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CIE IGCSE English Language exam today

Hey guys,

I had an English language re-take today (I got 2 marks off an A-star in the November exam..we did it early) and I made a stupid mistake-I can't bare the thought that I might have got a similar mark on my second attempt!

so here it is:
The empathetic genre conversion had 3 bullet points, one of which was "talk about your experience in Alaska"
In the text one of the main things that happens to the guy is that he breaks through some ice in a creek.
I STUPIDLY omitted to include this in my genre conversion piece...does anyone know how many marks I would loose for this?

Or did anyone do the same paper and have any thoughts to share? Please let me know!

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Reply 1
Hey!
I did the same paper yesterday. Hm, you might lose one or two marks but no more. I would say, in terms of reading marks, it is 5 per bullet point adding up to 15. Normally you wouldn't lose more than a mark but as the event is quite substantial you might lose two marks. Did you not mention it later in your talk? How did you generally find it?
I definitely wrote too much for the second bullet point and a lot less for the first and third bullet point. Generally my answer does not sound and read like a talk too, I am hoping to get around 15/20!

How did you find the other questions? I thought the writer's effects question was pretty good, I wrote that the frost was compared to a predatory animal and I wrote that the fire was compared to a young bird, to which Tom Vincent was a paternal figure.

The summary was easy too, loads to talk about in passage B and a bit less to mention from passage A. Do you think I will lose marks for not writing my summaries in the present tense?
(edited 10 years ago)
Reply 2
Also, what have you done in preparation for tomorrow's paper 3?
Reply 3
Original post by samr96
Hey!
Do you think I will lose marks for not writing my summaries in the present tense?


pretty sure you wouldn't lose any - it's the points they want in the summaries, and the fact you're using your own words.
Original post by samr96
Also, what have you done in preparation for tomorrow's paper 3?


I really don't know how to prepare for it either. I've read last year's Examiner's Report on English Language, which contained some useful stuff, and looked at past papers, but I'm still feeling unprepared, especially for the second question.
Reply 5
Original post by effortlesswhirl
I really don't know how to prepare for it either. I've read last year's Examiner's Report on English Language, which contained some useful stuff, and looked at past papers, but I'm still feeling unprepared, especially for the second question.


Yeah I'm really not sure how to approach the paper, my teacher wasn't incredibly helpful.

For the second question I would advise you to avoid the narrative task unless you have something prepared that matches the question. It is easy to write a load of rubbish and it is incredibly difficult to write a story with some sort of substantial plot in 50 minutes.

Most tend to do the question asking you to write a descriptive piece, frankly the easiest choice and also most likely my choice for tomorrow.

Sometimes the argumentative essay works well if you can relate to the topics, but from my perspective it is a risk as often enough I tend to run out of arguments in practice papers and I start repeating or rephrasing the main argument.
(edited 10 years ago)
Reply 6
Original post by samr96
Yeah I'm really not sure how to approach the paper, my teacher wasn't incredibly helpful.

For the second question I would advise you to avoid the narrative task unless you have something prepared that matches the question. It is easy to write a load of rubbish and it is incredibly difficult to write a story with some sort of substantial plot in 50 minutes.

Most tend to do the question asking you to write a descriptive piece, frankly the easiest choice and also most likely my choice for tomorrow.

Sometimes the argumentative essay works well if you can relate to the topics, but from my perspective it is a risk as often enough I tend to run out of arguments in practice papers and I start repeating or rephrasing the main argument.


I'm also going for descriptive :biggrin:
Reply 7
Original post by samr96
Hey!
I did the same paper yesterday. Hm, you might lose one or two marks but no more. I would say, in terms of reading marks, it is 5 per bullet point adding up to 15. Normally you wouldn't lose more than a mark but as the event is quite substantial you might lose two marks. Did you not mention it later in your talk? How did you generally find it?
I definitely wrote too much for the second bullet point and a lot less for the first and third bullet point. Generally my answer does not sound and read like a talk too, I am hoping to get around 15/20!

How did you find the other questions? I thought the writer's effects question was pretty good, I wrote that the frost was compared to a predatory animal and I wrote that the fire was compared to a young bird, to which Tom Vincent was a paternal figure.

The summary was easy too, loads to talk about in passage B and a bit less to mention from passage A. Do you think I will lose marks for not writing my summaries in the present tense?


