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IGCSE English

Assessment GCE O Levels IGCSE English

Best of luck for Paper 1 tomorrow!

victortanws
 

Good luck to all of you out there who are taking your 0500 paper 1 tomorrow!

I trust it’s going to be an interesting experience, and as you go into the exam, go in the knowledge that you have already prepared your very best, but do remember some of the following small things.

Remember to read your questions.

When you are navigating, you need an address. If you don’t have the address, it doesn’t matter where you go, what you do, at the end of the day, you still won’t get to where it is that you want to go.

So, learn what you’re supposed to do, read the questions carefully, and then go in that direction.

Don’t just throw yourself along a path while hoping that you’ll get somewhere, because you definitely won’t.

Next tip, make sure to plan out your answers.

I know it’s very easy to just think that you should go in guns blazing, writing as fast as you possibly can, but really, planning out something can be helpful in a whole bunch of different ways.

I can’t remember who it was, but someone, perhaps it was Lincoln, said that if you were given 6 hours to chop down a tree, he would spend the first 4 sharpening the axe.

Obviously, you don’t have 4 hours during the course of your IGCSE exam, and if you try that, then you’ll be off and with no grade. So please don’t follow that advice literally; on the metaphorical front, do take some time to think about what you’re going to say, because that is going to pay dividends down the line when you structure, have a clear idea, and then finish in time.

Next tip, make sure to think about time.

Generally, each of the sections that you complete can be thought of as a 40-minute section, a 40-minute section, and a 40-minute section, respectively for your reading comprehension and then summary, then your reading comprehension, and then explanation and writer’s effect, and then finally, the extended response to reading.

Budget your time well, and make sure that you are going ahead and just ensuring that you have ample time to respond.

Next tip, when you are reading, make sure not to deceive yourself.

Remember that you are reading a text. This is not a time for you to impose your own opinions.

It is a time for you to understand, to retrieve, and from there to synthesize. It’s not time to start campaigning.

None of you are going to become Greta Thunbergs and simultaneously obtain an A-star if the cause that you are going for is environmental science when in fact the paper was actually about running a marathon. It doesn’t work that way.

My last tip, just go in with a sense that you are going to learn something along the way and that you’ve already done your best.

So treat it as a good time to go in, enjoy some interesting text, write a response, and know that you’ve already done your best by that point because it is going to be the best that you’ve done by that point.

You can’t really change anything.

I have no idea if any of you are going to retake things but that’s a separate question. Go in with a feeling that this exam will not determine your life because certainly it won’t. It may decide the kind of grade that you eventually get but that at the end of the day isn’t really going to be consequential relative to the other things that could ostensibly affect your life.

So just go in with the knowledge that it’s going to be an interesting time and that there is going to be something cool to gain right here and enjoy yourself.

That’s all there is.

Alright, good luck everyone, have a great time and I look forward to seeing you on the other side!

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Descriptive Composition First Language English IGCSE English

Descriptive Essay Composition Bank Updated! (19th March, 2024)

victortanws
 

Dear all,

The Descriptive essay compilation has been updated!

Want to gain the exact examples you need for that A*? Sign up for a Premium membership so that you don’t miss out, today!

V.

Describe the people waiting for an important visitor to arrive.
Write a description with the title ‘A special building – inside and outside’.

We hope you enjoyed these essays! If you want to join our IGCSE First Language English class or just want to know how we can help you, please feel free to fill in this form, or drop us a WhatsApp here.

Alternately, you may scan the QR code below:

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Grammar IGCSE English Paper 1 Paper 2

The Complete IGCSE Grammar Guide: Book Release!

victortanws
 

I’m very excited to announce to all of you today that I have just released the complete IGCSE grammar guide and it’s available right now on my website!

Before you purchase…

What is this book about?

This is an IGCSE English grammar book.

It’s suitable for both First Language English students as well as English as a Second Language students who are taking the 0500 exam as well as the 0510 exam, and it’s also suitable for students of all ages who are interested in learning about the mechanics of English grammar across all ages.

Have a look at a sample below!

SAMPLE-The-Complete-Grammar-Guide-for-IGCSE-StudentsDownload

If you’re interested to purchase, click here; to complete your purchase, simply click or tap “Add to cart”, and you should be able to view your cart and check out normally using your credit card; please note that this is an eBook and no physical copy will be distributed to you!

Why this book?

I decided to write this book when I started to notice that my students were facing trouble in writing and constructing sentences, even though they are technically First Language students. This made me realize that there’s a little bit of a gap in what the IGCSE requires in terms of First Language English and English as a Second Language, what students are prepared to demonstrate, and what schools actually do teach along the way; although First Language English is a curriculum that was designed by Cambridge to create a curriculum for First Language English speakers, people take First Language English for a whole variety of reasons; maybe they take the subject because sometimes they just want to get into universities or it’s part of a requirement or maybe their school doesn’t allow them to take anything else…

But the net result is that many students who are taking First Language English and English as a Second Language do not have the requisite grammatical skills to write and communicate well in English.

This is terrible, because grammar is the foundation of almost all good writing; it is essentially the rules of the English language and what First Language is asking for is for the ability to demonstrate that you have certain types of artistry in mind as you create summaries, writer’s effect pieces, and everything in between…

But how can you create a work of artistry when you don’t even know the rules in the first place, let alone how to break them beautifully?

So that’s where this book comes in.

This book is…

  • Comprehensive.

    It’s essentially a full-scale study guide and reference book that is going to teach you about pretty much everything it is that you need to know about grammar, whether you’re a Year 8 student or Year 11 student. The book’s 230+ pages will teach you everything that you need to know about grammar and more, with a special emphasis on the elements that are required for IGCSE success, in the context of IGCSE English and much more!
  • Organized.

    It’s organized into multiple different sections that teach you about things like, for example, the parts of speech, multi-sentence pronoun-antecedent agreement, the different types of possible sentence structures, irregular verbs, irregular nouns, verb conjugations, and so on so forth.

    Each of these sections is ordered in such a way that it addresses common problems that students face in writing from the very outset and targets those problems from the perspective of a learner.
  • Practice-focused.

    The book contains many different exercises that you can conduct in order to improve your understanding and to test your understanding over the course of time and ultimately at the end of the day come out with the understanding of English grammar that you’ll need to conquer the IGCSE; you’ll get the chance to understand grammatical concepts on an intuitive level.

Ready to dramatically level up your writing and speaking? Purchase the book today!

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