Is my A Level grade correct?

Anyone know even roughly if I'm right or wrong?

Check the papers are equally weighted! A few people thought the Economics A Level grade boundaries for one exam board were weird last year but it was due to the overall weighting of the papers

Thanks, do you know where I can find out how they are weighted?

I'm not sure, sorry. Maybe try contacting your exam person at college? They should know more about it

Hi,

I got my CIE A-Level result in January for English Language but I'm not sure if it's actually right! Be warned though my maths is pretty shocking and my whole theory depends on it being right so it's more than likely I'm just being an idiot!

In AS Level English Language I got 91% which would be 91 marks out of 100. According to the November 2017 grade boundaries, the minimum mark required for an A* across the whole syllabus is 152 (out of 200 across both levels). If I understand correctly I would need to have gained a minimum of 61 marks in the two A-Level papers I did in November to get an A* (152-91=61).

From there to work out a total percentage I would need for an A* it would be 152 x 100 ÷ 200 = 76. Is that right? If so this makes 76% enough for an A*, I got 89% in total according to my provisional results however I was given an A.

Obviously, I'm really happy with an A anyway but I'm trying to get into a bit of a tricky uni and an A* would make all the difference.

Thanks!

Hello, do you have any tips for a CIE English Language? My friends and I are struggling quite a bit, we got B's. And we want to achieve an A in English language? Any structures? tips? etc.

Hello! I would have given you all my notes on this but annoyingly I deleted them all just last week! I'll tell you what I can remember anyway.

First of all, and I know this might sound obvious, the textbook was a life saver. I didn't use it for AS Level but I don't think I would have passed without it in A2. It contains the core of everything you need to know for each of the papers, make sure you go through it thoroughly and take notes.

Another thing that really helped me was reading the Example Candidate Responses that CIE release for the papers. It has examples of band 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6 answers if I remember rightly (basically: brilliant, good and not very good). I only had about 3 weeks to teach myself all of A2 in the end and I'm sure that studying those example answers is what saved me. They come with comments and annotations by the examiners about what works and what doesn't work in an answer (e.g. structure, level of detail, language) so I made note of those things and made sure I paid attention to that in my own answers. My teacher gave me these example responses as I haven't yet found them online so maybe ask your own teacher for them if you don't have them already. It's definelty somthing worth getting hold of.

I also read through almost every exam question that has ever come up to find similarities in what they are looking for. Often it looks like they're asking a really random question but actually, they have just changed the wording to make it look complicated. Nine times out of 10 they're asking exactly the same question as last year (how language is being used to communicate) but just with a different text. Knowing the pattern makes it a bit easier to know what to expect. Xtreme Papers has all of the papers and mark schemes if you're interested.

Again, I know this is a bit obvious, but I think its really important to use some fancy vocabulary in your answers. This is probably most important in creative writing answers but in the A2 papers, it pretty essential to use at least some of the specialized words that are mentioned in the textbook. You want to be able to read the text and then write about the lexis and discourse structure to show that you actually understand what they mean. At first, I made little flashcards with the specialised words on one side and then their definition on the other so I could test myself on them and eventually know what they meant. All that kind of stuff is in the textbook.

For A2 I think what makes you stand out from the crowd is how well you use examples of studies to back up what is being talked about in the text. I did the section on Child Language Aquisition for A2 as I wasn't really interested in the English as a global language section. If you're going to do the same I suggest you look at studies aimed specifically at studies of children in language acquisition (for example, the textbook talks about the study of Genie as proof that there is a critical learning period for children). Again, the textbook does contain quite a few studies on this section but I think if you're aiming for a really good grade you should do your own research and find other examples. You can then use these studies to back up your analysis into the text or use them as a counter-argument to show that you are open to more than just one angle of interpretation.

Sorry for such a long response, I think I got a bit carried away because there seems to be so little information out there on CIE exams! I know a lot of what I've said is quite broad but once you get hold of the example responses and the textbook it should start to make more sense. I hope this helps

Hello! I would have given you all my notes on this but annoyingly I deleted them all just last week! I'll tell you what I can remember anyway.

