Cambridge International AS Level English General Paper Webinar Slides

Cambridge International AS Level

English General Paper: What’s changed?

Webinar

17th April 2026, 09:30 UTC (10:30 UK time)

Meet the team

10:30 – 10:35 Welcome Laura Rogers

10:35 – 10:40 Overview of the changes to the Cambridge International AS Level English General Paper Ellen Mackay

10:40 – 10:45 Introduction to our endorsed teaching and learning resources and School Support Hub materials Julia Fusi

10:45 – 11:00 Insights from our authors part 1 David Towsey

11:00 – 11:15 Insights from our authors part 2 Alexandra Lezark

11:15 – 11:25 Q&A Laura Rogers

11:25 – 11:30 Wrap-up and closing notes Laura Rogers

Syllabus and assessment

Ellen Mackay

What remains the same?

• Component 1 Essay: The number of questions, the suggested word count and the duration of the component remain the same.

• The number and titles of the assessment objectives remain the same.

• Division of the content into three broad topic areas remains the same.

New or updated content

Economic, historical, moral, political and social issues

• The state and its institutions– removed

Wording changed to:

• International co-operation

• Charity and aid

• The role of the state in people’s welfare

Science, including its history, philosophy, ethics, general principles and applications; environmental issues; technology and mathematics

• The use of technology in daily life – new

• Sustainable development – new

Wording changed to:

• The testing and provision of medicine

• Information and communications technology, including artificial intelligence (AI)

• Disaster events, including mitigation and management

• The uses and applications of economics and mathematics

Literature, language, the arts, crafts, and the media

• Applied arts – removed

• Social media – new

Wording changed to:

• Language and culture

• Performing arts, music and entertainment

• Visual arts including design and fashion

• Traditional arts and crafts

Changes to syllabus information

• Update to assessment objectives

• Removed overlap between sub-strands of assessment objectives.

• Adjustments to the weighting of AOs in each paper and across the syllabus.

• Update to skills

• Reformatted into skills for each component.

• Organised by assessment objective.

• Skills development independently evaluated by Curriculum Team.

• 91% of customers satisfied.

"The clarifications are helpful for lesson planning and conveying information about the course and exam to the students."

"There's always a bit of strange magic with Cambridge, but this is the clearest I've seen it."

Details of changes to components

Component 1: Essay

• We have changed the total marks from 30 marks to 40.

• We have revised the marking grid: 20 marks for AO1 (Selection and application of information) and AO2 (Analysis and evaluation), and 20 marks for AO3 (Communication using written English).

• We have slightly changed the balance of assessment objectives tested in this component. There will now be more marks for AO3 (Communication using written English).

• In the paper-based version of this component, students now answer on the question paper.

Component 2: Comprehension

• We have changed the balance of marks in the two sections:

– Section A – Logical reasoning (20 marks)

– Section B – Comprehension (30 marks)

• We have slightly changed the balance of assessment objectives tested in this component.

• We have removed the 10-mark question in Section A. There is a new 12-mark persuasive question in Section B.

• The marking grid used for the 12-mark persuasive writing question is new.

Developing digital exams

• Mock exams available.

• First live series for early adoption centres June 2026.

• Expected to be available to a broader range of centres from June 2028.

For more information on our website.

Teaching and learning resources

Julia Fusi

School Support Hub

School Support Hub

Access for

Cambridge

Schools

Provides curriculum support resources

Find out more about professional development and training

School Support Hub

Scheme of Work

Lesson planning

Skills Exercises

Learner guides

Teaching tools

Specimen Paper Answers

Example Candidate Responses

Endorsed support from Cambridge

Cambridge International AS Level English General Paper

date: April 2026

New approach

Scaffolding and focused skills development

Skill development is taught through scaffolded activities throughout the coursebook.

Variety of text types

Annotated text to support skill development.

Includes a range of topics and themes.

Helps to build up analytical skills.

Critical reasoning and analytical skills

Encourages critical thinking.

Help students to reflect on the skills.

Support for developing reasoning and analytical skills

Can be used as an extension activity to deepen students’ knowledge.

Helps to contextualise learning by applying skills to a task.

Students can research different topic areas.

Video content

The digital coursebook contains videos to accompany each chapter.

