As we know, home educators have the advantage of being able to choose when they sit their exams, unlike their school educated peers. They can take them later than the traditional age of 15-16, or they can take them earlier.

Advice is often given that, because English and Maths are such vital subjects, they should be taken last of all, to ensure the best possible grade. Others advise that younger children are quite capable of getting top grades, if they are skilled in the subject and keen to sit the exam.

My own experience of helping home educated children prepare for the CIE English IGCSE is that some 13 year olds have done very well, attaining As and A*s, whilst others can really struggle to achieve a C at that age. This is an individual decision, but the following questions may help you to decide.

There are there are some key factors to take into account when making this decision about your child’s readiness.

How are your child’s skills? Are their writing and reading skills excellent? Good. They will need to be. If your child has a Specific Learning Difficulty, going for an exam early, even with Access Arrangements in place, may be very unwise.

How extensive is their vocabulary? Do they have the ability to express their ideas with a variety of appropriate and precisely selected words? If not, perhaps a delay of a year or two, whilst they work on widening their vocabulary may be helpful.

Can they read between the lines? Do they know the difference between literal meaning and implied meaning? If not, they won’t be able to achieve the best marks in a task testing comprehension of reading. If your child is a very literal, ‘black and white’ thinker, perhaps leaving the exam until later might benefit them, while they develop more linguistic experience.

How is their emotional maturity? Some of the extracts included in English exams expect a degree of maturity which your child may not yet have developed.

How experienced a reader and writer are they? Have they read plenty of good quality literature, especially classic fiction? If they are inexperienced readers or writers, their own writing may be too simplistic, cliché-ridden and unoriginal. This will impact their grade.
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Lastly, do they have sufficient life-experience to draw on? The English IGCSEs depend on this. They are written for students in Year 11 and are based on the assumption of certain life experiences common to that age group. One exam question set recently, for example, required students to describe the atmosphere in the crowd before a large sporting event or music concert. If your child has never attended either, they would need to try to imagine the details of such an event, which could compromise their ability to give a realistic account. The composition section of any English exam will have questions such as this, based on the same assumptions of common life-experiences.

Hopefully, considering these questions will help you to make a decision!

Papers 1 and 2 of the CIE English First Language IGCSE contain questions about how writers use effects. The most common problem in answering these questions is assuming that you are being asked to explain the meaning of a given word or phrase. You are not. Obviously, you will need to understand the words and what they mean, but the question goes deeper than that.

The word 'how' in the question is asking you about how language works.

It's also not enough to simply name the technique: metaphor, simile, personification etc Yes, you need to be able to identify those things because you are asked to include imagery in your answer to Paper 2 Question 2. Knowing what constitutes imagery is therefore vital.

However, the key to a good response is knowing how the image works and why the author chose it over another word or phrase.

Steps to a good answer:

1. Read the question carefully and make sure you follow instructions as to where the phrases must be selected from.
2. Make relevant selections of short phrases, some with striking imagery.
3. Try to explain why a particular word or phrase is being used in that context.

Don't waffle about how some phrase helps us to imagine something more clearly. Be clear and precise with your own language to explain exactly how the writer's choice of words work and the effect they have on the reader.

This may sound harsh but it is a lesson worth learning. You must plan your longer responses in the CIE English Language IGCSE exam, especially those in the Paper 3. A poorly structured response is inevitably the result of not taking the time to plan carefully what you are about to write.
 
Planning Directed Writing
If you make good use of your highlighter to identify the ideas from the passage in Question 1 that you want to use, that will go a long way to shaping the structure of your response. You need to develop each new idea in a new paragraph, sequencing your sentences within the paragraphs. This will make your argument logical.
 
Planning Descriptive Compositions
If you choose a descriptive essay for the second question, a spider diagram may well be the best way to plan, as you can include all the ideas you want to describe. Once the ideas are down on paper in the spider diagram, number them, so that the description flows smoothly through space or time, depending on which format you are using.
 
Planning Narrative Compositions
A narrative essay must be planned to the end, before you even write the first sentence. Too often, candidates will peter out or flounder around, searching for a suitable ending after writing a good story. Unfortunately, it’s too late to do a good job of the ending by then. Plan the final sentence before starting the first sentence. Plan to use an interesting or unusual narrative device, but make sure it is well constructed within the plan. This will help your writing be more purposeful and you can afford to be a little more free with your imagination, because you have an overall structure to work within, which will keep you on track to the end.
 
It always shows when a candidate fails to plan. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can get away without planning. It’s too much of a risk.

Make sure that you always highlight the key words in the question before planning a piece of writing. The question has been phrased carefully in order to elicit a specific type of response from you. If you highlight or underline key words, you are less likely to forget to include those things in your answer.

If there are bullet points in the question, take care to address all of them equally. You will need to do this in order to achieve the most marks available for the answer.