C or higher
C or higher
C or higher
So the examination season is upon us. There will be huge pressure to get as many grade Cs or higher at GCSE as possible. Schools are judged by how their students do, and you - if you have C-grade or higher potential - will want to earn the best grade you can.
Here then are my final hints on how to get that grade C or B in English that you deserve (assuming you have worked for it. If you haven’t - stop reading now).
1 Self-regulation is essential
This is a concept that I’m guessing your English teacher hasn’t spelt out in the way that I am going to do.
Effective writers don’t just think about what they are saying; they also consider how they are expressing it.
It means we self-regulate - we constantly question whether we could improve the way we write things.
For example: if I write a sentence like this one ...
It’s sunny out there and really beautiful.
... then I ensure that I have a capital letter on ‘It’s’ because it is the start of a sentence. I pause to test whether it’s ‘it’s’ (meaning ‘it is’) or ‘its’ (meaning possession as in ‘his /her / its). I pause at ‘there’ to check that it’s not ‘their / they’re’. I check that ‘beautiful’ has just one ‘l’ as I know that all words (except ‘full’) end with one ‘l’, as in ‘awful’, ‘disgraceful’ and ‘beautiful’.
This is self-regulation. Confident writers are always asking questions about HOW they write. They know that good writing avoids repetition of words. So in my earlier blurb I avoided repetition by using ‘saying / expressing / writing’.
2 Use paragraphs
If you are serious about a grade C or higher, then you must use paragraphs. In most writing this will mean three to five paragraphs to a page. If you are writing an article, then every sentence is likely to be a new paragraph.
In an examination it’s important that the marker sees you using paragraphs, so I would advise that you leave a line or two lines between each one to make your use of paragraphing really clear.
3 Vary your sentences
No offence, but C/D borderline students to write in sentences that are too long, rather boring, and which use the words and ‘and’ and ‘but’ too much.
To test this, think of how you would respond to a question asking you to ‘describe the room you are in’ (this is a real GCSE examination question from a few years back).
How would you begin?
What would you write?
The typical C/D borderliner would put:
This room is quite large and it is ....
See how predictable it is?
So: aim to use some SHORT sentence and some LONG sentences. Aim to use STATEMENTS and QUESTIONS.
An opening paragraph about the room you are in might therefore read like this:
What am I doing here?
This place is a prison and for more than two hours I am locked inside with hundreds of other jittery teenagers.
This is a superb opening. The initial question grabs our interest. It starts with a short sentence, and then moves to a longer one. That word ‘jittery’ really helps us to visualise the people around the writer.
This isn’t a C: it would gain a much higher grade.
And that shows that doing well in English isn’t about fancy words and long sentences. It is about having something to say and being interesting.
4 Be interesting
You’ve just seen what this means, but here are some ideas.
a)Being interesting means trying to grab the reader’s attention in your first sentence
b)This might involve asking a question ‘Why in the UK are we so obsessed with school uniform?’ or focusing on a detail ‘The new trousers were hurting his knees’
c)It’s also about rejecting the obvious words hat come into your ming (‘school uniform is a really bad idea’) and instead pausing thinking of a combination of words the are more unusual, less predictable - eg:
He wished he hadn’t agreed that his mum would choose his new school trousers.
OR
Dear Mr Smith
Why does your school, like every other school within a 25-mile radius, assume that wearing a school jumper helps students to achieve more?
5 Read stuff
You only really become a good writer through reading. This time last year I published an A* reading list. It applies just as much to you now. Read more here.
Of all of this advice, the most important are numbers 1 to 5. Good luck with your self-regulation, paragraphs, sentences, interestingness and reading.
Best wishes for those exams. Sock it to ‘em.
Geoff Barton
Sunday 17 January 2013
21:50
Sunday, 19 May 2013