English Language GCSE - tips.

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tiffinboys
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Joined: Fri Nov 11, 2011 11:00 pm
Location: Surrey

Re: English Language GCSE - tips.

Post by tiffinboys »

Do not stress. DC said it was not so hard to do speaking endorsement. Most of his class got D (distinction). But they did it in year 11.
tiffinboys
Posts: 8022
Joined: Fri Nov 11, 2011 11:00 pm
Location: Surrey

Re: English Language GCSE - tips.

Post by tiffinboys »

piggys wrote:The 'structure' questions appear to be the ones most folk are finding difficult. Here is my checklist of possible features to identify and comment on:

- impact of opening sentence: does it raise questions? is it provocative or mysterious? (eg "last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay"). Perhaps the piece opens with something dramatic and / or unusual (eg "Hale knew by midday that they meant to murder him"). Doe the narrative unfold gradually or are we thrust into the midst of the action?

- chronology: does the extract unfold chronologically or are there flashbacks/forwards in time?

- time markers : " ten minutes later I was doing xyz.......an hour later nothing had changed" and so on. They provide a time context. There are also indirect time markers, such as 'suddenly / immediately / gradually / a little later 'and so on.

- narrative voice: who is the speaker? what tense is the piece written in? what can you say about this?

- the interplay of long multiclause sentences (very typical in pre 20th C lit so that's EDEXCEL paper 1) and short, 'staccato' sentences.

- certain punctuation features such as rhetorical questions, hyphens and ellipses.....also very common in pre 20th c.

-Use of direct speech rather than reported speech: normally it makes the characters more convincing and realistic.

-Motifs: a repeated image or symbol. This is tricky because it's arguably a language feature, but if it recurs and is positioned several times in a text it has structural importance too and provides emphasis. It could be the repetition of a slogan or phrase too.

- perspective: whose is it? if there is more than one it's definitely worth a comment.

- movement from beginning to end: how have things changed by the end? or are we back to where we started?

Hope this helps all the Y11s :) If anyone has any generic questions about language, structure or perspective and so on please feel free to ask.
Language paper 1 tomorrow. Thanks for the tips, piggys.
silverysea
Posts: 1105
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:32 pm

Re: English Language GCSE - tips.

Post by silverysea »

good luck to all DCs. Will be interested to hear how they found it.
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