What is the best way to prepare for English language paper 1?

I'm about to do my (y10) mocks and I'm a grade 9 student in everything else- but English. I hate it. we are only doing paper 1s, and I am worried about the text analysis questions on language. I also know that English exams are extremely tight on time, so any help with dealing with that?

Reply 1

Super Sprinkles

Practise, practise, practise! Timing is a huge issue for both English lit. and lang. so this can have a huge impact on your grade - the more you write, generally you write more good stuff that gets marks. Examiners don't mark you down for waffle.

For the language 8-marker & evaluation question, teachers don't seem to like technique-spotting, but I find that it's a sure fire way to getting good quotes - just make sure you write about the effect e.g. what it makes you, the reader, imagine/think/feel and you can think about how this is shown through the writer's purpose.

For structure, 90% of the time you can talk about the start (e.g. starting in media-res/focussing on character or structure) and how this perspective changes by the end (is it left on a cliffhanger? is the tension resolved? is it a cyclical narrative?). You can also talk about patterns throughout the text & focus shifts; every time there's a new paragraph, there's a new change of focus. Explain the effect of these on the reader e.g. this builds tension as the writer withholds crucial information, so the reader is left piecing together the situation. Do NOT write "and this makes the reader want to read on" as it gets no marks and examiners detest it!

Mr Salles, First Rate Tutors & Mr Everything English on Youtube all have some good videos about each question - I recommend that you go and watch some of those.