Son been to funeral- catch up help with English Language GCSE tomorrow- AQA A higher

[kangers]

My son's junior school friend died of Leukaemia last Friday, funeral yesterday (all day and stayed at a friends with twin borther of firend). Not mcuh evision done all week. Not asking for special consideration. Has any one got tips for effective revision for the above exam to do this afternoon. I would be really grateful. AIBU? :)

Hi, I am an English teacher. If you let me know which exam board your son is doing, I will be able to help. Sorry to hear about the death of his friend- what a terrible experience.

Have you looked on the AQA website? There's revision tips and past papers on there I believe.

Also try BBC Bitesize. There's a whole section on GCSE English on there.

You should ask via your EO for SC.

www.aqa.org.uk/
^^ put the spec in there and it will pull up - but you have to know the spec - I assume he's doing the outgoing 3702H?

AQA A higher- language- 3702/2H he is crap at it and really struggling- and we are running out of time. Thanks dolly-

Can't help with teh revision.

But I would raise it with teh school and ask for special consideration. Its what it is there for. Might be a bit too late though, but worth a try.

Sorry!! Just read your title properly. Tomorrow's paper for aqa is media and non-fiction and writing to argue, persuade , advise. He needs to be able to look at two newspaper or magazine articles on similar topics and analyse them. The paper will ask him to identify facts and opinions, discuss presentational devices such as images, layout, fonts etc and their effects, and compare the two articles. In the second half of the paper he will be asked to write a speech, letter or article. There is lots of stuff on BBC bitesize (google it and go to gcse eng Lang). Hope this helps .

Do ask for special consideration, yours is a genuine case, and exactly what the system is there for (not our Hamster died a month ago).

Just think its a bit late and he's not been as gutted as others ( he attended different secondary school but remained friends) its the time he's lost, and the lack of focus over the week-- just daydreamy. And part of me wants him to get grades entirely on his own- SC seems like a bit of a cheat.

Thanks all- will do all you suggest-
any useful mnemonics for the comparison part dolly- he struggles about what to consider- like he didn't know you could include fonts I don't think.

I don't think you would get special consideration.

I agree MmeBlueberry- not enough.

Mnemonics- yup! Try SPLAT: subject, purpose, language, audience, tone. The comparison can be quite formulaic, so easy to remember. For each of tge SPLAT he needs to write a PEE (!) for each text (point, evidence, explanation) and then compare. Eg 'in text 1 the purpose is to persuade tge reader that smacking is bad. (point). We can tell this from the sentence 'how would you like to be smacked by someone bigger than you?' (evidence).The use of a rhetorical question here makes the reader see smacking as ridiculous and wrong.(explanation). However(comparison) the purpose of text 2 is to advise parents about appropriate ways of disciplining their children. (point)We can tell this from .... Etc etc.

excellent- thank you so much- will be showing him this and hopefully getting him togo through a past paper later.
Thanks a lot dolly

Read the questions BEFORE reading the 2 texts to inform the reading.

Annotate useful ideas/points in the texts.

Think in terms of 1 good point or quotation/example and roughly 2 minutes writing time per mark available (so 2 points and 4 mins for a 2 mark qu)

Be careful not to mix up presentational and linguistic devices if there is a qu on each one - keep points about presentation to the qu about presentation etc.

Presentational = fonts, colours, images (cartoon/map/photos etc) use of bold/italics/capital letters, text boxes, bullet points, columns etc

Linguistic = use AFOREST to help remember
Alliteration
Fact
Opinion
Rhetorical questions/repetition
Emotive language
Statistics
Three (rule of 3)

In all cases, state the intended EFFECT of the device used - e.g. alliteration used to create rhythm and draw the audience's attention to the statement.

Make sure he uses the AFOREST devices in his own writing task as well.

As he's doing higher, make sure his comments on the effects are specific to the text he is writing about - so try to avoid generic comments such as 'it catches the eye'. He should identify the purpose and link his comments to that. A good one is to 'say what you see' in detail - so if there is a photo of a person, he should mention what clothes they are wearing, the facial expression, if it is a 'real life' photo or a posed shot etc ect. Then link this to the writer's purpose.

For paper 1 section A the questions cover the following skills - if he googles these he should be able to find some final top tips to help -although to be honest missing even 1 week should not wreck his chances.

Question 1 is following an argument - he needs to show that he knows what the core message of the text is and how it has been structured.

Question 2 is fact and opinion (sometimes just one of them) - he needs to comment on the use of both, pick out examples and show that he understands the different roles of both within the text.

Question 3 and 4 - one will ask him to look at how language has been used in the text to create specific effects for the reader (he needs to link to purpose and audience), the other will be on images or presentation features. One of the two will ask him to compare texts.

For the writing section he needs to carefully consider the purpose of the text he is writing and who he is writing it for.

HTH

For writing to persuade, he should use persuasive techniques such as a flattery, rule of 3, threats, humour, anecdotes, emotive language, alliteration,
statistics, fact and opinion, rhetorical qustions (don't overuse these) similes etc