Anyone doing Enl Lan AQA this June ?

[MoniDubai]

Any advice or last minute revision for Year 10 child doing new Eng Lang exam this June, 40 % of the mark, currently sitting with only a grade c from all the coursework, difficult as teacher marks all the course work, what is the moderation thing about ?

is my understanding of the exam correct as in www.doindubai.com English GCSE, is anyone in UK confused over Lang or Lit, did they tell you at beg of Yr 10 or end of yr 9 kids wld be sitting their gcse eng lang at end of year 10 or is it just me ??

I have a Ds doing this. It's a new course with AQA designed so that teachers can teach Eng Land and Lit over 2 years but less able candidates do only "English".

We weren't told much about it and I was unhappy about DS taking part of his GCSE a whole year early when he's not the best at English and would benefit from another year teaching in my opinion.
There isn't actually coursework in the way they used to do it. It's now called controlled assessment. There have been a few threads on here about that aspect. These are tests done in school in exam conditions and held by the school until next year, but the teachers are not allowed to give feedback.

I meant English Lang

Y10 Daughter is doing this in June as well. She is a C/D student but no one is giving any idea about current controlled assessment grades because thresholds haven't been released yet. I also feel it is early for her to sit it, but they are the professionals and I am sure they know best, so we are supporting her all the way.

We are being strongly advised by AQA not to give out our guesses at the thresholds. CAs are marked according to 'bands' and students are given a number grade rather than a letter. At the moment, we haven't been told what these numbers are likely to correpond to (although obviously you can guess!). Depending on the school, coursework does tend to be moderated quite strictly- and I suspect most of them will be trying to do a good job on this as it's the first time it's been done. At most of the schools I know this has not been done yet as different classes/ teachers may be approaching courseworks at different times in the year.

(OP, I may have misunderstood you. Moderation is where we check each other's marks to ensure that we agree as a department that everybody is marking correctly. Hence there should be no concern that they have been marked just by the teacher. Additionally, AQA will collect a sample later on to double check. In no way, therefore, should the grades be seen as final)

OP, many schools are getting the students to sit the exam this summer partially because it looks as though that makes sense in terms of how to divide up the new course. But also, because we're a bit nervous about teaching the new course and this gives students a chance to resit if there turns out to be a problem. You know how each year students get higher grades in the exams and the Media complains that this is because exams are getting easier, blah blah blah? Weeeeelllllll, they're not. A big factor in students getting higher grades is teachers knowing the exams and structure of the course inside out. I have never taught a GCSE English class in which I hadn't pretty much predicted the questions on the paper beforehand (there really are only so many they can give you) and taught children the 'formula' for getting top grades.....until this year. This is the first year of the new syllabus, so we're all really nervous and my prediction is that exam results will go down accordingly.

It sounds like the school are factoring in these concerns too.

Tortu, what sort of skills does this paper cover?

Presentational Devices, Language Features and items writing to persuade and argue a point, I've written my understanding on my site www.doindubai.com

Thanks very helpful, I am trying to get my Yr 10 child to write something everyday till the exam, persuade me to get her a BB, persuade the local retail centre to have a cinema etc, have also tried to give her formulas for Lang devices and presentational techniques to practice, when you say they can resit, can they resit any bit of the CAs? Esp the verbal ones, eg presentation on being PM for a day type of thing and as for the video, I really felt all the drama students were at such an advantage on this.

Sounds as though our Year 10s are guinea pigs then.
I have concerns about resits as I've heard that some universities frown on them. DS is brilliant at physics and Maths but English is his worst subject, hence my anxiety at him taking it early.