Why choose Edexcel for GCSE English?
Because we've developed our specifications by listening to English teachers and the wider English community, we believe that they meet your needs - and those of your colleagues and your students. Our four-year GCSE English pilot has enabled us to learn directly from experiences in the classroom, with some 6,000 students inspiring the whole process of developing these new and exciting qualifications.
We’ve also worked alongside English teachers at 100 schools to develop a superb range of resources to support your teaching.
Our new English GCSEs will:
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Engage your students, allowing them to study texts that are relevant to them and that will help them to develop their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills
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Allow students to improve their learning with accessible exam papers and controlled assessment tasks
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Enable you to teach new texts and approaches alongside the more traditional and familiar.
Key benefits of the Edexcel GCSE in English
• A common unit with GCSE English Language, meaning that you can delay your decision about which route to follow
• Familiar writing tasks shared with GCSE English Language to maximise use of existing resources
• Option to use the same Different Cultures text so you can share resources and training with GCSE English Language Unit 2 and GCSE English Literature Unit 1
• Wide variety of non-fiction texts allowing you to choose texts which are relevant to your students and your centre’s resources
• Digital resources to enhance your poetry teaching, including video, audio readings, images, grade improvement activities and worksheets
• Structured examination questions for Shakespeare and prose that follow a clear framework which will remain unchanged from series to series.
Clear and accessible specification
The specification is clearly structured, with examiner tips on teaching and exam preparation.
Assessment designed to enhance learning
The opportunity to follow a modular assessment model will really help you track students’ progress, so you can provide the right level of support or challenge for each individual student. Your students will be motivated by the ability to ‘bank success’ during their study, giving them a real sense of achievement throughout the course. Alternatively, you could follow a linear assessment model if you would prefer your students to take all of their assessments at the end of the course.
Engaging content that will inspire, challenge and motivate all students
Our whole approach to developing the content for our English specifications is to ensure they will motivate students of all abilities. With a selection of paper-based or digital pre-release texts, you can choose the type of reading that will engage your students the most. We’ve also taken an innovative approach to how the course assists the development of students’ writing, speaking and listening skills.
Accessible papers that allow your students to show what they know
Whether your students are responding to an essay or to a structured three- or four-part question, they can be sure that they are fully prepared for their examinations. We’ve also made sure the language level is carefully controlled so students understand exactly what is required.
Planning and delivery to suit you
We’ve thought really hard about the ways in which you might want to deliver English and the resources that you will need. So you’ll find that we offer different ways of planning your timetable and detailed schemes of work that you can adapt to suit your circumstances.
Controlled assessment is clearly explained and easy to manage
In controlled assessment, our range of tasks enables you to find the right one for each student and offers the option of a written or multimodal response.
An exciting range of teaching materials
Alongside free teacher resources (including schemes of work and sample student answers with examiner commentary), there is a free digital Poetry Anthology to support the English and English Literature specifications. We also offer a wide choice of published materials including teacher guides, assessment packs, ActiveTeach, CD-roms and student books for each specification.
Answers to your questions from our experts
You can email EnglishSubjectAdvisor@edexcelexperts.co.uk or call 0844 372 2188 and count on getting a swift and authoritative answer from our English Subject Advisor team. Alternatively, you can visit the English discussion forum.
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