I’m writing and filming a course to the language exam. One of the resources I’m playing with is the also providing the script to the videos I’m making. So, a bit later in this post, I’ll give you a script and ask for your advice.
About the Course
I’ve started with questions 2, 3, and 4 of AQA paper 1. Soon, I’ll be asking to get a class of up to 20 students to take the course. They will have access to it for life.
There are answers at every grade for every question, with examiner comments for each one, and of course a method which gets you top marks every time.
Then there will be a practice paper, and a model answer at each grade to help them mark their own. That’s much more accurate and easy to understand than the mark scheme.
Why only 20 students?
Because for the first 30 days, they can request unlimited marking of their practice answers. I’ll give detailed feedback on each one.
So, I will give unlimited tutoring for 30 days.
Students will also be able to ask me for anything that is not on the course - I think it covers everything, but I bet there will be problems a student might have that I haven’t considered. So, I’ll personally answer any question they have.
I’ll turn each answer into a worksheet or video, with my commentary, and the student’s name removed.
So when the course is available to the general public it should be very concise: here is only what you need for a top grade…
And also very comprehensive: here are dozens of problems you might have, and here is a video and resource on each one, to solve that problem.
ChatGPT
Script to My YouTube Video on the Method for Question 3 of Paper 1
You can watch the video here.
I don’t script my videos, because it takes too long. However, you can download the transcript, copy it into ChatGPT, ask it to correct any transcription errors, and punctuate it as sentences.
Then you can ask it to summarise what you need to learn from it to get full marks.
This is what it gave me:
To score full marks of Grade Seven in the English exam, focus on identifying changes of focus in each paragraph, which typically signal shifts in the writer's intention. Each paragraph represents a potential change of focus. Follow these steps:
Identify Changes of Focus: Pay attention to shifts in the writer's focus throughout the text. New paragraphs often indicate a change in what the writer wants the reader to think, feel, or predict.
Think, Feel, Predict: For each paragraph, consider what the writer is attempting to make the reader think, feel, or predict. This helps uncover the changes of focus.
Choose Beginning and End: Strategically, pick the beginning and end of the text for analysis. These points are usually highlighted by the examiner, making it easier for you to find changes of focus.
Explain with Insight: Provide insightful explanations for each change of focus. Avoid generic statements; instead, delve into specific aspects that prompt the reader to think or feel a certain way. Look for opportunities to predict future developments.
Multiple Explanations: If applicable, offer more than one explanation for the same change of focus. This demonstrates a deeper understanding and can earn additional marks.
Keep it Concise: Use your words efficiently. A Grade Seven answer in the provided example consisted of five paragraphs and only needed five quotes. Practise writing with a time limit of 1.5 minutes per mark.
Practice, Practice, Practice: Regularly practice this technique to improve efficiency and hone your ability to identify changes of focus quickly.
By following these steps and incorporating insightful analysis, you increase your chances of scoring full marks in the Grade Seven English exam.
Here is the script of the video
Changes of Focus
Hello and welcome to a Grade Seven edition of Question Three, Paper One.
This should be the easiest question on the exam paper, but the average score is under 50% or under four marks. I'm quickly going to show you how to get six marks, which is where the Grade Seven starts. If you stick to the end of the video, I'll show you how to adapt it to Grade Nine.
Now, amazingly, only about 21% of students are allowed to get Grade Seven, so this seems like a really difficult target to achieve. But I'm going to show you that actually, it's very easy.
So, there are eight marks, and you need six of them.
How are you going to do that? Well, the easiest way is to get eight changes of focus to get full marks. So, you only need six changes of focus for six marks, Grade 7.
How will you find a change of focus?
Well, that is why this exam is so easy. The writer will show you exactly where the changes of focuses are because that is a new paragraph. Each paragraph is a change of focus, so it's like a gift. All you have to do is say, "Right, what is the writer trying to make me think or feel or predict?"
Any of those three things is the reason there's a change of focus. It's going to be simple for you to do. Each paragraph: think, feel, predict.
Now, tactically, there might be more than six paragraphs, so you're going to pick the beginning and the end. That's super easy for two reasons.
One, you know exactly where to find them, so what the examiner has done has found an extract where the beginning and the end are a big deal. That means those changes of focus are going to be super easy to find and explain.
What to say about the changes of focus
‘The writer wants us to think this about the character’, and at the end, ‘the writer wants us to think that about the character’. It's going to be as simple as that.
You don't have to find six full changes of focus. You might explain more than one thing. For example, ‘the writer makes us think this about the character, which then invites us to predict that later on, blah, blah, blah.’
That would be two explanations. One thing that we think and then one thing that we predict. Two explanations will get you two marks from the same change of focus.
Personally, I'm very happy to find six changes of focus. They're going to be easy, and so I'll do it that way. But you don't have to. You need six explanations.
Well, now we come to the next problem.
How many paragraphs should you write?
Paragraphs. Many teachers teach their students two methods.
They say, "Write four paragraphs." Well, that's great. That means you write in detail. That's why teachers give you that instruction. ‘Write in detail; you'll get a good mark’.
True, but you want to know that you've exactly got the Grade Seven, which means you need seven explanations. Seven into four don't go.
