What is the difference between IGCSE and GCSE coursework any way?
 
Good question. IGCSE is an international interpretation of GCSE and it includes a wider variety of assignments to complete.
 
Whenever a student is writing IGCSE courseworks, his/her examiners are assessing the following skills:

1. Student’s understanding of the IGCSE coursework’s issue: a student should develop a deep investigation of the issue and provide all necessary information on its background and its existing theories.
2. Student’s ability to apply his/her knowledge of the course to the IGCSE coursework writing: this paper should be based on the course notes and appropriate literature overview, not just student’s ideas and thoughts on the issue.
3. Skills of the students to analyze the data he/she has found: IGCSE coursework contains a section on the analysis of student’s findings.
4. Evaluation skills of the student: they will be important in writing a summarizing conclusion for IGCSE courseworks. A student is supposed to evaluate the situation, provide his/her own suggestions for improvement and predict the future changes.
5. IGCSE coursework is an assignment which requires some writing skills, as well as the awareness of various writing styles. If a student would like to get an excellent grade for his/her IGCSE coursework, he/she is expected to be a good academic writer.
6. Finally, a student should be excellent at conducting the research on the IGCSE coursework’s topic. However, to know how to surf the Internet is not enough to be a good researcher. In terms of IGCSE coursework writing, research involves various sources of literature, electronic resources and even the latest up-dates from the media coverage.

This article is helpful for both a teacher and a student: a teacher may have a better idea on what skills to assess in IGCSE courseworks and a student would understand better what skills he/she should reveal in this paper.