How to Pass The GCSE English Language Resit Exams.. From Grade 3 to Grade 4 (November Resits)

If you got a grade three, two or one in your GCSE English exams this summer and you're facing resets in November, it can be very easy to feel discouraged. But I actually want to start with a message of hope. Of course, you've probably seen in the news that the joint council for qualifications found that reset students, just 19.8% of those that were doing GCSE English resets actually passed. So over 80% of students who did their reset exams this year failed again. Now even if these statistics are discouraging, what I want to do is first begin by a message of hope. In other words, remember that as long as you start preparing early enough, i.e. between now and November. Number two, as long as you also modify your approach, you don't make the same mistakes that you had made the first time around you're doing your GCSE English exams. or even maybe if this is the second time around you're having a go at this, you don't repeat the same errors. And number three, as long as you have a really clear strategy and you look at the past and your past exams as a way to learn lessons, you're actually really really uh likely to pass your exams and you're in a great position to do well because you're doing this again. You've gone through this before. You know what to expect, but more specifically, you're entering exams with eyes wide open and you're taking it seriously. And to be honest, if you're watching this video, you're clearly taking this really seriously, right? So, I just want to begin with the message of hope firstly, and I've seen it personally myself this time last year when I was preparing my reset GCSE masterclass students. They all passed and they all did well the second time around when they did their resets in November because they learned from the past and got really specific guided feedback. So, what I want to do within this video is to show you the four top things you must absolutely do consistently between now and your reset exams in November. It's really important to be very, very clear on the statistics and be very realistic because it can be very easy to get distracted, to procrastinate, and to just think, oh, hopefully I'm going to pass the second time around. Let me cross my fingers. And if you take that approach, you would unfortunately end up being part of the 80% who then don't pass the reset second time round. Okay. The most important thing is to have a really clear strategy to also of course be optimistic because it can be done. You can reset and not only get a grade four, but actually maybe even exceed that. Get a six, seven, eight or nine second time round as long as you are consistent, focused and determined. So I want to share with you four strategies that you must absolutely follow between now and your reset exams in November. So number one, the first thing I want you to absolutely avoid doing and again this is a mistake that reset students make every year is stop making the uh mistake of actually working too hard and relearning the whole of GCSE English. Now this is actually a very logical and rational approach that a lot of reset students um take right so a lot of research students when they get a grade three two or one say okay I didn't pass the first time around because I didn't know every single thing that I need to know for GCSE language paper one and paper two and then what they do is they spend a lot of their limited and very valuable time going back to basics learning everything from the start learning the meanings of every single word all of this stuff right they think that they have to learn the entire syllabus of GCSE English and that actually not only is overwhelming but it diverts their attention from the thing that they need to do most which is practicing past papers but also after practicing past papers and past questions especially the questions that they were weakest on getting guided marked feedback every single week. Okay. So, the first thing I want you to absolutely avoid is actually thinking you need to relearn all of GCSE English again. Avoid doing this. It's actually going to be a massive waste of your time. You're going to have worked way too hard and actually maybe not get the results that you want. Okay? What you want to do is remember that your resets and ultimately your GCSE language paper one and paper two exams test your ability to answer exam questions and to demonstrate exam skills. Meaning what you need to do is consistently work on improving your exam skills every single week. Okay? And that's the reason why every single Sunday I will be running reset master classes specifically working on exam skills, exam structure, writing in a way that not only hits all the assessment objectives that examiners are looking for, but also as part of these reset master classes, and this is the first year I'm doing this, I will also be offering marked feedback. So I've actually gotten AQA examiners, so actual AQA examiners who will be working with me and all of my reset students and marking homework. Okay, so this is marking homework and marking it according to the AQA exam criteria. These are the same examiners that marked the 2026 papers. Okay, so if of course you want to get feedback and to know how every single week you're doing, where you're going wrong, what you need to improve on, simply join in that master class. Now, the second thing you absolutely need to do as you prepare for your recent exams is you need to make sure you absolutely master question five in language paper one and language paper 2. Just to remind you, question five in language paper one is your creative writing question. And then question number five in language paper two is your non-fiction question. Remember that these questions carry the lion's share of the marks. They're 40 out of 80. they are worth 50% of the marks. Meaning you absolutely need to make sure you nail this part of your exams because of two reasons. Number one, of course, the questions themselves are worth half of paper one and half of paper two, right? So in theory, obviously don't do this, but in theory, if you only answer that question and then you got 100% in it, you literally not only will pass, but you're going to be well into grade five territory. Okay. However, the second reason is, and this is just mathematics. This is literally not even thinking about, oh, you need to get, you