Descriptive vs Narrative Essays
The IGCSE English First Language exam places a strong emphasis on creative writing, with writing descriptive and narrative essays being
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In Questions 1-6 of the Listening papers, you hear a series of short spoken items. The sentences are not connected. For each item, you answer one question as briefly as possible, often with just one or two words.
In Questions 7-10, you hear continuous, connected speech, and the questions may require you to complete a table of information, or complete some notes, or answer individual questions with short responses.
In the exam, you will be given time to read the questions before you hear the cassette/CD. Make sure you use this time well. Read all the questions and underline the keyword(s) in each one.
Decide what type of information each question requires; for example, a number, a place, a street name.
Some time, you’ll hear how some words are changing with the stress on different part of the words. For example: notice how the word interviewer changes to interviewee.
When spoken, the stress on these two words is different: interviewer, interviewee.
Other examples are employer and employee.
There are a small number of other ‘person’ nouns in English which end in -ee.
The last question in the Listening papers usually requires you to answer questions based on a talk or an interview. The questions may ask you to identify people’s feelings and attitudes, as well as testing you on general comprehension.
Note: make sure that you write clearly and that you include all the necessary information.
Listening papers contribute 30% (15% for private candidates) on your overall scores for your English as Second Language certificate. Don’t make the assumption that Listening paper is not important thus not making any attempt to learn the tactics and skills.
In fact, Listening papers could determine either you score A* or not in your IGCSE E2L paper.
The average preparation needed for Listening skills is one year. Best is two years, from getting acquaintance to mastering.
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Lanja Omer
United Arab Emirates
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72 responses
how many sentences should we write in summary?
Hi Michael,
The important point is to not go beyond the word limit. We suggest that before the exams, check how many words you write on a line, then you’ll know approximately how many lines you will need.
For more summary writing tips, please read our post here: https://www.skolatis.com/how-to-write-a-summary/.
We hope this helps!
Whats the best way to do the multiple matching??
Hello Lola,
For multiple matching task, you are required to recognise key words in the question and ensure that the text you select fully supports your choice of answer. Furthermore, it is important that you make it absolutely clear which option you wish to be taken as your final answer. It needs to be emphasised that where crossing out of a rejected selection is not clear this will be seen as ambiguous and, if there is any uncertainty, it will not be credited.
We hope this helps.