Shawn's Writing News

Studying For An English GCSE Exam

English is unlike many other GCSE subjects because, certainly in the case of English language, there are few, if any, hard facts to remember. However, this does not mean that it is unnecessary to revise for English GCSE. In fact, effective, thorough revision will play a key part in your performance in the examination, just like any other subject.

Before we get down to the nitty gritty of revision, it’s probably worth reminding yourself as to what you will come up against in the GCSE examination. English syllabuses vary across the country, but you’ll almost certainly be required to write essays, in the form of your own Creative Writing, writing to explain, describe or inform and writing to argue, persuade or advise. You’ll also be asked to read one or more fiction and non-fiction or media texts and to answer questions in response to them.

It is therefore relatively easy to divide the English syllabus up into chunks and to concentrate on one chunk at a time. A decent revision guide, either online or in print, can help to lead you through the various techniques that you’ll need to answer each type of question, but to try to find one that is appropriate to the English syllabus that you have followed.

Creative writing, for example, involves writing your own story or narrative. It’s helpful to outline a plot and the main characters involved on paper before you start. This means that you’ll have a pretty good idea as to where your story is going in terms of beginning, build-up, climax and ending, so you can concentrate on adding style and substance to your writing.

Writing to inform, explain or describe involves conveying information to your reader in one form or another. You need to be aware of your purpose and your audience, so that you include a detailed discussion, if necessary, ensuring that the reader can understand precisely what you mean.

Writing to argue, persuade or advise means presenting a coherent, logical argument that convinces the reader that yours is the only sensible point of view. In order to do this, you must grab the reader’s attention right from the start and get straight to the point. You can use certain “tricks”, such as expert opinion, ethical beliefs, striking or emotive language to reinforce your argument. However, if it is not based on logic to start with, it will not be convincing. Rhetorical questions often work well in this type of writing. You do want maximum marks in your GCSE examination don’t you?

There are clearly many more techniques that you need to appreciate and apply if you are going to reach the higher grades.

Of course, whatever the question you may be answering, the examiner will expect your spelling, punctuation and grammar to be up to scratch. To reach an A or A* grade, you will not only need to spell and to punctuate correctly, but also write sentences that are grammatically correct and varied. This means avoiding writing as you would speak or the use of slang or dialect words, which the examiner may not understand. You must write in formal, standard English. Starting your sentences in different ways and varying their length will make your writing more interesting to read and will earn you additional marks.

About the Author

Article by OUP

OUP Publish study guides for WJEC GCSE English, OCR GCSE English as well as for a variety of other subjects and levels.

Creative Writing Tips for Students & Teachers : How To Write a Syllabus

Academic Writing for Graduate Students, Second Edition: Essential Tasks and Skills (Michigan Series in English for Academic & Professional Purposes) $15.50 The second edition of this successful guide to writing for graduate-and undergraduate-students has been modified to include updates and replacements of older data sets; an increased range of disciplines with tasks such as nursing, marketing, and art history; discussions of discourse analysis; a broader discussion of e-mail use that includes current e-mail practices.Like its predecessor, this editi…

Creative Curriculum for Preschool $51.00 “This text skillfully balances current demands for outcomes and accountability with what we know about the vital role of play in children’s learning.”…

Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives $9.00 In this inspiring book, based on her twenty years of research, highly acclaimed author and teacher Louise DeSalvo reveals the healing power of writing. DeSalvo shows how anyone can use writing as a way to heal the emotional and physical wounds that are an inevitable part of life. Contrary to what most self-help books claim, just writing won’t help you; in fact, there’s abundant evidence that the w…

Poetry Writing $12.99 Guide students through the process of writing poetry. Inspire them with creative project ideas. Use templates and frames to help them get started. Share their results in ways that promote pride and a sense of accomplishment.

Cursive Writing Activities $12.99 Cursive Writing Activities is designed to help students master important handwriting skills. The book provides a variety of activities that allow students to practice letter formations as well as real world skills such as simple sentences, paragraph writing, creative writing, and everyday writing. Anyone using these instructional and fun worksheets will gain the confidence needed to keep his or her handwriting legible and free of mistakes.Activities include: writing letters and numbers, answering questions with written responses, completing creative writing activities, practicing writing with word games, and more.

Beginning Writing $10.99 Give emergent writers the practice they need as they progress from the scribbling stage to writing paragraphs. This book features a variety of activities for the different phases of writing, as well as writing samples from actual emergent writers.The activities target standards in these areas: the writing process conventions in writing writing using graphic methods to describe high frequency vocabulary complete sentences

Writing Workshop $24.99 Writing Workshop is designed for busy teachers who are seeking a comprehensive resource for teaching the writing process. persuasive, expository, narrative, and poetry writing lessons student samples writing rubrics graphic organizers language use and convention lessons writing process lessons assessment checklist daily writing exercises homework suggestions portfolio instructions bulletin board ideas writing enrichment activities

Creative Awakenings $24.95 Create Your Own Dream Journal Inspirational Projects and Step-by-Step Collage Techniques Begin your own creative journey with an overview of the intention-setting process and instruction on how to start a Book-of-Dreams Journal in Creative Awakenings. Be introduced to twelve artists who went through the process themselves. See firsthand how these contributors used the intention-setting process to realize their own dreams. Learn through over 200 colored images and inspirational artwork in addition to several step-by-step mixed-media techniques . Use the interactive bonus deck of tear-out prompt cards to help set your own intentions and record the process in your own journal.

Journal Writing $12.99 Daily writing activities are provided for every month of the year. Also included are cross-curricular journal topics, journal covers, and journaling pages to make any journal writing program more manageable.

Assessing Communication Education: A Handbook for Media, Speech, & Theatre Educators $131 Designed as a handbook, this text provides media, speech (public speaking, interpersonal, small group, and organizational communication), and theatre educators with both the theoretical and practical ammunition to fight the assessment battles on their campuses. The philosophical implications of accountability are balanced with concrete, specific, and usable assessment strategies. Stressing student, faculty, course, program, department, and institutional assessment, this book’s aim is to provide, in one place, information that will help diverse and complex communication programs face the growing challenges in assessment. The book is divided into three sections: background and foundational information for assessment; broad assessment strategies that apply to a variety of media, “speech,” and theatre courses and programs; and context-specific assessment strategies. While covering a host of topics, it: • provides an overview of assessment and suggests how it might impact communication education, • discusses the elements of program assessment and how linkage of mission statements with outcomes can lead to strong, innovative programs, • compares and contrasts regional association requirements and presents a specific how-to strategy for writing outcome statements, • discusses teaching evaluation and argues that we need to identify the “what” of teaching before we try to measure the “how,” • looks at creative ways for formative and summative course evaluation that starts with the creation of an explicit syllabus, • discusses the use of capstone courses as a way of evaluating not only their major but also how students have integrated their “total” educational experience, • suggests the variety of ways that interpersonal communication can be assessed and calls for future research that stresses the “knowledge” component of learning, • reports on a strategy for developing small group communication