 Hello, and welcome to the English language paper one portion of the course now I thought it would be great to start off by having a broad overview of the entire paper and what you should expect and anticipate and we can go through this before I go over the exam questions and the exam questions practice now what I've done behind me is I've created a mind map and I'm going to go over it with you and this mind map essentially summarizes what to anticipate for all five questions in the paper do remember that this paper is one hour and 45 minutes long however you do have lots of time if you use it correctly so what I'll do is I'll go over what to anticipate for each question but also how to allocate that specific time split between all five questions so let's get started with question number one now for this paper you usually tend to get four statements and these are really related to specific lines so for instance a question can ask you look at the extract from lines one to four so usually they relate to specific lines and make sure that you stick to these lines now this question and this specific set of questions that you have to answer are really straightforward so you just need to write four simple statements make sure it's related to those specific lines and do not add quotations so strictly no quotes it's really quick it should be really easy marks as long as you stick to those lines and you should spend a maximum of five minutes and this question is worth four marks now you've then got question two now for this question you always get an extract and you're going to see this when I show you the different examples now you always get an extract and you're asked to talk about language and also sentence forms now when it comes to language first off what language relates to is when you're getting these specific examples you're relating it back to nouns verbs adjectives adverbs pronouns but also things like similarly metaphor alliteration hyperbole all of this falls under language and if you're a little bit confused on terminology make sure you go and check out the terminology and concepts explanation video because that video goes over all the specific terminology as it relates to both language but of course the other part of the question does ask you to talk about sentence forms and sentence types so this relates to simple sentences compound sentences complex sentences but also things like question sentences which we also call interrogatives so this question I would suggest because it's worth eight marks you should only spend a maximum of ten minutes and you should write either two or three paragraphs meaning you find two or three examples use PEE style paragraphs using a point explanation evidence and explanation and of course if you want to get more information check out the PEE video where I explain what PEE means however for this question if you do write two paragraphs that is sufficient as long as you explain and talk about the effects now let's move on to question three and this question is always a structure question you're asked to write about sentence types and sentence types of course relates to things like simple compound complex sentences interrogative sentences which is just another way of saying question sentences imperative sentences which are statements that issue a command or an order all of that you include in this question however also structure talks about or relates to punctuation but only interesting punctuation do not talk about commas full stops that's not interesting enough you are expected to talk about things like ellipses you are expected to look for for example an interesting use of semicolons perhaps to create a compound sentence or a complex sentence that's the type of punctuation that you're supposed to talk about now for this question as well structure relates to how the passage is especially if you're asked to look at specific extract or even the whole of the source how it begins versus how it ends that's also part of structure and for this question you should write two or three paragraphs similar to this of course not the same content but in terms of the timing because it's worth eight marks you just spent a maximum of 10 minutes and it will be sufficient if you use PEE paragraphs to write two examples make sure that they are different enough so for example you can give one example one quotation maybe sharing a simple sentence but then in that paragraph you can explain the effects of that and why that simple sentence is interesting but then the second point can be for instance an example of ellipses or an example of a compound sentence and why that's effective and that can be sufficient and you can move on now let's go on to question for now this question is a much larger question and as I mentioned one hour 45 minutes is a long time however of course this time will fly by really quickly if you're not really strict of your timing so make sure each time the time passes so the five minutes is done you move on the ten minutes is done you move on and so on now for question four you usually get a statement and this is a statement that issues some kind of opinion usually by a student so for example you can have an article on a teacher for instance and then the statement could be you know a student having read this said this article really makes us understand the feelings of the teacher to what extent do you agree so usually you're given a statement and you're asked to what extent do you agree now this is not always necessarily a question which you have to interpret as an argument that you have to make I would suggest actually always agree with this statement the examiner is not looking to what extent you agree and to what extent you disagree they're not looking for you to make an argument they're looking for you to write compelling examples and compelling points relating back to why they are relevant to the