Top 5 Biggest Mistakes Students Make In GCSE English Language Paper 2 & How To Avoid Them

Hello and welcome back to another GCSE revision video. Now, with the GCSE English language paper two exams upon us, I want to go over the top five mistakes GCSE students always make every single year in the language paper two exams that you must absolutely avoid. And I'll also talk about the solutions, what you should do instead so that walking into that exam, especially if you're in year 11 class of 2026 nice and early on Friday morning, you have these mistakes top and center and also you know what to do watch out for and how to avoid these common errors. And by the way, speaking of the upcoming language paper two exams, don't forget that I will be running a night before language paper two revision class. It's going to be a super intensive three-hour booster class going over literally the entire paper, all five questions, and also answering literally all your questions that you have before the final exams. And of course, you not only know how to write amazing model answers in advance of the exams, but also if you have any burning final questions, you can ask me during that live lesson. So, make sure you join in. So, let me get straight into it. What are the common mistakes that students make every single year that irritates the examiners? The first leading mistake, which sounds a little bit obvious, but it's actually the leading reason why students get low marks, especially in questions number two, number four, and five in language paper two, is not actually answering the question or starting off really well answering the question and then going completely off topic. In other words, lots of students, when they open their scripts, right, they panic. This is a big deal. I need to pass this exams. This is my final English language exam. I really need to make sure that I do well in this. Maybe I didn't do well in language in language paper one. This needs to carry. And so students are carrying all of this tension and anxiety and then they panic when they look at these sources, look at the question, start answering, throwing in random techniques, mentioning similarities when the question is asking for differences or vice versa, mentioning differences when the question is asking for similarities. In question five, they're being asked to talk about school uniform, and instead they're talking about education is it worth the paper it's printed on. In other words, lots of students and one of the main and the biggest reason, to be honest, for lower marks in language paper two is they either don't answer the question and don't focus on what the question is asking them, or they start off answering the question and then go completely off topic. The direct remedy for this is making sure you underline the question's keywords. Even better, begin instead in the first 60 seconds of your exam, when you start, hold off on reading both sources, begin by reading the questions first, okay? So that you get a lay of the land. You understand what really strategic piece of information you're looking for in the sources before you then read the sources, and then as you're answering the question, make sure you keep on going back, checking those keywords, thinking, "Am I making sure I'm staying focused? Am I making sure I'm answering the question and focusing exactly on what my examiners want, rather than mentioning random things that make no difference to my response?" Now, the second mistake that students tend to make in language paper two every single year in the language paper two exams is spending way too long on question five in section B. So obviously question five, this is worth half of the paper's marks, right? It's worth 40 marks. And this is the non-fiction question, the letter, article, or speech, where students are given a topical question, a topical statement, a topical issue, and then they'll need to argue whether they agree or disagree, right? And write either letter, article, or speech. Now, because it carries half of the paper's marks, students then go overboard because they're like, "I really need to secure these 40 marks. I need to secure these 40 marks." And they go overboard and spend over for hour on this as it's worth 40 marks. Remember that of course it's really important to spend majority of your time on this question. However, that should be restricted uppermost limit to 50 minutes so that you don't lose time and you don't get restricted marks on the remaining part of the paper which is also worth 40 marks. And remember that of course obviously if you do a really great job in question five, you can get some really good marks but it's highly unlikely you're going to get 40 out of 40. So, remember that you also need to make sure you're answering some of the other questions and you're leaving yourself with enough time to answer question number four which is also really big question. Even question two, question three which also will give you slightly easier marks. And so, what you need to do is firstly do not sacrifice those easy marks in the other questions. Make sure you really try as much as you can to restrict the time that you spend in question five to 45 maximum 50 minutes. And of course the remedy for this is making sure that you really have your time management locked down. Remember that. You want to spend around 10 minutes on reading the sources, then about five minutes on question one, 10 minutes on question two, around 30 minutes on question three, uh and also 16 minutes on question four and then the remaining time which is around 45 to 50 minutes on question number five. Now, the third mistake that students tend to make is retelling the source, describing the source, summarizing what's happening in the source rather than analyzing what's happening in the source and connecting it back to the questions, especially question number two, three and four. In other words, students sometimes slip into summarizing what's happening in the sources. Summarizing also say this is what happened. Oh, and in source B this is what happened. Thinking that that's going to add to the marks. That is not. Your examiner has read the same source. They don't want to see any summaries. They do not certainly want to see you describing and retelling what's happened in the source. Instead, what you need to focus on is analysis, and analysis simply means you're mentioning, for example, the writers techniques, especially in question three and four. Analysis also connects to the writers message. Have they used any type of specific tone? Have they made any interesting language references or any structural references that has certain connotations? What does this contribute to the overall theme of this of the two sources? You can even talk about the thematic aspect of the source, but also analysis means reader effect. How are we affected as readers? And of course, with question two, part of analysis is you inferring, showing, and inferring what this how this relates back to the questions keywords, not describing what happens in the source. Now, the fourth mistake that students tend to make is forgetting to compare, especially in question two and question four. Remember that question two, which is worth eight marks, and question four, which is worth 16 marks. That is a total of 24 marks for this paper, meaning that if you don't compare, you are leaving some vital marks on the table. Lots of examiners look at different student responses and realize that students literally do not know how to compare, or what they do is they write about one source in one paragraph, another source in another paragraph, source in one paragraph, source B in the second, and assume just because it's in the same essay they are comparing. That's not comparing. That's just basically two mini essays. Instead, remember you need to talk about both sources in the same paragraph throughout a few different paragraphs, especially for question number four, and your examiner wants to see the connections between the sources. What I usually suggest to my to my students, and of course, if you want to see a structure like this, I'm going to be going over this in lots of detail in my language paper two night before class on the 4th of June. This is on Thursday. What I usually suggest to students is when you're writing comparatively, literally adopt a simple PEEL paragraph structure, point, evidence, explain, link, but at each step, you talk about both sources. So, in your opening point you talk about source A and source B. In your evidence you quote from source A and source B. In your explanation you analyze your quotations from source A and source B, and then in your link you link this back to your question connecting it back to source A and source B. And again, as I said, when I go over literally all five questions in language paper two in my night before masterclass on the 4th of June, I'm literally going to be showing you model responses and how to synthesize all of this especially for the comparison questions, okay? So, of course simply join in and you'll see how that looks like. And now number five, the fifth and final mistake is adding evidence with zero analysis, throwing loads of quotations into your responses, which will limit your marks. Because remember that examiners want to see analysis. The main thing you need to remember by the way with English to do really well in English is it's all about analysis, okay? So, of course you need to quote, but your examiners don't really want to see a bunch of quotations. If you add loads of quotations, you're basically redescribing/retelling them what's happening in the sources. What they want to see, and remember that one short quotation per source properly analyzed in depth is better than loads of quotations. The writer said this in source A, here's a quotation. Also the writer in source B said this in source B, here's a quotation. Also the writer in source A says this, here's a quotation. That's not what your examiner wants to see. They want to see the quote and they want to see you unpacking, talking about technique, talking about meanings, talking about effects, all of this stuff that goes into analysis right here. And that is now what gets you those marks, not adding loads of quotations, loads of different quotes from both sources in your response. So, as I said, I hope this helps and remember to have these errors top and center and make sure you avoid them through in your practice in the lead up to the exams, making sure that you're also being mindful of these errors, okay? So, of course make sure you're mindful and also as you practice try to ensure that you avoid them. And of course, as I said, if you want to see how this looks like in practice, I will be going over this on the 4th of June in my final language paper two master class.