Yr 11 - struggling with English Language

[OvercookedSausages]

I’m looking for hints and tips to help DS. He’ll be taking GCSE English Language in June and is struggling!

He is a bright boy, in a selective state grammar and getting 7-8-9s in all his other subjects, including English Lit. He needs a 5 to get back into his sixth form and he wants to stay. So he needs the 5! Latest mock was a 4.

He has had a tutor (group online) since September and he’s finally started to do some independent practice outside of homework and tutoring.

From what I can see, he can pick out sentence structures but he can’t explain how this makes the reader feel, as one example. He also struggles with the longer creative question - he can’t think outside the box and write a story. His recent practice at home produced one A4 page in 45 minutes. He should be writing 2-3 pages.

I’ve asked him to take some photos of higher grade work produced by friends so he can see what they do. He also has the revision guide.

Any English teachers who can assist? How can I help him write more and write creatively? I’m struggling here myself.

Can he memorise a piece of writing and adapt it to the question? I feel this could be a dangerous strategy!

I feel your pain, have son in almost identical position! So hard to do revision for Eng Lang. We have been focusing on recalling all the different literary devices and giving examples of the cuff. We've found that going for a walk and describing what we can see using a metaphor etc helps get practice in.

For the creative writing he's been told to keep the plot very simple, that showing character development is the best way to gain marks. So he has worked up a few plot lines, all pretty similar in structure to try and cover off the most common topics. So for example he has a Bus Stop story: character is at a bus stop, feeling sad/apprehensive about where going (use devices to describe scene). Someone else turns up. They have a short but meaningful conversation (gets the speech in). This brings about a change in perspective (character development). The bus arrives and they get on feeling differently. As the bus pulls away they look back at the now empty bus stop (cyclical structure).

DS is actually now finding the transactional writing in Paper 2 more daunting!

Have a look at Mr Bruff and Mr Salles on YouTube (they are both English teachers). DD found them useful and easy to understand for English Lit.

The good news is he has just about enough time to sort it out - the high grades in the other subjects mean this is within his ability for sure.

For the creative writing, technically yes one could memorise a piece but I would not suggest it. Partly because it’s not the point, partly because the writing prompt could be difficult to match, and partly because if your strategy is to memorise and then you forget in the exam hall, you’re more screwed than ever.

Instead, memorise elements. Short, short, long, medium is one I encourage my students to try. It’s sentence length to open the creative writing - two short sentences, a long one with more detail, and a medium one that sets up the story they want to write. Also means they can set a good pace without needing a huge vocabulary. ‘He looked left. He looked right. When he looked straight ahead, he could see the path disappear into the dusty horizon. There was only one path Joe could take.’ That’s the whole opening paragraph and then start a new one that develops Joe’s predicament.

In terms of writing pace, this can be a good exercise to take on over the holidays. Set a timer for 20 minutes and write that long day after day. If the writing isn’t getting any longer after three attempts, sit down to try to unpick why.

For affecting the reader, remember everything the writer does is a choice and it will have an impact on the reader. It might be next to no impact - they read, they don’t think too much, they do nothing. It can be a great deal - they read, think, and attempt to make change. But every time the reader feels a new way, that’s an impact on the reader. Try reading articles or the first pages of books and quizzing on what he feels from them.

In the YouTube channels mentioned above, be aware the ‘points for prizes’ concept one of them embraces is not particularly helpful and he is essentially trying to game the system. The examiners are onto it and don’t love it tbh.

The boost your DS needs is going to come from practice, so first things first, sort a realistic but effective revision timetable for Easter. Good luck!

For how does it make the reader feel:

Dd1 struggled with this.

We got her to think about the overall feel of the piece/paragraph and only then work out why she was thinking this - what words / constructions gave rise to these feelings.

We also had some success with getting her to think 'what if the words were changed'?

To add to the excellent suggestions above, I would consider getting a 1-1 tutor who can really unpick your DS’s individual needs and support him with a tailor made programme.

Thanks all. Some good suggestions I will speak to DS about. He’s a bright boy and I know he’s capable of that 5. Fingers crossed.

This sounds very similar to what we see a lot — bright students who can analyse technically but freeze when asked to explain effect or write creatively. The fact he's getting 7-8-9s elsewhere tells you the ability is absolutely there.Two things that tend to unlock this:For the "how does this make the reader feel" questions: Get him to read the extract and literally say out loud, in one word, how it made him feel. Tense? Sad? Uneasy? That single word is the answer — the rest is just pointing at the evidence that created that feeling. Many students overthink this because they assume there's a "correct" literary answer. There isn't. The examiner wants to see he can connect technique to emotional response.For creative writing speed: The issue is almost certainly that he's trying to think of a "good" story. He doesn't need one. He needs a situation. One character, one setting, one small change. The bus stop example upthread is perfect. I'd also suggest he practises "5-minute sprints" — set a timer, write without stopping, no editing. Do this daily over Easter. The goal isn't quality, it's breaking the habit of staring at the page. Quality follows once the hand is moving.The memorising-a-piece strategy can work as a scaffold (having a go-to opening paragraph structure, for instance) but I'd avoid memorising whole pieces — too rigid for the unpredictable prompts.We run a small tutoring company (Quantum Brain Tutoring) and work with quite a few grammar school students in exactly this position — happy to have a no-obligation chat if you'd like some more targeted advice. But honestly, with Easter ahead and his work ethic, a 5 is very achievable. Good luck to him.

