Help on GCSE, ENGLISH.

Hi,

Im taking my GCSE's this month and I need some help/Ideas on what to write.

All I know that I have to write to Persuade/Describe.

Im not very imaginative so I need some help.

1. Describe a nightmare world
2. Describe a journey
3. Describe the room you are sitting in

1. Persuade your Headteacher to be alloud Mobile Phones in school.
2. Persuade your Headteacher to have no school uniform.
3. Persuade your local council to be more enviormentally friendly.

Thanks.

XT2MAD

 

I'll start you off with the no school uniform, im also taking gcse. Make bullet points with reasons why uniforms are bad. eg.

"Everyone is the same, No right of freedom of expression"

Hope that helped ^^

 

Do these have to be realistic, or can they be made up, such as the journey.

 

When I sat my GCSEs last year, it was quite straightforward. We were asked to do things like describe a journey. I made it up as I wrote it in the exam. I'm sure you'll be fine.

 

No, don't use bullet points in a GCSE. It has to be prose. When I did mine, I wrote the descriptive piece on a journey and did the persuasive piece on taxation. Just remember that when writing persuasively it should be distinguishable from an argumentative style, i.e. that it should have more emotional appeal than rational, and should, unlike an argumentative style, acknowledge no opposing views.

 

I think he is talking about the plan.

You have to be imaginative. Aparently you get marks for doing that.

- Using metaphors.
- Illiteration
- ...

Thanks for your help guys

 

personally i think ur best bet is to describe the room ur in...use reference to ur 5 senses.. possible a paragraph for each sense and describe in high detail about them. use verbs, adverbs etc and dont forget to include metaphors and similies thats a big help to ur righting!! also make sure u include hyperbole and onomatpoeia if u know what that is

i hope that helps

good luck

 

Whats a hyperbole.

I know what an onomatpoeia is.

Thanks

 

hyperbole is an exaggeration for example 'i could sleep for a year' or 'this book wighs a ton'
and onomatopeia is words that sound lyk their meaning for example 'bang' 'crash' 'hiss' 'whack'

any other questions? if so im glad to help since i got english exams next week as well

 

oh ok thanks.

Are you doing Poems from other cultures?

 

yea i got that in about a weeks time...however i already had my poems by duffy and armitage and from the pre-1914 bank which is the literature paper and i feel like i failed that badly..hopefully i can redeem myself in the different cultures paper

 

I did Heaney and Clarke lol.

Did u do Of Mice and Men?

 

I got an A in both GCSE literature and GCSE english last year.

My advice:

When writing your descriptive piece, SHOW, DON'T TELL. Describe using the 5 senses (touch, smell etc). Don't just say what's there. Think outside of the box. I had to write about a journey (same as Finn) and I described the journey of a plane, but animating it to give it the features of a bird.

When writing your persuasive piece, you need to really remember what I call the fear module.

Facts
Exaggeration
Anecdotes
Rhetorical questions.

All that crap managed to get me a high A grade in the english paper. As for literature, that's just a matter of memorizing the book and poems you've studied. I also did Heaney and Clarke. It was hell. All you gotta do is remember to use 'point, evidence, explain'.

Make your point. Use a quote from the text as evidence (though this has to be embedded to give your work nicer flow and make it less painful to read) then explain the meaning and relate back to the question.

Easy As.

 

Unless a plan actually benefits you, I don't recommend wasting time in the exam on writing one. I personally did a 20-second spider diagram to create the illusion that the prose had been carefully planned, but plans do not help me - my hand and thus writing are free.

I did. We did ''Hurricane Hits England'', ''Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan'', and various other ones espoused by the AQA syllabus.

Heaney and his fucking potatoes.

I set a record for GCSE English Literature and got an A* in English Language, too. Take our advice!

I can't stress enough how right she is. Not only can you use sensuous description as a point of analysis for English Literature, but you should also try to incorporate it into pieces of descriptive writing. What Giverny is saying is that you should seek to take the reader to the place being described; to allow them to experience what you are expressing; to show them the sounds, tastes and touches.

It's a nice idea. I would use an extended metaphor to underpin the entire piece. I remember now that I used the concept of Hell as my extended metaphor. The journey was the transgression to Hell, and the person I met on the journey was its custodian. I used lexis throughout from the semantic field of Hell, and personified objects in a lurid and sinister fashion.

I disagree. Persuasive pieces do not require factual inclusions. They can make blind, unfounded assertions that are the product of both prejudice and of opinion. This is why a argumentative style is distinguishable from persuasive writing. Moreover, I recommend incorporating statistics to consolidate your persuasion.

 

Facts, statistics: same thing

 

I Loled.

At a Potato Digging.

Digging.

LOL

 

Well, I'm a few years off my GCSE's but I'll try to help anyway. You should do the following:

-Make descriptive references to your senses (Eg. 'The smell of sulphur lingered in the air', 'I could hear the crescendo of the raindrops landing on the roof')

-Use descriptive techniques (Eg. metaphors, alliteration, similies etc.)

-Read what you have written as you go along, and think about how good it would sound to a marker, or another person. Try and write it in a way which would make it impress you if you read it in a book or something.

I'm only in year 9 (going into year 10) so I don't know if this will be of any use to you, you are probably way past the stage of the advice I have given you. But even so, I hope I have helped. If you like, you could do some past papers for English and PM me the results, and I could give you my opinion on what you could do to improve?

 

I got a B in GCSE so my help might not be as top notch as those here, but PM me any questions( on your new account ofcourse..) you have anything you don't understand and I'll do my best. I would go through past case studies, work sheets it's usually in the same format each year! Good luck you probably have taken them by now.

Also don't worry bro English takes you nowhere.. what you should concentrate on is Maths, PE and Science.

 

English has merit in pretty much all areas of employment and education, as most require at least a C grade in English and Maths at GCSE. Studying English at further and higher education can lead to very well paid jobs and really broaden employment opportunities, sir.

 

I lold.

Anyway, Giv's right. User is also banned, so thread=locked.