Review
Paper 1
Paper 1 has always been both a blessing and curse for many. Write an insightful and impactful essay, and you would have pretty much secured an A for GP. Hijack or write out of point, and you would fall in the D/E/S/Ungraded range for GP.
For this year of examination, there are 12 questions. However, the most popular question from crowdsourcing was
Q11: Assess the view that attempts to control climate change can never be truly effective.
A valid and simple question which a person may easily underestimate. The underlying arguments that a candidate must encapsulate within their discussion to score well for this question are so profound. To score well, a student cannot rely entirely on the 'politically correct' reasons. He/She must offer their personal voice and question from the perspective of a GP student to gain the insight needed to score A.
It would be expected that this question would be responded about half of the candidature. If everyone were to attempt the questions and use the same reasons to tackle this question, it may become ad nauseam to the Cambridge Markers and they may not award students a score worthy of an A or even B.
As such, if one candidate were to want to score well easily, they should attempt other questions that 'speaks' to them AND those that they would not use robotic methods to attempt. Doing otherwise makes up increasingly susceptible to the utterly egregious act of 'hijacking' the question.
Personally, I feel that these questions would be the ones that are both simple and easy to use to impress the marker:
Q4. ‘Rehabilitation, not punishment, should be the purpose of the justice system.’ Discuss.
Q6: Do events, rather than politicians, shape the future?
Q7: How far is science fiction becoming fact?
Q8: Examine the role of music in establishing a national identity in your society.
Q9: To what extent are people judged more by their physical appearance than by their abilities?
Q12: The quality of written language is being destroyed by social media.’ What is your view?
Nonetheless, to score A for a GP Essay, well-substantiated arguments with good examples are the key to scoring an A for GP.
Paper 2
Paper 2 was a straightforward paper, but with some surprises, just as for any other year of GP comprehension.
The text was regarding Personal Data, which was quite anticipated considering the upsurge of the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) in 2014/15 time (considering Cambridge scripts are set two years in advance).
Given this year of examination, it would seem that Cambridge is moving towards testing students on their ability to comprehend the impact of the happenings of today's world towards themselves as A Level students, even if they do not belong to that category of society.
