English Language GCSE - tips.
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Re: English Language GCSE - tips.
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.
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Re: English Language GCSE - tips.
Language paper 1 tomorrow. Thanks for the tips, piggys.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.
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Re: English Language GCSE - tips.
good luck to all DCs. Will be interested to hear how they found it.