If your child is following the exam board AQA for their GCSE, they will be completing the below exams:
- Language Paper One
- Language Paper Two
- Literature Paper One
- Literature Paper Two
If you are unsure what exam board your child is following, a phone call to the school will quickly clear this up. However, if you live in Cornwall, it is likely that the school will be following the AQA curriculum.
As a parent, all of these different papers for each subject can quickly become confusing. It can also be confusing for your child! I feel that it is very important that I make the student (and their parents/ guardians) as clear as possible from the start on what to expect from each exam and when structuring my tutoring for their GCSE years, I ensure I make it clear to my student how and when we will be covering everything they need to know.
English Language Paper One: what you need to know
Language paper one is based around fiction and creative writing. Section A consists of four questions based on a fiction extract. As English teachers, we know what to roughly expect for these questions, therefore, we know how to effectively teach the skills needed to answer these questions. The highest mark question in this section is worth 20 marks – question 4.
Section B involves your child needing to write their own piece of creative writing inspired by a title, topic or picture. They will usually have the option of doing either descriptive or creative writing. Upon having tutoring sessions with me, your child will feel confident with the skills they need to use in the creative writing section, and they will have knowledge of how to implement these skills through a learned success criteria. We will practice this writing question regularly throughout their GCSE course, as this question is worth a huge 40 marks!
English Language Paper Two: what you need to know
Again, this paper consists of two sections – a reading and a writing section. Section A is again reading, but this time of two non-fiction texts. This can be difficult because one of the extracts will be 19th century which can be difficult for some students to understand. In our sessions together, I will build your son/ daughter’s confidence and abilities in understanding the language in these 19th Century extracts and I will help them build an understanding of how to break the texts down into manageable chunks in order to answer the questions. The highest marked question in this section is worth 16 marks.
Section B involves students writing to argue. They will be given a quote/ statement and will be asked to write for or against this statement. In our tutoring sessions, again, we will spend a lot of time on how to structure this answer and your child will build their confidence and the knowledge of the tools needed to effectively write an argument and gain as many marks as possible. This question is also worth 40 marks, as with section B in paper one.
English Literature Paper One: what you need to know
In schools, due to COVID, we currently have the choice to ‘drop’ one of the below three options (this is still currently the case for Academic Year 2022-23). Therefore, you will need to find out which option your school has dropped. I will list below the three options, but keep in mind that for this part of the exam, your child will only be doing two of the three:
- Anthology of poetry question (30 marks)
- 19th Century novel (30 marks)
- Modern prose/ drama (30 marks).
Before I begin tutoring your child, it will be important for me to know the two options their school have chosen, and which texts within those options they are studying. For example, for the anthology of poetry they will either be doing ‘Love and Relationships’ or ‘Power and Conflict’. For all three of these options the schools have different texts to choose from.
As there are a lot of texts to learn, remember contextual details on, remember themes and quotes for as well as have a solid understanding of the plot, having a private tutor can really help your child with organising themselves in plenty of time for their exams. It can be tricky for your child to sometimes balance and arrange their revision correctly. Part of my job is to help them with that.
English Literature Paper Two: what you need to know.
For paper two, your child will be answering the following questions:
- Section A Shakespeare question (30 marks + 4 marks for Spelling and Grammar)
- Section B Part one: unseen poetry essay (24 marks + 4 marks for Spelling and Grammar)
- Part two: unseen poetry comparison (8 marks).
Shakespeare can be a daunting topic for many students. However, in my lessons, I try to make the learning and revising of Shakespeare as engaging as interesting as possible, ensuring I keep a focus on the most important themes and ideas they need to know about. Your child will leave my sessions not only feeling more and more confident in the plot after each session, but also with strong knowledge of the key areas in the text. I will help your child develop their revision skills and help them find ways which work for them in terms of remember quotes and important information. Unsurprisingly, most Year 11 students are most daunted by remembering quotes! This is something I will aim to work with them on throughout the year, to help build these quotes into their long-term memory.
Unseen poetry is a lighter topic in comparison to Shakespeare; usually the poems given have really interesting meanings and are quite easy to understand as they need to be accessible to all of the abilities of children. These poems will most likely have not been studied in lessons but both poems given will always share a theme. I will ensure that by the time your child is assessed/ sits their final GCSE’s, they will feel they have a solid understanding of the unseen poetry section.
Final Words
So, that’s it! You’re all set to go ahead of your AQA English GCSE exams in the summer of 2023. Please feel free to browse this website further to get a flavour of the support I can offer. If you have any questions then please contact me and I’ll be happy to talk.