know, four marks 40 out of 40. Let's say for this question, so let's literally look at it numerically, mathematically, and strategically. If for question five out of 40, you worked on boosting your marks and trying to get around 24 out of 40 for this question. That would be 30% of the overall marks. So, out of 80, right? If you got 24 out of 80, that's 30%. Remember that last year's grade boundaries just to get a four was 38%. Okay? So, what that means is if you got 24 out of 40 in question five, what that simply means is you've got 30% of the marks, right? So, this is not even the four marks out of 40. And that therefore means you just simply need to get just a few additional marks from questions one two three and four and you will be clear right you will literally get that 38% that you need to get a grade four okay in questions 1 2 3 and four. So that's the second thing you want to do really really work on mastering creative writing as well as non-fiction writing. And again, if you do want a booster in creative writing, I am going to be running literally a one-off £5 creative writing master class on Friday the 4th of September. Okay? So, that class is going to be focused on grade nine model answers and literally boosting all the uh grades of my students that join in. So, that's going to be a one-off lesson on Friday, the 4th of September at 5:00 p.m. Now, the third thing you want to really work on with your strategy on passing your resets is now having a paper one strategy specifically and a paper two strategy. So, this is your paper one strategy for passing your resets when you do them in November. What you need to first work on especially when you're practicing past papers and ultimately in the exam hall is make sure this time round if you hadn't already work backwards with the questions that you're given. So make sure so that you don't run out of time. Okay, always start the exam with the big question. This is the question five which is creative writing in paper one. As I've mentioned, this ties into this strategy of making sure you try as much as you can to get 23 24 out of 40 because then you only need just a few marks from elsewhere in questions 1 2 3 and four to pass and to get a grade four, right? If you get even more than a few marks to then easily get into grade five territory and so on. So [snorts] work backwards in terms of your paper one strategy. Start with question five, then read the insert, then do question four, which again obviously is important because it's worth 20 marks. Then three, two and one. Equally, what you want to do is go into the exam having memorized three diverse creative writing model answers. You either go for descriptive writing or story questions. Okay? Try to memorize uh most of if not all of three diverse model responses. That's why when I'm going over the creative writing master class and going over descriptive writing, specifically my one-off master class, my students will literally have a grade nine model answer. So, of course, if you join in on that, that could be one of your three descriptive writing model answers. Either way, make sure you memorize those uh three diverse creative writing model answers, which have really good ambitious language, ambitious vocabulary, a really good structure that you can then adapt to the question that you get in your reset exams. And finally, use and make sure you adopt a clear peel paragraph structure when you're answering questions 2, three, and four that make it really easy for your examiner to follow what you're writing and to follow your trail of thought. And finally, your paper two strategy is number one, list out the 10 most popular topical issu questions for or uh uh topical issues for question five. I'm going to I'm going to explain what topical issues means or topical questions. Topical questions simply means remember in question five for paper two, you are told to answer a question and to debate an issue, right? So for example, you'd be asked to debate school uniform. Is it good or bad? Is artificial intelligence, you know, um, good or bad for society? Social media, is it good or bad for us? And so on and so forth. Find the top most popular topical questions. Again, if you want to know, I'm literally going to be going over this in my resets master class going over literally, I've created a list of 10 topical questions and 10 topical issues. Have an opinion on them because one of them is guaranteed to come up. And so when you go into your paper 2 exams, you know what you can talk about because you have prepared for them in advance. Then also what you want to do just like question one your strategy is start with question five then 4 3 2 1 in the order of which you answer questions during this exam and finally make sure you have a solid comparison paragraph structure for answering question two the inference question and question four. My suggestion is you simply adopt appeal paragraph framework but instead what you do is in your points you talk about both sources in your evidence quote from both sources. in your explanation quote uh uh explain and talk about both sources and then again in your link mention both sources. That is a really simple and very easy comparison structure that you can use for both question two and question four in language paper two. So as I said obviously uh I would suggest having a really clear approach going into your resets exams following these suggestions so that you make sure that you're part of the 19% of students who ended up passing the reset exams this summer and not part of the 80% that were not able to pass the second time round. Okay? Try to make sure you avoid the same mistakes but also have a strategy as you're practicing and preparing for your reset exams. And as I mentioned, don't forget that you don't have to figure this out alone. I will be running reset master classes from September all the way until the November reset exam. So of course, if you want not only structured lessons which have model answers, obviously I'll be going over them and you can ask me as many questions as you want, but also marked exam feedback. As I said, I have and I am working with AQA examiners who will be marking all of my students work. So, I'm going to be issuing homework every single week for all of my reset students and they'll be getting marked feedback. So, of course, if you want to benefit from this so that you pass second time round, simply join in.