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Crazy Like the Fox

Posts Tagged ‘igcse’

  1. Getting into the Zone (Exam Prep)

    16/03/2020 by axonite

    For those of you with exams coming up, here is some advice. For those who don’t have exams, read anyway – it may well be of use later.

     

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    It’s not all about knowing the texts and demonstrating your command of the English language. What about you as a person? It’s natural to feel nervous before an exam. Use that energy. Channel it into your revision and exam practice, but don’t let nerves get the better of you. In the exam, breathe in slowly through your nose, hold for a moment, then breath out slowly through your mouth – you will find yourself becoming calmer.

     

    Ensure that you get a good night’s sleep the night before the exam.

     

    Use the toilet before the exam, but don’t feel embarrassed about asking to use the loo during the exam – it’s better to concentrate on your answers than on your bladder.

     

    Make your table your world. Ignore everyone and everything else in the room – nothing else matters. Put your watch on the table and ignore the clock on the wall.

     

    Ensure that you have two pens (at least) in the exam hall. There are always some students who have pens that run out of ink (and some even forget to bring pens with them!).

     

    Start with whatever section gives you the possibility of the most marks (You can always rearrange the order of your papers at the end). Give yourself at least five minutes at the end to proof-read what you’ve written – you wrote fast under pressure, so there will inevitably be mistakes.

     

    Don’t think that you can fob the examiner off with waffle. Here’s a genuine Year 11 essay:

     

    This poem written by … is a poem that gives the reader a thought of the poem. As the reader reads the poem, he/she would get an image of the poem. The reader would be able to imagine a picture of what is going on in the poem. The choice of words that the poet uses makes it easier for the reader to get an image of the poem.

     

    This bland, fault-ridden opening tells us nothing. One could apply it to any poem or prose excerpt that one has never bothered to read. No examiner will ever be fooled by this nonsense. It is waffle that the student hopes will disguise the fact that he/she does not understand the piece. Do not waste time writing this rubbish – instead, make meaningful and specific comments about the piece.
    Now compare it to this response from the same class about the same poem:

     

    …is a romantic piece about two estranged lovers who live in different places.

     

    Don’t rely on the teacher or think to blame everything on him/her. Even before the Internet, students were expected to demonstrate initiative and do their research in the library. Today, you have a wealth of information at the touch of a button. Use it – and don’t be tempted to make excuses. If something is unclear, don’t wait until the lesson. If you have a problem with your written expression – fix it (You will find many useful links on this very site).

     

    Remember that you are students of Language primarily – in a sense, there is no such thing as a student of Literature – because it’s all about the words and their construction! With this in mind, don’t shy away from the poetry in the unseen exam – because you should be writing about pace, fluency, pitch and other such devices even when writing about prose.
     
    Take the time to explore the texts and the language exercises to discover what you think. Don’t just blindly repeat what your teacher has said. CIE say:

     

    “Examiners can easily differentiate between students who have genuinely responded to literature for themselves and those who have merely parroted dictated or packaged notes.”

     

    Smell is a great aid to memory (apparently). Try wearing the same perfume/aftershave on the day of the exam that you use when revising.

     

    Timing! Plan your time properly. Start by answering the questions that have the potential to give you the greatest numerical score. Allocate your time appropriately. Read the questions three times to ensure that you understand – but don’t ever waste time on first drafts! Try to finish at least five minutes before the end of the exam – spend the last few minutes proof-reading – you can pick up valuable extra points this way.

     

    Practise! Practise! Practise!

     
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    Here are the funniest (and most alarming) mistakes from previous exams. Enjoy.

     

    “strucked…striked…hitted…builted…digged out”
    “…about how they survived this disaster and geologists.”
    “The earthquake was informed.”
    “The speaker reveals everything that happens, using words.”
    “Seamus uses some words to depict the mood and foreshadowing and metaphors.”

     
    [n.b If you do not understand the words illustrate, depict and foreground, it is probably best not to use them]
     
    Next, we have those who waste time with the blindingly obvious or the completely vague:
     

    “The Mid-term Break is either ironic and not ironic.”
    “Heaney expresses his feelings through various techniques.”
    “The poet uses the word ‘angry’ to show that the mother is angry.”

     

    And finally, we have the Just Plain Weird category:
     

    “Geogolists”
    “The message will be sent forth” (Presumably with Moses from Mt Sinai)
    “lossness”
    “The destruction was handmade”
    “…a warning to warn.”
    “The poet instigate alliteration and assonance to emphasize the stopping of blood and life.”
    “This past member is dead with bloods.”
    “An illustration of a picture or the creation of imagery was extrapolate in the concluding stanza of the poem.”
    “Seamus wants the conveys.”
    “Seamus ironicly twisted both the tone and mood of his poem.”
    “This poem consists of irony, sad mood and tone, and symbolism.”
    “He was alone with his brother and many literary terms.”
    “The person is Death.”
    “emotional feelings”
    “Heaney adds assonance and alliteration.”

