hi everyone, it's Melissa here. If you’re new around here, this is normally an **art channel**, but today I want to talk to you about some tips and tricks for igcse first language English exam. When I was doing my igcses, my English teacher literally told us that you can't really study for the English language, but evidently, from my grades, you CAN study for English but you just need a different method or approach in terms of studying it. Sidenote: this is actually the first video where I’m speaking in front of a camera, so bear with me if I look or sound or look awkward in this video. Without further ado, let's get into the juicy part of this video: my grades. I took the exam in October series in 2020 since the June 2020 series was cancelled So we were doing evidence-based grades for our igcses. My teacher told me that if I would apply for evidence grades I would only get a B but I still wanted to aim higher, so I “reset” the exam in the autumn series. To be honest, I didn’t have high hopes for my English grade cuz 1) I was doing AS level during my FLE preparation period and 2) I was just never too confident about my English, always quite insecure about my speaking and my grammar. So naturally, I was **not expecting a high grade** when it was result day in January, but to my surprise, I got an A*! I got **56 for Paper 1** the reading paper and **68 for Paper 2** the writing paper. For the percentage uniform mark, I was in the **92 percentile**, I know just **barely passing** the percentage for an A*, but idc I still got an a*. While you could argue that there was **grade inflation** for the autumn series, if you check the percentage for FLE, it didn’t really change much. My theory is that because it was a new syllabus, the grade boundary was supposed to go higher but because of the grade inflation in general, the grade boundary for First language English specifically didn’t change much. I’m not sure if I explained it good enough, if you have any questions just comment down below. So you must be wondering, what did I do to get that A*? Well let’s go in details with each paper and each question. Paper 1 the reading paper The first question of the reading paper consists of two tasks, **the comprehension task and the summary task.** For the comprehension task, you will be reading passage A to answer the questions. I think these short answer questions are ok, as they're **relatively straightforward** and begins the exam with an **easy start**. One thing to note is that because each question worth so few marks, the examiner will look for very **specific answers** for each question, which means there's little space for manoeuvring so you have to stay **relevant** to the question. When the question states **"use your own words"**, it's pretty clear that you SHOULD NOT copy straight from the text, actually use your own words! For the summary task, (this is kind of confusing), but you will be reading text B to write the summary. The key thing to note is that Cambridge has reduced the word limit to **120 words**, which means you really have to make it **extremely concise** while filling it with facts from the passage. When writing the summary, you don't have to follow the order of the points in the text, in fact, you should change the order a bit, group similar points together and make the summary flow better. This really shows the examiner that you've read the text and you're trying to make a relevant summary to the question. They also removed the question from previous years where you have to first write in bullet points of your summary, which might make it more difficult since it's easier to see the points and group them in continuous writing. In this case, you should use around 2 or 3 different coloured highlighters and **highlight the different points** from the text into different groups of arguments. It's okay to underline but sometimes I find that I have to manually group the points I underlined again while writing the summary since the points are not divided into groups. The last thing for the summary task is that the points are no longer limited or restricted to 15 points, what I mean is that, you **don't necessarily need to get 15 lines or arguments or facts** to get the full marks for the question. For the exam that I did in the summer, I thought I didn't have enough points for the summary but when I checked the mark scheme, it turns out the question had **13 relevant points** to the 15-mark-question. So what I'm guessing is that you will have to include around 15 points in your summary, but in actuality, it might be asking a little bit more or less. With that being said tho, I know it may sound redundant but still try to include as many points as possible while being concise with your language. Question 2 of the reading paper consists of 2 types of sub-questions again on Text C: **the short-answer questions** and **language analysis task**, or as some of you may call it, **the writer's effect question**. For the short answer questions, again, it's relatively **easy and straightforward**, kinda similar to the first comprehension questions. Just pay attention to the **wording of the question,** for example, there is one that says " Identify a word or phrase from the text which suggests the same idea as the words underlined", this means that you have to find the synonym of the underlined word in the question from the text, not coming up your own words. I'm pretty sure one of my classmates did that. The last question of the short answer question is kind of similar to the language analysis question on the next page, although for this it's like a mini version of it. The words or phrases should be relatively **easy to pick out** to analyse, make sure you will explain what the phrase means and explain the effects that it has. More of that in the next section of the video. For the language analysis of the exam, since you have to write your analysis for two paragraphs, the structure I normally follow for each paragraph is: 1) An **introductory sentence** is used at the beginning of the response to each paragraph you need to look at. This gives an **overview** of your answer. 