Dreaming Spires Revision

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 ...

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'...

This may be one of the most frequently asked questions for people who are preparing to navigate the whole season of their children's lives where exams loom large. Quite frequently, parents will reason that English would be a good exam to do first. After all, it's the student's first language and they've been doing reading and writing for many years. However, most experienced home-educators and examiners advise that you hold off taking English. Why is that? A child who loves reading is preparing for exams, but not ready to take them. First of all, there are other exams with cut and dried answers, like maths, where you either know it or you don't, and these are easier to tackle in the earlier part of one's exam career. English, on the other hand, is essay-based, and this means that a student needs to be able to write fluently and with maturity, skills that are often "uncooked" in teens toward the thirteen-year-old end. Make no mistake: an e...