GP Paper 2 Notes (8881 Syllabus)

GP Paper 2 Notes (8881 Syllabus) Preface This set of notes is intended as a comprehensive yet non-excessive set of advice to succeed in Paper 2 of the H1 General Paper syllabus. To maximise the utility of this document, you are strongly advised to compare questions from your comprehension practices with the question types to understand how to apply the tips. As this is a relatively new syllabus, take the advice provided with a grain of salt. In every case that this document contradicts your tutor’s advice, take his/her advice to be correct, and those in this document to be wrong. Nonetheless, the notes provided in this document are designed to be aligned with the 8881 syllabus (as explained later) and hence should cover the approach to most, if not all questions. Time Management It is extremely important to be aware of the time constraint in Paper 2. For me personally, it is absolutely necessary to allocate a minimum of 35 minutes to attempt the application question. This ensures sufficient time to plan the AQ for a proper answer. 0800 - 0805 Read Passage 1 0805 - 0830 Attempt Passage 1 Questions 0830 - 0833 Read Passage 2 0833 - 0850 Attempt Summary 0850 - 0855 Attempt Passage 3 Questions 0855 - 0900 Plan AQ 0900 - 0930 Finish AQ Note: If you are unable to complete the SAQ on time, move on to the AQ. A lot of students (me included) struggle with time management because they think that spending 5 additional minutes won’t hurt. But 5 minutes is about 15% of the time you should be spending on the AQ, which is time you cannot lose. The AQ is worth 12 marks in the 8881 syllabus. That’s more than a third of the content marks. 1

GP Paper 2 Notes 8881/02 Short Answer Questions Fundamentally, Paper 2 of the H1 General Paper syllabus is a test of understanding language use. Cambridge is assessing you on your ability to empathise with perspectives of people around the world. Therefore, the primary principle when dealing with Paper 2 is to demonstrate understanding of issues raised. In the 8881 syllabus document, Cambridge states that “There will be a range of questions on the passages, requiring candidates to demonstrate their ability to comprehend, infer, analyse, evaluate, summarise and synthesise.” These skills are what Cambridge is expecting from students. Hence, that is how this set of notes are structured. 1. Read the preamble carefully . It gives the big idea of the entire passage.2. Read each passage carefully before answering any questions pertaining to that passage.a. Do NOT read and do the questions at the same time. This causes tunnel vision as you do not take the context of the entire passage into account, resulting in an answer which does not capture the nuanced and contextualised understanding idea required.b. Do NOT read all passages first before answering questions. This causes information overload as you will forget what you have read for passage 1 by the time you have finished reading question 3, causing you to waste additional time reading passage 1 again to answer questions regarding passage 1.c. Do NOT read to only get the big idea of what the passage is saying. That information is provided by the preamble.i. Understand the ideas and concepts raised by each paragraph in the context of the passage. These come in the form of reasons , impacts and comparisons usually. Take note of these.ii. Understand the cause and effect of the ideas raisediii. Get a sense of the tone of the passage.iv. Identify the arguments raised for and against the topic at hand.v. Recognise and interpret the techniques used (irony, hyperbole, repetition, callback, simile, metaphor, analogy, allusion, figurative language)vi. Understand the sentence structure , signposting , and paragraphing .3. For the above point, there is a caveat. When reading the summary passage, instead of focussing on techniques used, you should look at the ideas presented by each sentence. Frequently, ideas are repeated. Hence, you must know what each sentence means directly and whether it is different from a previously mentioned point.4. Identify examples that you can use for the AQ whilst reading. 2

GP Paper 2 Notes 8881/02 This section of the paper is generally more predictable than the others, so you must know how to answer generic question types. Below are a few guidelines that you should adhere to when you answer the short answer questions.1. The number of lines provided are an accurate estimation of the length of answers expected by Cambridge. Your answer should, at most, exceed the line limit by 1 or 2 lines. When a long and detailed chunk of information is presented, you are required to distill the main idea from it rather than paraphrase it.2. An idea should be presented in your own words as far as possible, while the sentence structure should follow the format of the question’s words.a. Q. Using paragraph 2, identify two functions of citizen participation.A. One function of citizen participation …3. In general, the answer is a mixture of literally answering the essence of the question, followed by the context of the question.a. Q. Explain the author’s use of the phrase ‘cornerstone of democracy’ (line 24) to describe citizen participation.i. To answer this question, you would need to first ‘explain the author’s use of the phrase’, meaning you have to explain the phrase. Then, you would need to explain how that ‘describes citizen participation’, meaning that you have to contextualise the phrase in the context of citizen participation. Type 1: Paraphrase● The structure here is [Idea] + [Idea] + …● Be very familiar with basic synonyms. Words that frequently appear in passages are worth memorising paraphrases for.● Be specific in language use. If you paraphrase wrongly by not considering either the full extent or the nuance in the meaning of the word (e.g. tone, negative connotation), you might not get the mark.● Make sure that figurative language is paraphrased literally to ensure the meaning is not lost.● Some technical terms do not need to be replaced. However, some terms like ‘economic’ can be paraphrased to ‘financial’, and therefore do need to be replaced.● Word-for-word paraphrase can be substituted with paraphrasing a word to multiple words. Type 2: Listing● The structure here is [Way 1] + [Way 2] + …○ Paraphrase the ways/ reasons ⇒ This is the preferred method. If you have reasons in this format, choose them.○ Identify the language use/ techniques