Cambridge IGCSE English Language (May 3rd 2016) official thread

Yeah... Descriptive or narrative?

Yes I can tell you what you need to get in the exam if you know your coursework marks.

But lets say you got like 47/50 on average on the writing coursework and your s&l is 26, then you would need at least 27 in the exam to get an A overall.

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I forgot to sign off, how bad is this??

Guys, is 60% coursework and 40% exam and 20% S+L????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

That doesn't add up...

WOW this thread has been busy since I was last here!!

I'm sorry I wasn't able to help all the people that I said I would prior to the exam taking place. TSR crashed at the most inopportune moment (probably due to all the panicking that you lot were doing )

I've seen the 0500 P2 and thought it was quite nice compared to last year's (about ospreys) although I can see why people found Q2 hard (although it was still possible to find 4 examples for each) as they didn't give you much to work with compared to previous years. (However, they will probably lower the grade boundaries if enough people struggled.) Q1 and Q3 were straightforward enough though. (I say this as someone who's taught 0500 since 2008!)

In Q1 it won't have mattered if you made up a name for the husband or not (or even if you wrote a date!). The main thing, in my view, is to start and finish the letter appropriately - don't just launch in or end abruptly. I can't remember who the letter was to (only looked at the paper briefly today when the secretary was kind enough to get it out of the safe for me!) but I'd say that signing off 'Yours faithfully', 'Yours sincerely', or 'Mrs Head' is more appropriate for a more formal letter. If writing to a friend or relative you might lose 1-2 marks if you sign off this way.

Bear in mind that the range of students sitting this paper is extremely diverse (for 0500 at least). Remember that it is a worldwide exam. Some candidates will be gifted literature students who are native speakers of English. Others will have English as their second or even third language and have worked extremely hard to get to this level. So just because you didn't see anything for Q2 (particularly if you are not a native speaker) it didn't mean that there was nothing there. They need to differentiate the very able candidates somehow and it would also explain why Q2 is worth fewer points than Q1 and Q3. If you are not a native speaker/do not read widely/do not have a good vocabulary then it is only natural that you would be unable to spot some of the nuances inherent in the words used.

'straggling' is not an unusual word really. Just means 'trailing'...

You will not usually lose marks if you overwrite in Q1 and Q2. However, you are more likely to lose marks if your response to Q3 was too long.

In Q3, it normally doesn't matter if you merged points in your list. You should normally still get the mark.

What I hope this shows, however, is how useless it is to try to speculate and predict what text type you will be asked to write in Q1. People on this thread were getting into such a spin on Monday night, predicting that it would be a formal report, and in the end it was a letter for 0500 - much nicer, and much closer to what I would expect them to give you to do.

Those doing 0500 will also be sitting an exam on Friday. As a teacher (even if a youngish one who still hangs out on TSR ) I'm bound to remind you that you can be penalised for talking online about the exam for 24 hours after it's been sat. Please don't do this. Even if you think you're helping people, you could actually be panicking them more. There could also be confusion as there are different variants for different time zones (usually 3) - so even if you've sat yours and friends around the world are waiting to do theirs, their task could still be different.

For what it's worth, we don't mark drunk (usually ) but we do try to be both positive and fair. All examiners are monitored by team leaders and if we are not marking fairly then we get kicked off the paper. So rest assured that everything is done to ensure that your grade is as accurate as possible. Begging the examiners via a hashtag will make no difference I'm afraid (although as I'm in need of a laugh I'll read the tweets anyway )! All pages of your answer booklet have to be seen by the examiner (we tick or otherwise make a mark on the page, even if it is blank) before it can be submitted for your final mark to be calculated. So everything in your answer booklet will be counted. If you wrote anything on your question paper that you intended to be marked, then you need to know that these are not scanned in for assessment - so any additional information that you wanted to be marked will not be seen if it is on the question paper, I'm afraid. If you need more space, it is better to continue on extra paper as this will be seen: extra pieces of paper are classed as "additional items" in Cambridge's marking system, and as with the answer booklet, each page needs to be acknowledged before the mark can be validated.

Rest assured that you can get an A* - not on an individual component, but when they look at everything together it is possible. I have even had students taking 0500 who got an A on one paper and a B on another and still somehow ended up with A*

Highlighters are allowed ON THE QUESTION PAPER. On the answer paper they are not (so no rainbow unicorns ). This was confirmed to our school by Cambridge, in writing.

Remember that your interpretations do matter (it is NOT true that Cambridge only work by their one interpretation - examiners are encouraged to mark positively and give marks for anything that's valid), and as long as you tried your best, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Best of luck for the rest of your IGCSE papers. I'll be hanging around on the P3 thread(s) too if anyone has questions about that before Friday.

