great work, including two per...

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.