Dreaming Spires Revision

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...

This may be an unnecessary post. You may know exactly where to get Past Papers for the CIE iGCSE English Language exam, but just in case, my go-to links for old papers are: http://papers.xtremepapers.com/CIE/Cambridge%20IGCSE/English%20-%20First%20Language%20(0500)/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzumkDfi9230MEF4T3FSemtmNWM Pointing you the right way Here are three things you need to know about past papers: 1) The Cambridge Board changed its "spec" or its style of questions back in June of 2015. This means any paper before that is not in the current style. 2) That being said, there are still sections of the old papers that are useful for practice. Particularly, the Question 2 on Paper 2 -- that's the one about analysing the language of a passage. That's still there in the new spec, unchanged. In Paper 3, the descriptive and narrative tasks are unchanged as well, and you can get a huge range of practice questions that would be helpful. 3) ...

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...