Today, I’d like to talk to you about the way that the site is going to be and be organised in days ahead to hopefully give you a bit more organised of a browsing experience.
In the coming days, what you will see is that the materials on the site will be re-organised in phases.
The reason for the reorganisation, if it is not already immediately obvious, is to allow you easy access to our resources for a pleasant browsing experience right from the homepage rather than forcing you to navigate each time you need to look for something specific.
In particular, what you will soon see is that a table of contents will soon appear on the side that will allow you to easily navigate to different parts of it.
Think of it as your combination of a landing page and also a blog which you can immediately access each time you go to the homepage where the table of contents will allow you to easily navigate as you go through the site.
At the same time, please bear in mind that the table of contents will not encompass the full scope of what is available on the site, but instead will simply contain the essentials – the blog structure of this website will be maintained as we proceed through the days, and you will be able to see the most updated and recent post down below, so please just scroll down after you are done with the pinned post, and you will be able to see the majority of the site updates then.
Meanwhile, I would like to draw your attention to the search bar on the upper right – if you simply click upon it, you should be able to find a series of posts related to what you are looking for if you search some relevant keywords – search for narrative writing, for example, and you will find our bespoke guides to that material on the side right away – I thought that I would draw attention to it because it is rather small at the moment, and may not be seen by the visitors otherwise.
Thank you for your continued visits, and I look forward to serving you better in the days ahead – remember, if you find the site available, do share it with your friends, students, and even teachers so that they may make use of it on a greater level!
Hello there! If you purchased the book recently, you are entitled to access the premium tier of this website; thank you so much and I hope that it will bring you to where you wish to go, and beyond as you embark on the journey that is education and the IGCSE!
Rest assured that we are doing everything in our power, to refine the membership tier and to bring you a great experience when it comes to the time for memberships to open, and if you don’t receive access within the next week (by 7th April 2023), do send me a message and I will add you in as soon as I can!
In the meantime, I’d also like to define the benefits that members of the premium tier will get briefly in this post, and will do so more extensively at a later point.
Full access to all guides
Full access to recorded courses
Full access to worked solutions and responses for exams
Priority access to posts
Full essay breakdowns and analysis
Live office hour (once weekly, at 9pm on Tuesdays via Zoom)
Discounted access to future resources across the entire spectrum
Additional membership tiers will be defined at a later point perhaps for schools as well, but this is the draft for what I am envisioning for the premium tier at this point in time.
Free members of the website, please know that you will continue to receive access to the same level of high-quality content that you have had access to up until now, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future – Premium will be a cut above though, and if you see value in that, our promotion to grant you one year of access in return for the purchase of the book is still ongoing, and approximately 150 redemptions remain. If you see value in this work, I look forward to seeing you in the members section!
In the meantime, premium members, do give us some time as we prepare the membership area content for you – looking forward to serving you soon!
That’s essentially the conundrum that examiners face when they look at many descriptive writing essays written by students – the essays are often not detailed enough, they do not present sufficiently complex content, and they do not allow the person who is reading the essay to deeply and distinctly visualize the thing that the writer is trying to describe.
Well, this is what we’re going to address today!
IGCSE First Language English (0500) students often find descriptive writing for Descriptive Compositions to be a challenging yet rewarding aspect of the curriculum, specifically in Section B: Composition of Paper 2 of the IGCSE First Language English exam.
The thing is, crafting vivid and engaging descriptions requires a unique set of skills – it requires you to see details in the things that you look at, to be able to craft word pictures for people with great facility… And… You guessed it, it requires a deep understanding of the mark schemes!
In this blog post, we’ll share essential tips and strategies to help you excel in descriptive writing, ensuring that your essays align with the marking criteria and at the end of the day, contribute to your long-term development as a writer.
We will once again be examining the Cambridge sample mark scheme provided for Paper 2 on the Cambridge International website, focusing specifically on the criteria for Descriptive Writing, referencing Table A, Composition: Content and structure, and Table B, Composition: Style and accuracy as we think about what it means to write wellaccording to the overlords of the IGCSE!
For each piece of advice, we will provide a justification that correlates with the band descriptors used to assign marks to your descriptive essays, helping you understand how to elevate your writing and achieve the highest possible marks through consistent practice, reading, and improvement.
Let’s get started!
Create a Vivid and Convincing Picture:
A high-scoring descriptive essay presents a series of well-defined and developed ideas and images that create a convincing overall picture. Use sensory details, metaphors, similes, and precise vocabulary to paint a vivid picture of the scene, object, or person you are describing.
Another way to say this is also that you must learn to see a vivid and convincing picture. This is not a one-day process or something that you can achieve just by sitting down and thinking about things – rather, you must take the time to actually immerse yourself in the world around you and to ask yourself: What can I see in a flower? What can I see in a bird, a building, a tree? If you can only see that these things are merely the words that they code, then you may be missing a good part of narrative writing – for these things are exactly what you are being asked to look at, and then to describe.
These are two different skills:
You must first see an imagined reality that is convincing, beautiful, and consistent, then you must learn to communicate it. These are two separate skills, but they are both important.
Justification: According to the mark scheme, a top-scoring essay (14-16 marks) must have “content [that] is complex, engaging, and effective.” Creating a vivid and convincing picture fulfills these criteria by immersing readers in the world you have described and evoking strong emotional responses.
What this means in many cases is that you must go into detail.
For example, let’s suppose that you are describing a river as it flows down a mountain.
Do you simply describe the direction of the water, as in “the water flowed down the mountain, wetting the rocks as it moved swiftly downwards, pushing the grass aside as it coursed through towards the forests below”? Nope. You talk about its “sinuous reflectivity”, describe how it “almost seemed as if it was alive”, and you even move beyond that to talk about how the water “splashed about the rocks playfully”.
No sorry, that will not cut it.
To get a 6, you need to say something more along the lines of:
“A torrential cascade of crystal-clear water surged down the steep mountainside, its forceful currents carving intricate patterns in the rock face. As it rushed downward, the river’s glistening tendrils playfully danced around boulders and twisted through vibrant green grasses, leaving a mesmerizing trail of glistening droplets in its wake. As it approached the edge of the dense, verdant forest below, the water’s relentless momentum carried it through the shadows of the towering trees, their leaves shimmering as they swayed to the rhythm of the river’s eternal song.”
Why? Because it’s complex, engaging, effective. It allows you to immediately visualize the river as it flows down the mountain in a way that is unmistakable and truly vivid – It develops multiple different sentences in ways that allow the viewer to immerse themselves in the painting of words that’s been created – it creates something that’s distinct, absolutely clear to the memory, and that creates a strong impact in the reader.
Let’s move on to the next point! When you are describing…
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