I wrote too much for the first bullet point!!
Reply 8
Original post by Kshanahan
Hey guys,

I had an English language re-take today (I got 2 marks off an A-star in the November exam..we did it early) and I made a stupid mistake-I can't bare the thought that I might have got a similar mark on my second attempt!

so here it is:
The empathetic genre conversion had 3 bullet points, one of which was "talk about your experience in Alaska"
In the text one of the main things that happens to the guy is that he breaks through some ice in a creek.
I STUPIDLY omitted to include this in my genre conversion piece...does anyone know how many marks I would loose for this?

Or did anyone do the same paper and have any thoughts to share? Please let me know!


You will probably lose some points for this but normally the marking goes by points so it shouldn't be too bad :smile:
Reply 9
Original post by halzmac
I wrote too much for the first bullet point!!


Loads of my friends also said they wrote too much for the first bullet point, I thought they might not reward you as much for simply retelling the story so I kept it short, knowing me probably too short :tongue: ...Good luck for tomorrow anyway!!
Original post by samr96
Yeah I'm really not sure how to approach the paper, my teacher wasn't incredibly helpful.

For the second question I would advise you to avoid the narrative task unless you have something prepared that matches the question. It is easy to write a load of rubbish and it is incredibly difficult to write a story with some sort of substantial plot in 50 minutes.

Most tend to do the question asking you to write a descriptive piece, frankly the easiest choice and also most likely my choice for tomorrow.

Sometimes the argumentative essay works well if you can relate to the topics, but from my perspective it is a risk as often enough I tend to run out of arguments in practice papers and I start repeating or rephrasing the main argument.


I'm definitely weakest at argumentative so I tend to steer clear of that. I do find that when I use the narrative questions in past papers I tend to write stories that are either too long, or very cliched, or both, so perhaps I'll do descriptive tomorrow. I think I'll probably just choose whichever question I feel I can write engagingly about without running out of material!

I've also been trying to expand my vocabulary a little over the past couple of weeks in the hope that I can slip a couple of impressive words in :P.
Is English higher really hard?


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Reply 12
Original post by samr96
Loads of my friends also said they wrote too much for the first bullet point, I thought they might not reward you as much for simply retelling the story so I kept it short, knowing me probably too short :tongue: ...Good luck for tomorrow anyway!!


I thought that as well but I felt every part of the story was important hahaha, I basically bypassed the match part when I retold it, Like I just didn't explain it in too much detail :smile:

Are you doing language today?
Reply 13
Original post by halzmac
I thought that as well but I felt every part of the story was important hahaha, I basically bypassed the match part when I retold it, Like I just didn't explain it in too much detail :smile:

Are you doing language today?



Yes I did it today!

How did y'all find it? Thought it was really good actually!!
Reply 14
Did Paper 3 today, thought it went quite well. The letter about the Olympics was ok, lots of scope for developing points. For the composition, I chose the discursive task - explaining about the admirable and undesirable aspects of your age group. Tried to make it a bit satirical as well, so it wasn't just boring for the examiner and was a bit different...hope they have a sense of humour! :P
Reply 15
Original post by alexgr97
Did Paper 3 today, thought it went quite well. The letter about the Olympics was ok, lots of scope for developing points. For the composition, I chose the discursive task - explaining about the admirable and undesirable aspects of your age group. Tried to make it a bit satirical as well, so it wasn't just boring for the examiner and was a bit different...hope they have a sense of humour! :P


Yeah I thought it was good!

I picked the same option, loads to write about! I should hopefully end up with an A* :smile:

And good idea, humor often works really well, I imagine examiners get so bored marking identical scripts so something a little different should work pretty well!
Glad to get english language over and done with for good today :P.

Would anyone know what the grade boundaries are likely to be?
Reply 17
Original post by samr96
Yeah I thought it was good!

I picked the same option, loads to write about! I should hopefully end up with an A* :smile:

And good idea, humor often works really well, I imagine examiners get so bored marking identical scripts so something a little different should work pretty well!


Yeah, if it wasn't for the two hour time limit, I could have happily kept writing! :P My essays in school always lose marks for being too boring/unoriginal, so I tried to spice things up haha. :P Good luck!
I loved the descriptive question, I did the one about an old place with a powerful atmosphere :smile:
Reply 19
Original post by effortlesswhirl
Glad to get english language over and done with for good today :P.

Would anyone know what the grade boundaries are likely to be?


Hm I couldn't find anything online but I imagine no more than 75ish/100 for an A* ..really cannot imagine it being above 80! In my mock, the school did a Paper 2 only and the boundary for an A* was something like 39/50..

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