Help! Doing really badly in AQA English Language GCSE

@filchards of course you are. But I have made suggestions which I know work for all kinds of students because I teach all kinds of students.
Finding a story to learn and regurgitate is not a good idea.

@filchards not getting 40 marks is less of a problem than being disqualified.
I made some suggestions upthread.

I feel for you and ds. My DD is ASD & ADHD...very bright, well read and can debate......but just can not get GCSE English. She struggles with inference and nuance..so much so she won't attempt writing. There is no ND friendly English syllabus.

This is how my son was tutored - get a story written then all he has to do is link it to the photo
He got a 7 from a predicted 4/5
This is good advice

We're really good at spotting remembered stuff that students have found and used. That's a very dangerous game to play.

@filchards it does say write a description but it's a descriptive piece of fiction writing they want. It's misleading, as it's not supposed to be just a basic description. Have you looked at the mark scheme - it's woolly and vague but will give you some guidance.
If you do the written prompt for Lang 1 Q5, you should write a narrative story.

You say he likes coding, can he try and tie in his writing to that? Eg. they want something unexpected. What if it is something unexpected in the coding. Can he describe how he feels when he codes etc.

@filchards surely better if he writes it and owns it and memorises his own work?

Op the image you posted (the old man) is paper 1 (creative writing) - there are some good ideas from @HereBeFuckery on how to tackle this.

I agree the Venn diagram is not great for your son. Could he draft some basic starter paras and characters or even the majority of a story and learn that? The exam is next week I think?

@filchards do you know how to locate the past papers, mark scheme and examiners report/exemplar material?

Second, the venn diagram isn’t suitable for someone working at your sons level, it’s generic and therefore useless.

I imagine you would be delighted with a grade 4, so when you read the exemplars and examiners report look at the comments for answers scoring around that grade.

Most of all try not to panic and help your poor son not panic. It so is not the end of the world. He can resit his English as many times as his needs to, he can resit as a private candidate out of school and he can take functional skills instead. This exam isn’t the end of the line and maybe when his brains a bit more mature he will be better able to tackle an English exam.

For what it’s worth my child’s grades went from a scant 4 to 8/9s with medication.

Ds1 said lit didn't go too badly. He managed to get something down on the page! Massive result, although we're still not expecting a pass.

What pp described above is our approach for lang- basically memorise a piece of creative writing that can be tweaked to the relevant pic.

For Lang Paper 1 - the one with the picture that you posted (old man), he can pre prepare some 'scenes'. Get him to work with you on this:

Scene 1: an old man on a bench. What does he look like - describe his face, his hands, his clothes, his shoes. Use one simile, one metaphor and/or one form of personification. Now describe an expression on his face (sadness is easier than happiness!)

Scene 2: the old man sees a jogger running past. Describe the jogger - old or young, clothes, hair. Do they plod or speed past? Describe the jogger as an animal of some kind.

Scene 3: as the jogger disappears, a photographer takes a picture of them. As they look through the lens, describe the scene in the camera lens, and move from the jogger to the old man (this links it all together).

In the exam, he then has to link this to the picture somehow - if he gets a photo of an old man, great, start straight in. If he gets a busy street, one line about the busy street, then 'in a quiet corner, an old man watched the busy street from a rickety bench'. If it's a boat on a stormy sea, the old man remembers his days as a fisherman in scene 1. If a hillside path, a bird could swoop over that, then travel further and see the old man... etc

He can memorise scenes 1-3, then all he has to do is write a (tenuous) link to the picture.

This is what we teach y11 to do, and we get solid results and positive comments from examiners.

He has time as AQA lang is after half term. Good luck!

I've suggested students start with the weather ( pathetic fallacy) when they have a blank. Even if the image does not suggest it, it doesn't matter - the image is just a stimulus. Plan one positive weather starter and one negative- selection depending on what feels most appropriate when they see the task. Ideally they would come back to this as the final sentence to get some marks for structural cohesion. They could literally repeat it or, if feeling able, adapt it to create more of an ending.
E.g... start with: 'Dark clouds loomed overhead. Was the wind whistling or weeping? Rain threatened.' and then finish with 'Dark clouds loomed overhead' if it makes sense to, or a weather shift: 'The dark clouds had passed.' ( Simple sentences usually work well at start and end for clarity).
Obviously the bit in between needs writing and to 'fit' but this would work well enough to just get going and hopefully provide an end point too. Do the end as a single sentence paragraph to demonstrate a little more conscious structuring.

@filchards ds has dyspraxia, but he's asked about being assessed for adhd as well (I've got it and his little brother is being assessed for that and autism).

Physics, maths and coding are Ds's thing as well- he'd much rather do that than boring old English.