by melaniewp | May 5, 2013 | 11+, Common Entrance, GCSE, IGCSE, Metaphors, Similes
Creating similes is as easy as falling off a log. Easier, maybe. So how do you take your creative writing up to the highest grades? By whipping up a few metaphors. First, you’ll need to be familiar with the difference between a simile and a metaphor. What...
by melaniewp | May 4, 2013 | 11+, Character, Common Entrance, Complex Vocabulary, Describing Words, GCSE, IGCSE, KS3, Mood, Unseen Poetry, Vocabulary
Get these words to improve your essay grades in English. Use them to describe mood, point of view and character, and also to build your own insults. Genius! Words with positive connotations are bold. Negative words are in italics. For every other word, it depends...
by melaniewp | Apr 30, 2013 | 11+, Common Entrance, GCSE, IGCSE, KS3, Poetry, Sensory Language, Technical Terms
What is sensory langauge?It’s description that appeals to the five senses in a noticeable way.e.g.Images flashed at the front of the room: smashed up forests smouldering, hillsides washed away in swirling brown mud, seabirds flapping in oil, flames sweeping across...
by melaniewp | Apr 30, 2013 | 11+, Common Entrance, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, KS3, Sensory Language, Setting
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad Context: The main character, Marlow, is travelling into a remote part of the Congo to recover an employee of his company, Kurtz, who has ‘gone native’. Heart of Darkness exposes the dark side of European colonization (of...
by melaniewp | Apr 29, 2013 | 11+, Common Entrance, Fragments, GCSE, Grammar, IGCSE, KS3, Punctuation, Technical Terms, Writing
A Fragment – is ‘an incomplete sentence’. In other words, it’s a sentence without a subject or a verb. What is the effect of using a fragment?[1] Sometimes this gives the effect of confusion, ragged thoughts. The incompleteness...
by melaniewp | Apr 28, 2013 | 11+, Colloquial Language, Common Entrance, GCSE, Give, IGCSE, KS3
What is Colloquial Language?This is another word for everyday language – slang or informal expressions. These are often the hardest to translate if English isn’t your native language. Here are some examples:’give me a hand’ = ‘assist...