statement now in terms of how to address this and how to develop this question make sure of course you look at the bullet points in the question in addition to the statement now you need to write an introduction an introduction is really simple and straightforward I've explained this in the PEE video however what an introduction is you use a bit of the question as part of your statement so you turn it into a statement you say that you agree and then you talk about how you're going to use language and structure points to illustrate this and again please refer back to the PEE video if you need a bit more explanation on this now once you've written your introduction I would suggest for this question write at least five or six paragraphs five paragraphs is sufficient so you've got your introduction that should be really quick then you find five examples and these examples should be a mix of language points as well as structure points of course things like you find examples of nouns or similes that's all language but then if you talk about sentence types that structure if you can talk about for example how the extract begins if you're looking at the whole source or even that specific part of the extract that you're looking at how it begins versus how it ends that's a structure point now after you've written your five or six paragraphs five is sufficient you then end off with a conclusion now of course that conclusion is really important but it shouldn't be complicated just use again refer back to the question use a bit of the question to finish off and of course reassert that you agree with the statement of this student and for this question of course in addition to obviously using lots of examples do allocate a maximum of 20 minutes when it comes to writing and of course part of this 20 minutes maybe you should spend five minutes planning but then dive straight into it and write and this is important because this is worth 20 marks so do make sure you give this the time that it deserves of course the final question the massive question which is worth half of the paper is question five now question five is usually a creative or descriptive writing question and it's worth half of the paper's marks now you either get a descriptive writing question so you usually tend to get the choice the descriptive writing question tends to be an image that you get now let's talk about the descriptive writing part of the question quickly now you tend to have an image and my suggestion in terms of structuring a descriptive writing answer is your first paragraph should be descriptions on the setting so for example if you get an image and you see for example like here a white background talk about it use for example similes as white as a pearl and things like that to develop the setting then your second paragraph should be to do with atmosphere so for example as you can see here the atmosphere that I'm in is quite light probably quite warm quite bright so use for example descriptions relating to that the sweltering heat the bright sun rays things like that your third paragraph should focus on sounds for example if it looks like in the image the place is quite noisy quite busy talk about this cacophony of sounds this mix of sounds however if it looks like really quiet very dull you then talk about the airy silence for instance that could be a paragraph three your fourth paragraph for the descriptive writing should be in terms of smell so talk about century language relating to smell and your fifth paragraph should relate to sensory language relating to taste so for example is it really cold how does that maybe fill to the palette in other words maybe for example his tongue was really cold if it's a man in the image or her tongue was quite cold that kind of thing now that is the first option you have the second option of course is the creative writing question now for a creative writing question it's usually an actual question usually you don't tend to get an image and then you're asked to write creative piece you tend to have the image is a descriptive question and then you have underneath that image just a simple question now I would suggest use a story mountain structure you might have heard of this back in primary school when you were learning how to write stories and put them together I think this story mountain structure is still relevant even in your GCSEs now I've drawn out an image of the mountain and as you can see here I would suggest having your first paragraph with the beginning and then obviously have a build-up so for example introduce something interesting maybe the person in box in a journey of course they should always in the third paragraph face a problem something unexpected make the twist really interesting then you get in the development to a climax for example they being chased are they almost caught are they caught by the assailant or for instance what can you do to make the interest of the story more intriguing and then of course your fifth paragraph should be the resolution do they for example you know are they caught and captured and imprisoned or does it have a really really good ending where they prevail now I would suggest for this question definitely make use and practice of this story mountain structure and for question 5 you have 40 marks so you would and I would say this is 50 minutes so apologies I've written 10 minutes but you spend 10 minutes planning and 50 minutes writing so you spend 45 minutes on questions one to four and then you spend one hour and that therefore means 10 minutes in terms of planning this question and then 50 minutes in terms of actually writing the question so that's it when it comes to understanding the layout of the English language paper one I hope you found it really useful and do check in on the following video where I go over the exam question practice questions so thank you so much for listening