How Examiners Mark GCSE English Language Paper 1 | AQA Language Paper 1 Mark Scheme Explained

If you're in year 10 or year 11, you will know one of the best ways to improve your marks in GCSE English is not only to look at past papers, look at model responses to those past papers to know what works and what doesn't work, but most importantly then applying that knowledge and doing your own practice to the same questions and seeing how your response fits in connection to the model answer and also what the exam and past paper is looking for. Now, if you're especially ambitious and you want to know how to improve in GCSE English, maybe you've gone one extra step and actually downloaded a mark scheme for the same past paper to know, "Okay, I've done some practice. Let me see where my answer sits. Let me see which level I'm currently at." And then you've looked at the mark scheme and been completely confused. You've seen words maybe like "ability to interpret implicit and explicit information", "writing in judicious language", "perceptive analysis", right? The mark scheme sometimes can be littered with very confusing language and very confusing vocabulary, which actually is a bit of a shame because knowing how to interpret the mark scheme actually is one of the key ways to really see how you're improving when you practice every single time you practice a different past paper question when it comes to GCSE language paper one and paper two. And to be honest, also GCSE English literature paper one and paper two. So, what I wanted to do because I know mark schemes can be very confusing to interpret. They're useful and of course your teachers in school will use that, right? When you do like a class assessment, they'll give you a response and then tell you, "Okay, you're in level one, you're level two, level three, level four." And then you think, "Okay, what does that mean? Why is this important?" And then maybe they share a mark scheme, you read that and you're like, "Okay, I don't understand what that means. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong and where I'm going right." So, what I want to do, and I decided to create a video series basically explaining and um showing how you can interpret the AQA language paper one and paper two mark scheme in very simple English, okay? So, I'm going to be releasing a series of videos basically explaining how to interpret the mark scheme, okay? And how you can of course if you practice different questions, you can then look at the mark scheme and see where your response sits. And I'm also doing this because obviously and I've mentioned this in past videos as part of my weekly masterclasses that I run, all of my students get marked feedback and as part of that marked feedback, the examiner, so it's GCSE examiners that mark their work, they obviously grade their work according to mark schemes, right? So, that's something that's offered as part of my masterclasses and so what I thought would be really helpful is to break down these mark schemes and what they mean. If say for example you wanted to practice this independently, but of course if you also wanted to get actual GCSE examiner feedback, you can just simply join in those masterclasses, submit some homework and it will get marked for you, okay? And obviously those masterclasses every single Sunday at 5:00 p.m. So, in this first video, I'm going to show you how to interpret the mark scheme for GCSE language paper one question one. This video is obviously going to be really short because question one in AQA language paper one is fairly brief, right? Students are asked to look at usually the first paragraph in paper one and then they are given a series of four questions with three options, right? It's multiple choice and students just simply need to tick the correct option. However, for those of you that still want that mark scheme especially for that question explained, I did decide to start off obviously with this question and of course in later videos I'll be going over how to interpret the question two mark scheme as well as question three, four and five for language paper one as well as all five questions for language paper two. So, let me get into it with the question one mark scheme for AQA language paper one. Now, the first thing is always remember and again when you get marked feedback even from school, you will see things like AO1, AO2, AO3, right? This is assessment objectives. This is what your examiner is looking for. Now, question one test your AO1, which is basically your ability in and this is what the mark scheme says to identify explicit and implicit meaning. What that means in very simple English is, can you find the correct information from the line numbers you're given to and asked to look at for the multiple choice questions? Are you able to find the correct information and simply to tick the correct box, okay? And so for question one, remember that according to the mark scheme, you're not ever going to see any levels, right? So, the levels are given for questions two, three, four, and five. When I say levels, you have level one, level two, level three, and level four, which is a top band response. This is grade nine territory, okay? So, for this question according to the mark scheme, there are no levels. All you simply need to do is just pick the right answers from the specific line numbers and then answer them, okay? So, this part of the mark scheme and of course this part of the exam is the only way you can go wrong is number one, either selecting evidence and information material from the wrong part of the source. So, this is source A. Or number two, being a little bit confused by the wording and the different options you're given and picking the wrong option. That's really it when it comes to identifying and even interpreting the mark scheme for language paper one question number one. So, now come back for the other mark scheme questions. As I said, this is going to be a series where I'm going to be breaking down in very easy English how to interpret and to use the mark schemes for your advantage when you practice GCSE language paper one and paper two.