First Language Chinese (0509)

7 sections available · 42 chapters available

Free First Language Chinese (0509) revision notes for Cambridge IGCSE students. Each chapter covers a key topic with worked examples and practice prompts you can take straight into the thinka app.

Reading fiction: comprehension

  • Explicit information and attitudes

  • Implicit meaning and inference

  • Character and relationships

  • Setting, atmosphere and mood

  • Narrative structure and point of view

  • Twentieth and twenty-first century fiction

Language, style and effect

  • Simile and metaphor

  • Personification, exaggeration and contrast

  • Parallelism, repetition and rhetorical questions

  • Diction and connotation

  • Sentence variety and rhythm

  • Structure: openings, transitions and endings

  • Analysing the effect on the reader

Directed writing

  • Reading two thematically linked non-fiction passages

  • Selecting and evaluating information

  • Synthesising ideas in your own words

  • Building an argumentative or discursive response

  • Register, audience and purpose

  • Writing 250-350 characters to time

Classical Chinese

  • Reading an unseen Classical Chinese passage

  • Common function words

  • Word classes and flexible usage

  • Classical sentence patterns

  • Ming dynasty short stories and essays

  • Paraphrasing into modern Chinese

  • Short-answer and multiple-choice technique

Argumentative and discursive composition

  • The argumentative composition

  • The discursive composition

  • Thesis, evidence and reasoning

  • Counter-argument and balance

  • Structuring 400-600 characters

  • Effective openings and conclusions

Descriptive and narrative composition

  • The descriptive composition

  • The narrative composition

  • Showing rather than telling

  • Sensory detail and imagery

  • Pace, tension and climax

  • Narrative voice and consistency

Exam skills

  • Paper 1 Section 1: comprehension and use of language

  • Paper 1 Section 2: directed writing

  • Paper 1 Section 3: Classical Chinese

  • Paper 2: choosing and planning a composition

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