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!

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.

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:

Dear all,

Wow! The IGCSE is coming up quick!

With that in mind… 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.

You’ll find the new essays below:

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:

Learning English is often thought of as something daunting, a chore, an annoyance maybe, especially if you’ve come from a background where your first language isn’t English, but you’ve been forced to take this accursed paper because you need it for a scholarship, a university replacement, or just because your school doesn’t offer English as a second language at all. 

It’s storytime.

Today, I’d like to share a story about how I personally learned English, and a journey of technology and its strange and wonderful influence upon my psyche. 

I remember it clear as day. 

I was 9 years old, and at that time I was your average Chinese school kid at SJK(C) Damansara – the difference? It wasn’t only my Chinese that was bad back then, because so was my English. Conversant only in broken English, and unable to form sentences longer than 10 words without the entire structure breaking apart, as shown by the red squiggly lines that appear within the first of any 10 seconds that I spent typing things out on Microsoft Word. 

On this day I was sitting in the school computer room – A treat at the time! 

It was the only air-conditioned room made available to us lowly primary school students at the time. A wonder of a place where dozens of computers were arranged in matrix seating format so all of us could sit down for a brief few minutes and imbibe in the wonders of technology that would later, though we did not know, entirely consume us. 

The day seemed like an average day. But it was not to be… Because the woman who walked in was not our teacher. 

Dressed in a coat and pants, she carried an uncommon air of professionalism at the outset that was immediately shattered as the ensuing moments took place. 

“Class, Ms. Lim cannot make it to school, and I am your substitute for today”, she declared, walking into the room. 

As she appeared into vision, it became clear that she was struggling to walk. 

You see, in her left hand, she held a book – in her right, a heavy plastic box, and as she got to her designated teacher’s table, she dropped all she was holding with a satisfying crash. 

“Students, today you will do very important work!” she declared, figure of authority as she was. 

“Take these and open the file inside,” she continued, stretching her arms out, and pulled the teacher’s chair towards her.

As she sat down, placing her red high heels in front of her as her legs splayed disgracefully onto the table, I saw that the book was not a book – it was a CLEO fashion magazine. 

Anyway, we lined up. 

Lining up, we did not question her as we took out the floppy disks that she had prepared.

When I returned to my table and put the floppy disk in, the files that I saw in the folder were not quite what I expected. Because instead of the bundles of screenshots and recordings, that we’d see in consultants’ training decks, there was something different:

A game, which flickered into force as it showed a knight, a princess, and a castle in full 8-bit Technicolor glory, portending a journey of heroism and victory, leading me away from the classroom and into the embrace of another universe. 

My destiny that fated morning was to save the princess, but by the most unconventional means possible. 

By solving fill-in-the-blanks vocabulary questions.

It was ridiculous to think about it then, and it is ridiculous to think about it now…

But there I was, fighting werewolves, punching orcs, and slaying goblins with my word-blade; question after fateful question, I fought for honor in a world of knights and joust-earned honor, finally slaying the dragon on easy mode, and well before I understood why “SAT” was listed as the hardest possible difficulty. 

When I eventually took the SAT, I received a perfect score of 800 on the verbal section, beating out 99.99% of the entire population, and a 790 for mathematics.

There are other parts of that story, but somehow that is always the most salient moment to which my mind returns: a single point that I look to when I consider what could truly be considered a formative experience of my education.

It was the point at which I began to associate education with entertainment. The beginning of that joyful association that would lead me to learn word after word and eventually achieve the perfect score. Not because I was forcing myself to do it, but because it seemed natural: 

Like breathing air.

I don’t know how many of you out there have ever had an experience like that. In all likelihood, many of you are being forced. 

You look at the printed page and you see suffering instead of the words that are supposed to congeal into sentences and eventually deliver themselves into meaning. 

This is only natural if you’ve not had the serendipity to see the language in that light. And unfortunately, it’s not all that surprising. 

The modern world, though filled with wonders, is besought by education systems administered by teachers who may not captivate our interest, and in the first place, we may not think that verbosity of the constellation of traits that could be developed by a person might be within the upper percentiles of matters to which our attention should be devoted.

If you are that person, then I hope that something will change. If this piece was the thing to cause that change, then I should be very happy. 

But if not, I hope that some alternate thing will come out of left field and bowl you over, catalyzing the magic that I felt when I saw that video game appear on the screen. 

Of course, as I learned in the CELTA, education is not entirely entertainment, and neither is entertainment education and so, a happy balance must be found. 

But what I do know is this. 

That simple moment filled with the joy of an unexpected change. If it could happen to me, then it can certainly happen to you as well. And if it could happen with a random class of primary school students in Malaysia, it can certainly happen at your schools in Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, and the many other geographic destinations that you guys come from. Above all, this was just a fun memory that I thought to share, and you found some value in it, I’m glad! 

Have a wonderful day ahead, and happy preparation for exams! 

V.