First Up - IGCSE English Language

DD had used wordweaver wings from Catherine Mooney and using her IGCSE English Language course seemed like an obvious choice.

She is a home-educator herself, and has extensive experience in teaching and marking English.

The course currently costs £210, and for that you receive the course bound book  which includes 10 tutor marked assignments including a past paper.  The course is also provided on CD's for those who prefer to listen to their courses.  She also provides access to an annotated anthology which you download.

The course is easy to follow and most students I know who use it, enjoy it.  She is very helpful and does answer emails.  

Below is a link to her site if anybody is interested.

http://www.catherinemooneytutoring.co.uk/

This was the start of DD's journey into studying for GCSE's, alongside three other courses, and she timetabled one hour a day for this particular course.

She completed the course in 8 weeks.

I would suggest that she rushed the course.  Even though all the marked assignments came back with grade B's, and some A's, I think a slower pace would have meant that the information was more completely absorbed.  However, DD worked completely on her own, with no imput from me.  

Also, because DD was only 13 when she studied and sat this exam, her writing style was not yet very mature.  Catherine did advise DD to wait six months before taking the exam, to allow her writing style to mature.  I couldn't see how much it would change in six months, but actually, Catherine was absolutely right, and I can see that the essays she produces now, for Drama, and for Music, are better than the essays she was producing six months ago.

However, having said that, it was an excellent course to do first, because it has prepared DD for the essays that she has to write in her subsequent GCSE's/IGCSE's with regard to planning, paragraphs, beginning - middle - end.  So much so, that her essays have been used as demonstration essays in some of her classes.

Catherine taught DD to plan her essays before she writes them up in exams, which is excellent advice.  However, DD was thrown in the actual exam, because she was expecting to be allowed some scrap paper to write her plan, and wasn't aware that she could write her plan on the answer booklet.  It wasn't something I had bothered to check beforehand, because I remember being allowed scrap paper when I was in school, and I wasn't aware that the situation had changed.  

DD ended up completing paper 1 without a plan, which threw her.  She then wrote her plan for paper 2 on the exam booklet, as I advised her to do.  

In the end she got a C grade, which isn't bad for a 13 year old, who has not had much in the way of English 'lessons' from the age of 6 until 13, and who completed the entire IGCSE course in 8 weeks as opposed to the two years that is taken to study this course in school.  

There were things she could have done better in retrospect, such as write her plan on the exam booklet in paper 1, and wait 6 months to get a more mature writing style.  But all in all, an acceptable grade that is the standard required to get into further education college.