How to Actually Revise for GCSE English Language Paper 2

This 👆 is the reason people get disappointing results in English Language. When students approach me for help on resitting their English Language exam, the first thing I ask them is - 'what did you do to revise?' I'm sure you can see where this is going…

An exam is an exam. Regardless of whether you've seen the material before (like literature) or if the questions will be on unseen extracts (like language) there absolutely ARE revision tasks that can be completed. Let me go through some of them now quickly.

First of all, no one ever suffered in an exam from doing too many past papers in preparation. It's pretty obvious what the benefits of this are and yet so many students find so many ways to avoid actually sitting down for the allotted time and going through the paper. Add in getting the mark scheme from the exam board's website and marking the paper to the best of your ability and you have yourself some great performance data. Most importantly you'll be able to see which questions you need to focus your attention on, the ones you scored the lowest on. You can then try to improve these by looking at exemplar answers, usually on the exam board's website, and having a look at those examples that scored higher than you. The benefits of this self learning are absolutely massive and it gives you a sense of control over your own learning.

Doing a past paper also helps you with your time management and another reason why I see students upset by their result is that they get sucked into the trap of spending too long on questions that don't give a lot of marks. A past paper helps you manage this better!

For AQA, Edexcel and Eduqas, the paper 2s are always trickier, because you have two extracts thrown at you and multiple comparison questions which you didn't have to worry about for paper 1. AQA English Language Paper 2 in particular throws students who haven't practised these GCSE English Language comparison questions under timed conditions. They are tricky and require time to practice - a past paper can help demystify it a little for you and help to build confidence.

Another major consideration on this paper is the transactional/persuasive writing in section B. These questions can often be where a lot of marks are lost because people have not revised things like:

• The form each piece of writing should follow

• Techniques that work well on transactional writing

• Practice planning answers

• Getting it done in time

I'm not going to go through each of these in detail. You can find my walkthrough guide here: and also a 45-minute video on it here: https://youtu.be/js5SKkYtnR8?si=j_0O-Epyffn9vkR5

The important thing to take away is that there are lots of traps in this paper, and students need to counter these by seriously revising this paper and the unique questions that come with it. Non-fiction writing does not often lend itself to exciting language and a pile of techniques used, so reading as many of these extracts as possible will help with that. Oh, and I won't fall for the 'I've already done all of my exam board's past papers'. Every exam board gives non-fiction extracts, so with five exam boards to choose from you have… (quickly tries to do the maths) a lot - I'm not a maths tutor, ok!

Language paper 2 generally marks the final English exam you will ever take. It's the final opportunity you have to make a difference to your final grade. You've already got lots of, if not the majority of, the other subject content out of the way so you DO have time for one last push of revision on this paper. Do it; and you won't be disappointed with your result.

If you found this useful, you might also want to read my guide on how to actually improve your GCSE English grade, which covers the examiner framework behind all of these papers.

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"It's ok, you can't really revise for Language anyway, so there's nothing I really need to do."