     

    Just relax, do your best and don’t panic

    Good luck

     

    Exam Skills (University of New South Wales)


  2. Feedback on today’s past exam practice paper: Follower

    16/03/2020 by axonite


     

    Firstly (and most importantly) answer the question. You have been told repeatedly to do this – and yet the majority are still in the habit of ignoring it! It is not rocket science. In fact, it is the same the question every time! It will always ask you how a writer achieves his/her effects. It will not ask you to explain what the words mean. You must talk about techniques.
     
    Take one technique for each topic paragraph. Extrapolate upon it. State clearly what/how/why.
     
    There are no extra points available for writing about things that are irrelevant. Only answer the question.
     
    Stop using the word vivid (even if it appears in the question). It does not mean the same as ‘descriptive’ nor ‘evocative.’
     
    Look at the title. First think of the literal meaning before thinking of any possible figurative application and possible implications. Here, the title “Follower” literally means someone who walks about following someone else. It also suggests one who wishes to emulate and/or venerates another. It may even suggest a disciple.
     
    As you read the poem it should become quickly apparent that the words demonstrate just this sense encapsulated in the title – that the son ‘followed’ his father. He expresses how, as a clumsy small child, he idolised his father (both literally around the farm and figuratively as his most ardent fan). The father is described as “an expert” who worked with skill (“mapping the furrow exactly”) and verve (“…with a single pluck”). He was a powerful giant of a man whose strength was seemingly that of Atlas (“His shoulders globed…”), whereas the child felt inept (“I stumbled…a nuisance…yapping…”). Heaney contrasts the two to communicate the shame and inferiority that he felt at the time. However, now, with the passing of years, an ironic reversal has occurred – now, as a famous poet, Heaney finds that it is his father who ‘follows’ him. The last two lines seem very harsh as Heaney says that his father is the one who ‘stumbles’ (presumably making mistakes and possibly being the embarrassment now) and “will not go away.” The venerated and the follower have switched places – but Heaney (the ‘voice’ of the poem not necessarily being exactly the same as the poet himself) appears to accept the situation with far less grace than his father before him.


  3. IGCSE Language Assignment 1

    14/01/2019 by axonite

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    IGCSE Language Assignment 1: writing to discuss, argue and/or persuade in response to a text or texts of approximately two sides of A4 in total.

     

    The text(s) should contain facts, opinions and/or arguments. Candidates respond by selecting, analysing and evaluating the content of the text(s). They may write in any appropriate form that they wish. Different candidates in the same teaching set may choose to respond to different text(s) and/or in different forms.

     

    In this piece, you reflect on the writing of another – but you have great freedom in your choice of format (see page 13 of the syllabus).

     

    A newspaper opinion piece should be fun to pick apart – but you don’t have to present it as an analytical essay (It could, for example be a letter to the writer or the editor of the paper). Alternatively, you may wish to respond to an advertisement, a webpage, a couple of pages from a comic book, pages from a holiday brochure etc. Whatever the writing to which you respond, you need to ensure that you reflect on how the writer manipulates our response.

     

    A writer’s job is to encourage us to adopt his/her views – or make us ‘believe’ in an imaginary world – or tempt us to think that our lives will be so much better if we just buy a particular brand of coffee. In a sense, everything that we read is a form of propaganda. Some of it is blatant (as in the comic books that I read as a boy)…

     

    Seven Penny Nightmare

    Best of Battle

     

    …and some of it is more subtle (as in adverts and political language).

     

    Whatever you’re looking at, just remember that your chosen piece has to include facts and opinions (see the details above).

    Finally, the examiner is looking to see that you are versatile in your writing. Thus, you should aim to have three very different pieces of writing in your final submitted work, demonstrating clearly that you can adapt to a variety of writing tasks and that you can utilise the most appropriate style. If you have fun with your writing, you will already be on to a winner – because the examiner will be able to feel your enthusiasm. So, Enjoy!

    Don’t forget that there is a wealth of Assignment 1 stimuli material on Google Drive.


  4. Hitting the Right Note

    30/01/2018 by axonite

    Here are some examples of good practice in essay writing from my Year 10s:

     

    This is a strong introduction because it is clear, direct and concise. The quotations could probably be shorter (and indented) and colloquial expressions (like “sugar-coat”) and abbreviations should be avoided. However, despite minor detractions, this opening impresses because of its clarity. It covers the three essentials for commentary (or practical criticism): what, how and why.

     

    Generally, it is a good idea to avoid weak words like “give” and “show,” substituting active terms (such as “creates; argues; describes; renders; posits” etc). Nevertheless, this is again clear, direct, concise and expressive.