What board is he doing?

Have a look at the paper yourself and see how the marks breakdown. It will depend on exam board, but there will be some reading/comprehension and some writing, some of which is short and some more extended.

For my DS in similar circumstances, with about a week of focus on exam technique with me, he went from a 5 to an 8, so it can be done.

Does he struggle with the actual mechanics of writing? In order to get over the ‘this takes ages to write’ hurdle of doing practice questions, can he use Google voice typing for the practice?

Chat GPT is also good - tell it what board, sitting, paper and question number and it can mark any answer and provide feedback.

For the reading, make sure he can spot juxtaposition, alliteration, personification etc etc, and then he can have a template for answering a question.

FInd out which exam board they are using and look at a past paper. They are all online except for last year's set. Open the exam question paper, I found it helpful to print out the extract, then have the mark scheme open in another tab. Walk through the paper together. Once you understand as the parent what the exam board is looking for it helps to talk that through with your son.

Once you have walked through each set of papers from a year then move onto the next year's and see if he is able to do this one without as much help. There are also usually walkthroughs on youtube by English teachers.

Mine did go in with some prepared parts of a narrative, mainly weather description, character descriptions, settings, woods/house/party/school playground and understanding that this more about the language and punctuation you use as well as the story. A really good example used in class was a child who described standing in line for Subway and all about the choices he could make.

Use google to look up synonyms and weather descriptives. Mine also did contrast so their story took place at night in the rain and contrasted that to the daytime. Imagine the school playground, during the day, contrast that to at night, pitch black. Use inside/outside, outwardly Jenny was confident and smiling at the party, inside she felt small and could feel the sweat in her armpits. She hoped it didn't show on the top she had picked out. Also timelines, talk about the now but dip back into the past. Terry was late. Talk about how Terry is always late, the times you have stood waiting for him.

We had a note of every narrative title that had been in the exam paper over the years to see what ideas they could come up with for each one. Steal ideas, not a whole story, just plots. They are 16, they are not writing an award winning piece of fiction in the exam.

It’s AQA. He has been doing past papers and I have recently been sitting with him, offering suggestions (I loved English GCSE although it was different in the olden days!).

He does intend to try and do some practise each day to get a flow. I think like maths and the sciences which he’s getting 8s and 9s in, he considers there is a correct answer! I have explained time and again, there isn’t. So has his teacher and tutor.

He does tend to overthink- just write shit down. You might get 1 mark. A blank page will produce 0 marks! He knows all about the mark scheme and can bore on at length about it! If there was a GCSE in this, he would get a 9!

The PP who said about ideas/ plots is a good one.

Thanks again. Roll on June when this is over!

Solid advice above.

The secret to the story is CONTROL - how a student is able to develop their writing in a controlled manner, building tension (through description, setting, language devices, structure, etc) is often rewarded highly - rather than a load of garbled nonsense (which, frankly, any one of us might conjure up under exam pressure!).

It’s great your son is practicing writing, to time. This is the best way to prepare. Personally, unless a kid is already a really skilled writer, I would absolutely encourage them to have some ‘story scaffolds’ memorised, perhaps practice using Chat GPT to provide various prompts.

Practice ‘effect spotting’ rather than just device spotting - why does a writer use a particular style or word? How does it make the reader feel?

if you/ he could manage it, a couple of targeted sessions with a tutor, one to one, could be beneficial.

Good luck!

Lots of good advice

I’d also add if he’s struggling he does NOT need 2-3 pages - there’s no length requirement on the marks scheme. For q5 I’d learn a couple of sentence structures that use the advanced punctuation, and focus on creating a really strong atmosphere through personification. Read the first page of Rebecca.
q3 beginning/middle/end, why are we being asked to ‘look’ in this direction now?
q4 is like a lit question really

English Language is genuinely one of those subjects where being bright and analytical can actually work against you it requires a different kind of thinking to most academic subjects, which explains why he's getting 7-9s elsewhere but struggling here.

on the "how this makes the reader feel problem". This is extremely common in grammar school students who are used to factual, precise answers. The trick is to stop thinking about the reader abstractly and ask "what is the writer trying to do to me right now — unsettle me, slow me down, make me feel sympathy?" Then work backwards from that. Practising this as a conversation rather than written work first can help — just talking through a passage out loud, saying what effect it has, before writing anything down

regarding the length of the creative writing tne A4 page in 45 minutes suggests he's either planning too much in his head before writing or stopping to evaluate as he goes — both kill word count. The fix is almost counterintuitive: write first, edit never in timed practice. Quantity before quality until the fluency builds. Also having a bank of 2-3 pre-planned story "skeletons" (a character, a setting, a moment of tension) that he can adapt to any prompt removes the "thinking of ideas" bottleneck entirely

On memorising a piece — your instinct is right to be cautious. It's not dangerous exactly but it's limited — examiners can spot templated writing.

On reading higher grade work I think that it's great instinct — but make sure he's analysing why it works, not just reading it. Annotating a grade 8 creative piece asking "what did they do here and why does it work" is more useful than just absorbing it

Kingsbridge Education have good practice materials with good teacher commentary on what examiners want that kind of insight into the marking can really help him understand what "good" actually looks like in Language specifically

Focus on SPaG for the easy marks. How’s his spelling? Does he use a range of punctuation? Are his sentences grammatically correct even if not content heavy?