2) Choose **3 powerful or unusual phrases to be used as evidence to support your statement**, so they need to be relevant. Again, they should be relatively easy to identify within the paragraphs you're given. Also, try to be **selective** about the words or phrase, do not just write the whole sentence and starts explaining the effect of that. 3) For each word or phrase you selected, you should first explain the **literal meaning** of the word or phrase first and then explain the **effect** it has and how it creates **imagery**. As it literally states in the question "Explain how the writer uses language to convey **meaning** and to create an **effect** in these paragraphs." I think many students don't tend to explain the meaning and **go straight into the effect**. By mentioning the meaning of the phrase it might help you to **understand** and think of the effect it has easier. With that being said, your analysis for each phrase should be about 1-2 sentences max, cause 1) the total mark for this question is **15** **marks**, it's a lot but comparing it to the other questions that worth the same amount of marks, you shouldn't spend that much time on it. And 2) **timing** for each question, there's a final question where it requires quite an extensive time for the answer. With that being said, let's talk about the last question of the reading paper - **Directed writing**, or Cambridge likes to call it - **extended response to reading**. You will be reading Text C which is the same text from the last question to answer the question. For this question, I recommend you to use three different **coloured highlighters** since your answer has to reference 3 different bullet points that are stated in the question. When highlighting the text, try to find **5 different arguments or ideas** from the text to support **each bullet point**. Because this 25-mark question is divided into **15 marks for the content** and **10 marks for the quality of your writing**, and **3*5 is 15** so you should have 5 points for each bullet points. With the 10 marks that are counting the quality of your writing, you should **familiarize yourself** with all the different text types. The text types that could come up are **letter, report, journal, speech, interview or article**. Make sure that you know how to write all of them, cause any of the ones I mentioned could literally **come up**. I remember I wasn't too confident about writing **interviews** and I couldn't find any recent past papers about interviews so I was digging quite hard to find some specific questions to write about interviews. And it turns out, an interview came up in my exam, so always know your text types kids. One more thing that's crucial during your exam is the **timing** for each question. The exam lasts for 2 hours, and personally, I find that to be quite a short amount of time compared to the range of questions we have to answer. The timing structure I followed is 10 mins for the comprehension task, 10 mins for the summary task, 10 mins for the short answer questions again, and 30 mins for language analysis, 45 mins for directed writing. I tend to stay with the order of the questions but of course, if you want to do the direct writing question first, just try not to spend more than 45 mins on it. But if you do the math for the timing structure I listed earlier, there is still 15 mins left from the 120 minute-exam, but you have 3 texts to read, and I normally spend around 5 mins for each passage, so that leaves us with no time to review your answer at the end. You might have a bit of time to check your answers if you read a bit faster or finishing one of the questions quicker but overall this is a pretty intense and fully packed exam, so keep an eye on the clock to make sure you will finish the test in time. Now let's move on to paper 2 - **the writing paper**, I honestly find it so much easier than reading. You will have only 2 questions, the first one is directed writing again, but the text types for writing are only speech, letter or article. And since it is on the writing paper, it will be testing mostly on your writing abilities. So while you still have to read a text to answer the question, your answer shouldn't be restricted to what's laid out to you in the passage, you have to expand the narrative and be more imaginative. For the next and also last question - the composition section. You will need to answer one question from a choice to choose one out of four prompts they give: two descriptive and two narratives. For me, I always go for **descriptive** since I can't really think of a story in an exam condition, and descriptive writing wouldn't ask you to have a strong storyline but narrative would. Also, to make it easier for me in the exam, I **** from different texts together and grouped them into a document, and I would go over those little extracts during revision. They don't have to be extensively long, some of them are only one or two sentences long. if you're wondering where I find these descriptive paragraphs, some of them I found when reading a novel or a book but most of them were actually the passages from reading paper since they're already filled with literary techniques and imageries for you to analyse, so why not use them in your writing? I also converted them into an audio file so they really get **ingrained** into my brain, so when during the exam, I would easily recall those different descriptive pieces and fit them into my writing. Of course, don't write down word for word, otherwise, it would be plagiarism, but it's easy to write some complex sentence structure or some literary devices without thinking too hard and wasting time on the exam. The timing for the writing paper is quite straightforward, it's 2 hours again and 2 questions on the exam, so naturally you should spend about 1 hour per question. Of course, if you finish the directed writing piece early you can move on to the next question as people tend to spend more time on composition writing than writing about text types. In terms of resources, I find the youtube channels IGCSE success and Mr Salles really helpful as they break down the exam paper and questions in details, I will link their channels down below. I will also include some website links that I find quite useful for the exam. Alright, this is the end of the long and extensive video on the igcse first language exam. I hope you guys find it helpful and leave your questions down below if you have any. I will try to answer them all. Video request such as igcse math or history is also welcome, but I might not have enough time to film it at the moment since I'm preparing for my AS level exams right now. Anyways, good luck with your exams and see you soon.