First of all, and I know this might sound obvious, the textbook was a life saver. I didn't use it for AS Level but I don't think I would have passed without it in A2. It contains the core of everything you need to know for each of the papers, make sure you go through it thoroughly and take notes.

Another thing that really helped me was reading the Example Candidate Responses that CIE release for the papers. It has examples of band 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6 answers if I remember rightly (basically: brilliant, good and not very good). I only had about 3 weeks to teach myself all of A2 in the end and I'm sure that studying those example answers is what saved me. They come with comments and annotations by the examiners about what works and what doesn't work in an answer (e.g. structure, level of detail, language) so I made note of those things and made sure I paid attention to that in my own answers. My teacher gave me these example responses as I haven't yet found them online so maybe ask your own teacher for them if you don't have them already. It's definelty somthing worth getting hold of.

I also read through almost every exam question that has ever come up to find similarities in what they are looking for. Often it looks like they're asking a really random question but actually, they have just changed the wording to make it look complicated. Nine times out of 10 they're asking exactly the same question as last year (how language is being used to communicate) but just with a different text. Knowing the pattern makes it a bit easier to know what to expect. Xtreme Papers has all of the papers and mark schemes if you're interested.

Again, I know this is a bit obvious, but I think its really important to use some fancy vocabulary in your answers. This is probably most important in creative writing answers but in the A2 papers, it pretty essential to use at least some of the specialized words that are mentioned in the textbook. You want to be able to read the text and then write about the lexis and discourse structure to show that you actually understand what they mean. At first, I made little flashcards with the specialised words on one side and then their definition on the other so I could test myself on them and eventually know what they meant. All that kind of stuff is in the textbook.

For A2 I think what makes you stand out from the crowd is how well you use examples of studies to back up what is being talked about in the text. I did the section on Child Language Aquisition for A2 as I wasn't really interested in the English as a global language section. If you're going to do the same I suggest you look at studies aimed specifically at studies of children in language acquisition (for example, the textbook talks about the study of Genie as proof that there is a critical learning period for children). Again, the textbook does contain quite a few studies on this section but I think if you're aiming for a really good grade you should do your own research and find other examples. You can then use these studies to back up your analysis into the text or use them as a counter-argument to show that you are open to more than just one angle of interpretation.

Sorry for such a long response, I think I got a bit carried away because there seems to be so little information out there on CIE exams! I know a lot of what I've said is quite broad but once you get hold of the example responses and the textbook it should start to make more sense. I hope this helps

Thank you so much, I'm about to cry this is so amazing. I got a B for my AS Level, and now I'm trying to get an A in CIE English A level. This is so helpful, what textbook did you use? We're using a horrible textbook at the moment by Oxford and I hate it.

Oh that's so nice to hear, I'm glad I could help! The textbook I used is called 'Cambridge International AS and A Level English Language'. It's published by Cambridge University Press and Endorsed by CIE so as you can tell it's about as Cambridge as it gets. I got mine from Amazon here if you want one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cambridge-International-Language-Coursebook-Examinations/dp/1107662273/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1520599204&sr=8-15&keywords=English+language+Cambridge+a+level+textbook

I've never really been a fan of textbooks because I feel like it's information overload but I think this one is pretty good.

If there's anything else I can help with let me know! Good luck

CIE is quite weird in terms of the grades, when I got my GCSE results we were all really confused.

You need 90/100 UMS for an A*, but UMS isn't the same thing as raw mark. You need 152/200 raw marks for an A, which are actually the marks you get in the exam. For my CIE History A level for example, I only really need 60 something per cent in my exam to get an A, which is 80 UMS. UMS are adjusted every year depending on the difficulty of the exam, to show you how far into the grade you are - so if you get 85, you're in the middle of an A, if you get 89 you're at a very high A. In your case, some years 90 UMS might be 140 raw marks, others it might be 160. I'm not sure if I explained it in an understandable way, if you still need further explaining just tell me.

I am literally going to breathe, sleep and eat this. I found the e-book, and I'm just going to use this now. Thank you so much! I'll update you when I do the exam, and if I need help!

There's an e-book?! I really should have thought about that option rather than lugging around the textbook. Let me know how it goes!