Editorials

#YEAR11PROBLEMS

2 November 2015

By Lauren E. White

The column is back with the November-entry English Language exam

Guess who’s back, back again… it’s #YEAR11PROBLEMS! Today marks the day when the column officially comes back to b**p’s website with one of the biggest Year 11 problems ever: the English Language exam.

Many of us around the country will be entering the exam hall again on Wednesday ready to complete the remaining 40% of the English Language GCSE early after finishing our coursework and speaking and listening components long ago.

The Cambridge Extended Paper is tricky on the whole and the marking is often harsh and can be compared to nit-picking. Whether your forte is question 1, 2 or 3, it’s not going to be easy. Attempting to write PEE paragraphs on eight quotations in such a short space of time is far from a walk in the park. The same applies to trying to answer whatever question 1 throws at us (it’s pretty difficult to come up with an analogy for that one – the question is so out-there it would be stupid) and attempting to incorporate all fifteen points picked out in Question 3a in Question 3b. There are so many skills to harbour and remember, it almost makes me wonder if I’d have been better off winging it.

Just thinking about the exam makes stomachs churn – I know I’m not alone in that. After all, English is one of the GCSEs that actually matters whatever you decide to do post-16. However, the day is fast approaching and there’s nothing we can do about it. All of us are in it together and once January comes, we can start to put into perspective how we should feel about the rest of our exams in the summer. Once January comes, hopefully we can all relax a little bit because our track record with the English exam wasn’t so bad. Yes – that was optimism. Optimism in the second #YEAR11PROBLEMS column. I don’t know what’s happened, either.

This time next week, the exam will be over and if that doesn’t creep you out or make you feel some weird emotions then you really are a robot. If you’re still nervous and lacking self-belief, enjoy the gif below (click on it to make the Doctor come to life) and I’ll see you next week:

brilliant

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