WOW this thread has been busy since I was last here!!

I'm sorry I wasn't able to help all the people that I said I would prior to the exam taking place. TSR crashed at the most inopportune moment (probably due to all the panicking that you lot were doing )

I've seen the 0500 P2 and thought it was quite nice compared to last year's (about ospreys) although I can see why people found Q2 hard (although it was still possible to find 4 examples for each) as they didn't give you much to work with compared to previous years. (However, they will probably lower the grade boundaries if enough people struggled.) Q1 and Q3 were straightforward enough though. (I say this as someone who's taught 0500 since 2008!)

In Q1 it won't have mattered if you made up a name for the husband or not (or even if you wrote a date!). The main thing, in my view, is to start and finish the letter appropriately - don't just launch in or end abruptly. I can't remember who the letter was to (only looked at the paper briefly today when the secretary was kind enough to get it out of the safe for me!) but I'd say that signing off 'Yours faithfully', 'Yours sincerely', or 'Mrs Head' is more appropriate for a more formal letter. If writing to a friend or relative you might lose 1-2 marks if you sign off this way.

Bear in mind that the range of students sitting this paper is extremely diverse (for 0500 at least). Remember that it is a worldwide exam. Some candidates will be gifted literature students who are native speakers of English. Others will have English as their second or even third language and have worked extremely hard to get to this level. So just because you didn't see anything for Q2 (particularly if you are not a native speaker) it didn't mean that there was nothing there. They need to differentiate the very able candidates somehow and it would also explain why Q2 is worth fewer points than Q1 and Q3. If you are not a native speaker/do not read widely/do not have a good vocabulary then it is only natural that you would be unable to spot some of the nuances inherent in the words used.

'straggling' is not an unusual word really. Just means 'trailing'...

You will not usually lose marks if you overwrite in Q1 and Q2. However, you are more likely to lose marks if your response to Q3 was too long.

In Q3, it normally doesn't matter if you merged points in your list. You should normally still get the mark.

What I hope this shows, however, is how useless it is to try to speculate and predict what text type you will be asked to write in Q1. People on this thread were getting into such a spin on Monday night, predicting that it would be a formal report, and in the end it was a letter for 0500 - much nicer, and much closer to what I would expect them to give you to do.

Those doing 0500 will also be sitting an exam on Friday. As a teacher (even if a youngish one who still hangs out on TSR ) I'm bound to remind you that you can be penalised for talking online about the exam for 24 hours after it's been sat. Please don't do this. Even if you think you're helping people, you could actually be panicking them more. There could also be confusion as there are different variants for different time zones (usually 3) - so even if you've sat yours and friends around the world are waiting to do theirs, their task could still be different.

For what it's worth, we don't mark drunk (usually ) but we do try to be both positive and fair. All examiners are monitored by team leaders and if we are not marking fairly then we get kicked off the paper. So rest assured that everything is done to ensure that your grade is as accurate as possible. Begging the examiners via a hashtag will make no difference I'm afraid (although as I'm in need of a laugh I'll read the tweets anyway )! All pages of your answer booklet have to be seen by the examiner (we tick or otherwise make a mark on the page, even if it is blank) before it can be submitted for your final mark to be calculated. So everything in your answer booklet will be counted. If you wrote anything on your question paper that you intended to be marked, then you need to know that these are not scanned in for assessment - so any additional information that you wanted to be marked will not be seen if it is on the question paper, I'm afraid. If you need more space, it is better to continue on extra paper as this will be seen: extra pieces of paper are classed as "additional items" in Cambridge's marking system, and as with the answer booklet, each page needs to be acknowledged before the mark can be validated.

Rest assured that you can get an A* - not on an individual component, but when they look at everything together it is possible. I have even had students taking 0500 who got an A on one paper and a B on another and still somehow ended up with A*

Highlighters are allowed ON THE QUESTION PAPER. On the answer paper they are not (so no rainbow unicorns ). This was confirmed to our school by Cambridge, in writing.

Remember that your interpretations do matter (it is NOT true that Cambridge only work by their one interpretation - examiners are encouraged to mark positively and give marks for anything that's valid), and as long as you tried your best, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Best of luck for the rest of your IGCSE papers. I'll be hanging around on the P3 thread(s) too if anyone has questions about that before Friday.

Don't worry about highlighting the bullet points. You might lose 1-2 marks for forgetting to sign off, yes.

Not harsh really. It's integral to the letter-writing format...