     

    Another great introduction, this one is pared-down to the essentials – there is not a wasted word. It is crisp in its exactness, expressing (again) what, how and why.

     

    This piece contains a good example of the correct use of terms. See how “juxtaposition” is slipped in deftly as a verb (This is what you should do, where possible, in your own writing). However, take care to avoid unfounded claims (“he wants reality to become”). If you make an assertion, you must provide evidence to support it (usually in the form of a brief quotation).

     

    Again, this is concise but meaningful.

     

    Learn from these pupils.  Look over your own writing to see how you can improve it.

     


  5. Ditch the phone and open a book

    07/10/2017 by axonite

    While nuclear energy, global warming, deforestation and Donald Trump continue to be major threats to the environment, mobile phones can rob us of our very humanity.
     

     

    Students arrive for my lessons with their phones in their hands – despite signs on the doors clearly indicating that phones are forbidden in my classroom. The very concept of leaving the phone in a locker is horrifying to most students. They even have to reach out and touch their phones periodically just to be reassured that they’re still there. This is ADDICTION. No ifs, no buts. ADDICTION. Forgot to bring your books to school? We have reading lessons at the same time every week, and yet about six students in each class forget to bring books with them. The same six students would never dream of being without their phones. This is ADDICTION.
     

    Walk around the school. You’ll see many students playing with their phones, but very few actually talking to each other and none at all reading books. This is a change that has occurred gradually over the last few years so that most never even noticed it.

     

    You may well think that this is a gross exaggeration – but if so, perhaps you haven’t observed the slow slide into a digital dystopia, a world of social exclusion where families stare mindlessly at their phones rather than talk to each other. Even dating couples are to be seen romantically gazing into each other’s eyes the screens on their mobile devices.

     

    Paul Lewis, writing in The Guardian says that:
     

    There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention,” severely limiting people’s ability to focus and possibly lowering IQ.

     
    If this weren’t bad enough, serious scientific research (not funded by the industry) indicates that mobile phones can cause cancer and “may be exposing us to harmful levels of electromagnetic radiation.”
     
    At parent teacher conferences, I am often asked, “how can my son/daughter raise his/her grades?” The answer is simple. But like the rich man who asks Jesus how he can enter heaven, you may not like the answer – Ditch the phone and open a book. Lewis goes on to note that many people within the mobile phone and computer business severely limit their own children’s access to digital technology:
     

    It is revealing that many of these younger technologists are weaning themselves off their own products, sending their children to elite Silicon Valley schools where iPhones, iPads and even laptops are banned.

     

     
    Is buying a mobile phone a form of self-destruction? Is buying a mobile phone for a child actually a form of child abuse? The very people who design these products think so.

     

    Links:
    Our minds can be hijacked
    Aki vs the devil


  6. Imagery

    29/09/2017 by axonite


     

    “Why is the imagery there?” someone asked me this week.
     

    To ask this question is perhaps indicative of thinking about the poem or lyrical prose passage too much and (to paraphrase Charlie Chaplin) feeling it too little. One might as well say, “what is the purpose of poetry?” (Sadly, one joyless Mr Spock type Science teacher once did, before going on to declare that it “serves no function”! It seemed that for him love, humour and enjoyment in general were illogical and thus “irrelevant, captain”).

     

    Figurative language is essentially poetic language. When we read lyrical passages in works such as Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, we need to ‘experience’ it with our senses. What Lee does is share with us, first and foremost, the feeling of being in those ‘exotic’ places, so we can understand on an emotional level something of what it felt like for him to have that peculiarly paradoxical mix of revulsion and attraction, of culture shock and exoticism. Imagery hits us in our hearts. We are intended to respond to it as human beings – yes, we may think about it, but feelings precede thoughts in this case.


  7. A View from the Bridge

    16/03/2017 by axonite

     

    Eddie, the tragic hero
    Tragedies traditionally took as their heroes men and women of high office (kings, queens, princesses etc) but Miller believed the “ordinary” man to be an appropriate protagonist for his plays. In fact, he shows us characters who are not “ordinary,” an implicit statement that there is no such thing as “ordinary.” The USA is a meritocracy (at least in theory) where the power lies with the so-called “ordinary” person (again, at least in theory). Eddie is in fact from a solidly working class environment – but his passions are just as “Greek” (as Miller terms them) as any high-born emperor. Like them, his fatal flaw drives him to his own self-destruction. “Eddie Carbone had never expected to have a destiny.” A “destiny”? What does Miller mean by this?

