Cie igcse english literature (0486)

I am. Are you going to do the essay question or the passage?

I'm not sure yet it really depends on the essay question I've tried to learn quoted but at school we've basically only practiced passage what are you doing?

To Marguerite:
To Marguerite is a poem that explores the human condition (isolation, essentially) through the structure of an extended metaphor (called a 'conceit' - but don't worry about that). The metaphor is that humans are individual islands, and that we are separated and there's no real connection between us anymore. The poem explores feelings of longing, regret, isolation, loneliness, detachment, desolation etc...
Some close analysis:
- Poem begins: 'Yes!' - epiphany - tone of sudden realisation
- 'echoing' - far away; empty; sense of desolation
- 'straits' - narrow or troublesome situation
- 'we mortal millions live alone' - juxtaposition between the collective pronoun of 'we' and the magnitude of 'millions' against the singularity 'alone'
- 'endless bounds' - oxymoron
- ‘starry nights...nightingales divinely sing...lovely notes’ - about the beauty we don’t recognise; romantic language brings a poignant feel
- 'we were / parts of a single continent' - enjambment reflects current broken-up state
- rhyme scheme: ABABCC - the rhyming couplet adds stress to the last two lines - there is a sense of it being cut off, isolated, just as the human condition is

Hope that helped?

thank you soooo much!!!!!!! This is realllyy helpful

also, how much should we write per essay (is 3-4 points enough like 2 sides?) and how should we divide our time between planning and writing it up?

thanks again

Does anyone know hot to analyse shall I compare thee? I've tried so many times and if it comes up I will probably cry I can only analyse one quote and the sonnet structure 😫😫

Does anyone know what the usual grade boundaries are?
On some of my essays I've been getting 25/25 but I usually only get about 23/25 or 22/25 and I've been struggling a bit with the drama text and only get 18 - 20 /25. I really want to get an A* but I'm not sure if an average of about 20/25 for each of the four questions is good enough?

To revise I've just been making notes on the poems and doing loads of practice essays, probably about 15 - 20 by now and I write almost exactly 4 sides each time. My teacher also wrote over 100 practice questions and I've been doing some essay plans for them

you have to get 19/25 or more in every essay for an A and 23/25 or more in every essay for an A*

I'm not sure that's completely true?

Those are the marks for the top band on the mark scheme, but as the difficulty of the questions and the ability of the students can vary, they can't set the boundaries so rigidly. Getting 23/25 on every essay would almost certainly secure you an A*, but I believe you can get a lot less and still get one.

I may be wrong but that's what I was led to believe.

im doing the essay question because i just can't do the passages, i don't have enough to say

thats what my teacher told me but he might have been saying that to push us to get 23 or more out of the essays. but if you got 25/25 you could then get 21/25 in another and still get an A*.

thats what my teacher told me but he might have been saying that to push us to get 23 or more out of the essays. but if you got 25/25 you could then get 21/25 in another and still get an A*.

I can't find any pass papers for 'spies' or 'an inspector calls' on the ice website

I mean definitely aim for 23 + (I'm hoping for that at least in mine), I just think that that is definitely not the minimum to achieve an A*, as that equates to a 92% average, which is definitely not the normal grade boundary! My teacher always set that as ours (23) when marking, because she said that the real examiners mark a lot more harshly, and as a result the grade boundaries are significantly lower...

I can't find any pass papers for 'spies' or 'an inspector calls' on the ice website

I'm fairly sure (may be wrong though) that this is the first year that CIE have set 'Spies' as a IGCSE text. As a result, I think that is why there are no past papers. Maybe try practicing some essays on characters and themes (such as 'How does Frayn present the character of Keith in the novel spies' or 'how is the theme of imagination presented in the novel Spies' etc)

I don't do An Inspector Calls so I don't know about that

thank you, do you do spies then?

I don't know about Spies since my prose is Jekyll and Hyde, but An Inspector Calls is new on the syllabus so there are none.