This is a tough one as students tend to spend more time at school looking at language features than structure. Again, there’s a lot to do in this question in a short space of time. You will be asked to identify and analyse how the writer uses structural features to achieve a specific effect. It’s important to not cover too wide a topic, or else the completed segments can end up being rather superficial. In a department meeting, we discussed the areas we felt students needed help with. This is what informed the titles and content of the lectures. Teachers would deliver each lecture twice. You’ll be given a statement from a student about the extract and asked about the extent to which you agree with it.In your answer you need to evaluate how successful the writer has been in achieving the points raised in the question. This will include your own interpretation. We had a full house on the first session. So, a third of our cohort had an additional lecture on either the presentation of women in Macbethor how to compare two non-fiction texts. I was over the moon.

Two lectures would run, for between 30 and 40 minutes – one for English Literature and one for English Language. They would drill into a facet of the exam paper or area of a text. a temporal reference “three hours after Farrinor went to bed” implies how control was lost in a short space of time as by then his house “was in flames” and there is the “first victim” – implying there will be many more victims I had 12 weeks of high-quality additional provision planned that could accommodate 60+ students a week”

Online GCSE English Language revision tips

Language paper 1 is all about exploring creative reading and writing. You’ll be looking at an example of a fiction text and doing some creative writing. You will need to answer five questions, separated into two sections. In section A you are asked four questions about a fiction extract from the 20th or 21st centuries. In section B you answer one question form a choice of two, where you demonstrate your own creative writing skills. We opted to now focus on the importance of all lessons, since there wouldn’t be another lesson going over the same things again at a later date. If they didn’t take in the material during this lesson, they’d just have to do more work later. It doesn’t matter if their revision materials look pretty (unless that makes it more likely that they’ll actually use them). But they will need to be focused, designed for regular practice and able to get the relevant information stored in their heads for life.

Students should get used to completing deliberate practise tasks for both language and literature topics. They should take the opportunity to read and annotate, plan their responses and answer longer questions as part of their revision. The above revision techniques are easy to apply to literature topics, where there’s a clear body of knowledge to accompany each text, but they can seem less practical for the largely unseen texts and tasks of English language study.Our English Revision Guides are a great place to start — they cover every topic you'll need to learn with clear explanations, lots of examples, and brilliant advice for developing your exam skills. Once you've built a strong foundation, grab a matching Exam Practice Workbook to see how much you remember, and practise writing exam-style answers. We even have targeted workbooks for the Fiction (Paper 1) and Non-Fiction (Paper 2) components of the AQA GCSE English Language exams. Self-testing techniques are still very much relevant when it comes to achieving the fluency and agility demanded by language papers in the exam room.

Having spent time focusing on the concept, we’ll then look at an exemplar, perhaps developed as part of the learning process, and note where the gaps are. Flash cards This set of skills-focused resources lets pupils test their skills at analysing poems, pieces of writing and more. They can also create their own piece. language choices within dialogue close dialogue The spoken words of characters., for instance if dialect close dialect Different spoken forms of the same language. is used to reveal more about a characterI had a wealth of experience in my department (76 years of English teaching experience – including two GCSE examiners, which I was at pains to let the Year 11 cohort know!) and this felt like a logical way to utilise that experience effectively. Students should get used to completing deliberate practise tasks for both language and literature topics” the focus then shifts to Thomas Farrinor, a baker, thinking his “fire was out” – this detail foreshadows close foreshadow Hint at something that will happen later and have greater significance. the start of the Great Fire, building tension This bundle of resources from TeachIt helps students recap key words and terminology for GCSE English Language. Go over important skills for the exam by playing some tried-and-tested games and activities, like this printable language board game. The lectures have attracted all levels of ability in the year and even the ‘cool’ students are making an effort to go. What more could you wish for?”