     

    Eddie’s self-denial
    Eddie cannot face up to the reality that he finds Catherine (his neice and god-daughter) attractive, and so he decides that “something aint right” about Rodolpho, the man she admires. His apparently effeminate attributes (and even his stature) seem evidence enough to Eddie that he is actually a homosexual and thus only interested in Catherine as a means to gaining American citizenship – the fact that he is buying luxury items seems to confirm this – “he’s here to stay,” Eddie says.

     

    Alfieri
    Like Rod serling in The Twilight Zone, Alfieri acts as the narrator. His function is, in a sense, the “bridge” of the title – he acts as a link between our world (comfortable ‘tame’ middle class) and that of the working class American Italians in their enclave. The “bridge” is not just the literal Brooklyn one (from which we may look down as we pass over) but a functional one within the play itself.

     

     

    Something’s lost, but something’s gained
    Perhaps “civilised” means ‘tamed’? Yes, it means that there is less bloodshed (no more Al Capone), but is something lost too? Miller has Alfieri call Capone “the greatest Carthaginian of them all” – a man born in New York, not North Africa! Why? Probably because Carthage fought against the rule of Rome, which Miller may be using here as a metaphor for a civilising power. Southern Italians, in particular, have long held a deep suspicion of the law – but Alfieri notes that he now feels safer. Nevertheless, this “ordinary” man sometimes yearns for an idealised past on the Mediterranean. He feels a sense of loss. Something is missing now, something raw and vital. Something Authentic. Something that Alfieri admires in Eddie. Could it be that like Carthage, Eddie too wages an unwinnable war against a younger power? He is ultimately doomed (his “destiny”) but his refusal to back down, his insistence on regaining his “name” (his honour), is an admirable quality.

     

    Poetic Justice
    Eddie dies from the very weapon with which he threatens Marco.
    This scenario is often a cliche in action movies because it clears the hero of any blame – the villain is a victim of his own evil machinations (Typically, he forgets a trap that he set earlier or…he dies from his own hand in a duel). If the universe itself is somehow responsible for the villain’s doom, it is called Natural Justice. When the punishment fits the crime, we call it Poetic Justice. Is Eddie a villain? Is the universe punishing him? Does he (and remember that ‘he’ is a fictional construct representing people like ‘him’ in the real world) deserve his fate?

     

    “…something perversely pure calls to me from his memory…he allowed himself to be wholly known…I think I will love him more than all my sensible clients.”

     

    Links
     
    BBC Bitesize
     
    Universal Teacher
     
    Tragedy and the Common Man by Arthur Miller
     
    The Arthur Miller Society


  8. Tackling the ‘Unseen’ poem

    14/03/2017 by axonite

    Poetry often seems to scare people. Here’s a straightforward video presentation that demystifies and helps you to understand and appreciate poetry:

     

     

    n.b. The definition of alliteration in the video above is wrong – alliteration is the repetition of the initial (first) sound in a string of words. If those repeated sounds happen to be consonants, then it is also consonance – but if they’re vowels, it is also assonance.

     

    Don’t forget that poetry is a different country (They do things differently there). Where you may think about a prose or drama excerpt, the poem is more for feeling. One good way of approaching a poem is to ask yourself how it makes you feel. This may or may not be the poet’s intention, but that’s beside the point – try to work out why it makes you feel this way. Then just ensure that you remove personal pronouns and focus it instead on the poet and his/her writing techniques (Always WHAT, HOW and above all WHY). Thus, “I feel uneasy when I read this poem” becomes “This poem generates a sense of unease through…” Finally, don’t forget that it is no good just to identify the ‘WHAT’ – you have to explain the HOW and the WHY.


  9. Connecting content and form

    28/10/2016 by axonite

    The Lost Albums Loved by the Stars

     

     

    The write-up for the first album cited here is a very good example of how to connect form and content in poetry. This is specific and focused, a far cry from empty claims or vague references that sometimes occur in poetry essays for IGCSE and IB. Take note.

     

    P.S. Don’t forget that these are also the kinds of comments that you should be writing about prose too – it’s not just poetry that has rhythm, repetition and so on.


  10. Reservist by Boey Kim Cheng

    30/09/2016 by axonite

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    In Reservist, Boey Kim Cheng regards the military service as laughable. He mocks it as being delusional (This is most evident in his reference to Don Quixote – “…tilt at windmills”). These are old men he says (“With creaking bones…grunts”) play-acting at being “knights” in some medieval farce – but the most that they can muster these days is being “battle-weary” ones before they even begin. They all look ridiculous (“…rusty armour…pot bellies”). Their “cavalier days” (when they looked dashing and vital in uniform) are long gone. Now they are a parody of a fighting force. It is pure “fantasy land” to expect these old and out of condition men to prepare for war. Moreover, Cheng appears to say that it is all for the vanity of those in power (“…kings’ command”) that they enact this pointless ritual (“We…Sisyphus”).

     
     
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