The videos provide further examples and explanation on key skills as well as additional activities and questions.

Assessment support

Students can practice at responding to the types of tasks required by the syllabus.

Sample answers encourage students to evaluate answers at different levels, enabling them to apply those evaluation skills to their own work.

Teacher support

The ‘Language support’ feature contains information to help you present a specific language or grammar point from the chapter.

Suggestions for eliciting evidence of common misconceptions in your class and suggestions for how to overcome them.

Teacher support

For each section, there is a selection of starter ideas, main teaching ideas and plenary ideas. You can pick out individual ideas and mix and match them depending on the needs of your class.

The activities include suggestions for how they can be differentiated or used for assessment. Homework ideas are also provided.

PowerPoints and worksheets

Professional development

Professional development

• Introduction online from June 2026

• Cambridge International AS Level English General Paper (8021) | 2028-2030 Syllabus | Introduction | Online

• Focus on Assessment online from May 2026

• Cambridge International AS Level English General Paper (8021) | 2022-24 and 2025-27 Syllabus | Focus on Assessment | Online

• Focus on structuring lessons for success online from June 2026

• Cambridge International AS Level English General Paper (8021): Focus on structuring lessons for success | Online

• All available courses can be found in our professional development calendar online.

Insights from our authors David Towsey

Breaking down the course

Comprehension

Topic sentence

Conclusion

Evidence

Evaluation

‘Evaluate the view that written examinations are the best way to test students' skills and knowledge’

Support reasons with evidence

Explain how evidence supports reasons Judge the strength of this support

Explaining evidence and making judgements

Modelling the process

Doing it themselves

Modelling judgements

Checking learning

Insights from our authors Alexandra Lezark

Reading & comprehension: key chapter skills

The coursebook develops core reading skills through scaffolded activities, such as:

• Identifying vocabulary in context

• Finding main ideas and supporting details

• Summarising and paraphrasing

• Analysing explicit and implicit meaning

• Exploring text structure and organisation

• Identifying the writer’s purpose

• Examining use of language

• Recognising point of view and perspective.

These skills are explicitly taught and revisited to support both reading and writing.

Active learning

The coursebook and digital teacher’s resource embed active learning throughout.

• Discussion tasks encourage students to share interpretations, compare viewpoints and justify their reasoning.

• Group and paired work helps learners analyse texts collaboratively and build confidence in expressing ideas.

• Independent tasks, including practice questions and extended activities, require students to apply skills to new contexts.

• Real-world topics help students make connections between the syllabus areas and everyday issues.

• Reflection grids and self-assessment tasks promote learner autonomy and metacognition.

Using resources for planning

Use the coursebook for core tasks:

• Activities 1-3.

• Texts 2.2 – 2.4 for modelling explicit/implicit meaning and inference.

Use the digital teacher’s resource to shape the teaching:

• Modelling figurative language.

• Guided questions for deeper thinking.

• Group work routines.

• Differentiation suggestions.

Assessment for learning and differentiation

Use the digital teacher’s resource strategies to check understanding:

• Quick comprehension checks after modelling.

• Pair/group share + whole-class feedback.

• Use explicit/implicit meaning checklists from the coursebook.

Plans for differentiation:

• Support: glossaries, guided prompts, sentence starters.

• Challenge: independent research, extension texts, deeper inference tasks.

About the authors

Alexandra Lezark

Alexandra Lezark is a secondary English teacher and Cambridge International AS Level English General Paper educator with over a decade of experience teaching the course since 2012. She is co-author of the Cambridge English General Paper coursebook and a Cambridge trainer for English General Paper and Effective Talk and Questioning. Her work focuses on developing students’ critical thinking, reading, and writing skills through structured, skills-based approaches and supporting teachers with practical, classroom-ready strategies.

David Towsey

David Towsey is an experienced teacher, examiner and educational consultant. A former Head of English and Head of Sixth Form, he is currently Director of Foundation and Higher Studies at City of Liverpool College, UK. He is also the author of our Cambridge International AS & A Level Global Perspectives and Research series. He is passionate about developing ideas for assessment that help to support learning, and learning that has a measurable impact on people’s lives.

cambridge.org/internationaleducation