The first two exercises of igcse paper 2 english second language are writing tasks in which you’re required to go through the passages and answer questions based on them, their purpose is to test your understanding of contents and different vocabulary.

Firstly, scan through the texts and try to understand what it’s about and what points is the author trying to make and then read the questions. For exercise 2 the texts are quite similar to confuse you so you need to carefully read the questions first and highlight what they want then read the passages.

Read the questions and underline the important keywords. Understand what the question wants is it what, when, how or why? Be wary of questions with signpost phrases like ‘apart from’, ‘rather than’, or ‘according to the graph’; they tell you what exactly you need to find.

For exercise one locate the information the question is asking from the passage and remember to write a short, precise answer for what’s asked, if the answer is too long you may lose marks easily, this exercise is the easiest in my opinion in paper 2 so it’s better to score maximum marks in it. Keep in mind that the answer ill usually be found in chronological order in the passage. For the last question however you’ll usually need to scan the whole passage for the answer as it’s a 4-5 mark general question about things found throughout the passage. Some questions are precise so finding the answer won’t be an issue while others may use synonyms of words in the passage or you may need to read through the lines to pinpoint the answer. Always keep in mind that the answer will be in the passage, you’ll never have to make an answer from your own knowledge.