How do you know, when you've written four paragraphs, that you've got seven explanations? Really difficult. One possibility, which I will show you, and you can choose whether to do it or not, is to write that as a list.
What if you numbered your points and explanations?
If you number your list 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, the examiner is going to say, "Oh, there are seven explanations there," which are actually more than you need for the Grade Seven. You only needed six. So you will choose, after you've watched this video, whether that method is for you or whether you'll go with the paragraph method.
The second technique that I often see teachers do is say, "Write about the beginning and the middle and the end. You're going to get loads of marks."
Which is true, but again, you've got that problem. How many explanations have you written? You are at risk when you write just about the beginning, middle, and end of just writing three really good explanations, which might only get you three marks. And guess what? 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, that is always the average marks every year for this question.
That's why students are writing too little. It's not that they don't have the understanding that will help them get a Grade Seven; it's that they don't have the technique.
So let's find out what the technique looks like and dive into the screen.
Okay, here are the six changes of focus that are going to be easy to spot. They're all separate paragraphs.
Starts off with a man in the kitchen feeling a bit anxious.
Number two, he's watching his kids playing in a walled garden.
Number three, suddenly a massive dog appears as if from nowhere.
Number four, the kids keep on playing, ignoring the dog as though it's not there.
Number five, the man rushes outside to try and save his kids.
And number six, the dog is nowhere to be seen; the dog has vanished.
So all you have to do is come up with plausible reasons why the writer has changed those focuses. That's going to be easy for you to do right here from this list without even reading the actual text.
The grade 7 answer
So here is a Grade Seven answer. The student has got six marks. They've written five paragraphs, and in bold, you can see they've only used five quotes.
This is tricky, isn't it? You're in the exam. You've only found five quotes to write about, and you've only written five paragraphs. How would you know what mark you're going to get? And in particular, with this student, how on earth did they manage to get six marks instead of five?
Okay, that's why I'm going to show you what it looks like as a list. These are exactly the same paragraphs and exactly the same order.
But there's a difference, explanations with each number in yellow. I'm going to show you the explanations which didn't score marks.
But imagine you're in exam conditions; you know if you've numbered them that you've got a very good chance of getting eight marks for your eight points. Let's have a look.
Number one, ‘at the beginning, the writer focuses on the phrase "Eerie Hound." This invites us to wonder what the dog is doing, how it entered the field, and why it came.’
One mark.
‘The next paragraph focuses on descriptions of the house, where the window was stained glass in parts’. Good bit of evidence, but the explanation, "This invites us to wonder about what sort of house this is," is not really a relevant explanation. It's a house with some stained glass. Any description is going to invite us to wonder about anywhere, and so this isn't an insightful point. It's just saying the writer has used words to make us interested, effectively. So he doesn't score a mark.
Number three, ‘then the focus changes to a description of the field in order to give us a clearer picture of where the family lives’. That's another pretend explanation.
It's like saying, "Yes, the writer is using words to make us think about place." It's not really a proper change of focus. If we go back to number two, had the student said, "Ah, this stained glass reminds us of a church, and therefore the garden might be like a graveyard," that would get the mark because it would fit with the idea of the ‘Eerie Hound’ being dangerous in the garden. But there's no explanation of what the writer is really trying to make the reader think of specifically. So those two don't get any marks.
Let's bash into the ones that really do.
Number four, ‘the writer also focuses on Robert's children in the field as he had carried out a brief assessment of the strange field’. This deliberately refers back to the mystery of the Eerie Hound introduced at the beginning. So it suggests that the field also, if it's strange, might also be dangerous like the Eerie Hound is dangerous. He gets a mark.
Number five, so this refers back to the previous quote. Remember I said you can have more than one explanation for one change of focus? So they're going to get an extra mark for two explanations here about the same change of focus. ‘Also makes us wonder how the Hound got there without Robert noticing it arrive’. Okay, so now we have a specific thing that we're wondering, which is how on Earth this dog got there.
Number six, the change of focus is when Lara appeared to ignore this Hound. And the explanation, "We wonder if Lara is simply too engrossed in her play to notice the Eerie Hound." So that's one explanation, but then we get a second explanation for the same change of focus. ‘We also wonder whether, in fact, this dog is a ghost only Robert can see, and that's why Lara's ignoring it.’
You see? So two explanations for the same change of focus gets you two marks for that change of focus.
Number eight, ‘the focus at the end is also on this mystery when the giant Hound was nowhere to be seen. We wonder if the dog was real or just a product of his imagination caused by the strange environment of the field.’ A very good explanation. One mark.
So that's how the six marks were arrived at, and this student managed to get six qualifying explanations from four different changes of focus.
You might be interested to know that it took them 222 words to get this many marks, and that's also going to be a feature of your revision. How long are you giving this question? I recommend 1.5 minutes per mark. That's 12 minutes. Can you write more than 220 words in the time limit, including reading the passage as well as answering the question? That is what you've got to get to, and that's why you need to practice.
Now, if you want to find out how to get Grade Seven in one of the other English Language exam questions, that's the video coming up next.
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Blimey, I hadn't expected any teachers to be interested. You will be able to give me lots of tips on how to improve it!
I am so excited about the course, and will be purchasing it as soon as it’s available for the general public!