GCSE English Lit

[Michelle]

I was just wondering what people think about the content of GCSE, and the changes being brought in in a couple of years. I did GCSE soon after they started, and I recall studying both Macbeth and To Kill A Mockingbird in quite a lot of detail. I've been trying to remember if we did any poetry, but I'm drawing a blank! We had quite a few pieces of coursework, and I remember one being to compare 4 books - I chose Brave New World, 1984, Z for Zachariah and.. erm.. another modern along the same lines, and I really enjoyed it.

 

I can't find details about today's GCSE, but it seems to be a combination of modern-ish texts (Lord of the Flies etc), Shakespeare and Poetry. News articles are reporting that students only study little bits of books / plays, rather than complete ones. Anyone who's studied it recently, what was your content like?

 

The new GCSE will have no coursework, and will apparently have to have:

At least one Shakespeare play

Selection of Romantic poetry

At least one 19th century novel

Poetry from 1850 - 1980

British fiction, poetry or drama since 1st World War

 

How do you feel about the content, and what would you like to see? I think I'd like to see more modern fiction, because the idea is to capture a teen's attention, and start to teach them about literature. Of course there should be some Shakespeare and some classics, but for the average teen, too much could be off-putting, and damage a love of reading.

 

So what do you all think?

[Michelle]

For those of you not in the UK, GCSEs are taken at age 16. What are the equivalent English Literature exams like in other countries around that age?

[Raven]

Looks like a list compiled by someone who went to a public school and thinks history should be the Kings and Queens of England.

 

Whilst I think there is a need to teach the classics and Shakespeare, English Literature didn't end in 1900 and I think children at GCSE level should be exposed to a balance of new and old. 

 

Also, there's not much on that list for two years of study, is that just the core subjects they have to cover or is that it in total?

[Michelle]

It was taken from this article: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/new-gcses-will-be-more-challenging-and-rigorous-says-education-secretary-michael-gove-8653063.html

 

Interestingly, History will have a 'greater focus on the history of Britain'!

[Palagrin]

Well I completed my GCSEs last year so I have so up-to date experience.

 

We had:

• Romeo & Juliet coursework ("controlled assessment" style)
• Wilfred Owen poetry coursework
• Of Mice and Men exam (prose from different cultures)
• Journey's End exam (play text)
• Animal Farm exam
• Seamus Heaney Poetry exam

[Alexi]

I took them ten years ago, and studied Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet and some poetry. Can't seem to remember the rest.

 

The thing I remember most is having Lord of the Flies read out loud to me in English lessons for six weeks, and thinking it would be a much better use of my time if I read it home and analysed it in class.

[Brian.]

The texts studied when I was at school depended on what class you were in (the classes were ability based). For example the class below mine studied Of Mice & Men and Flowers for Algernon.

 

From what I can recall our texts were

• Macbeth by Shakespeare
• A Midsummer's Night Dream by Shakespeare
• Tess by Thomas Hardy
• An Inspector Calls by J.B Preistley
• some poetry by Siegfried Sassoon

I enjoyed the poetry and An Inspector Calls and got on find with the Shakespeare but I hate Tess. I think that including something that would be considered a modern classic would be a great move.

[~Andrea~]

We did Z for Zechariah which I loved, An Inspector Calls which I also enjoyed, and some war poetry. No Shakespeare, and nothing if I recall pre 20th century. I think the older classics would have put me off at GCSE though I enjoyed them to some extent at A Level. That's all I can remember - it seems so long ago now :S

[Athena]

For English class (highest year) we read Shakespeare's MacBeth, a lot of poems from earlier time periods (I can't remember any of the authors I'm afraid) and one literary book by choice (I can't remember which one I chose I'm afraid, I think it was The Beach but I don't remember the author nor anything about the story XD). For earlier years, we read Truman Capote - To Kill a Mockingbird among others. The exam was oral, and two out of these three options you'd be asked questions on. Mine were on MacBeth (which I had reread just for the exam) and the poems. I was quite nervous (at that time speaking English wasn't so easy for me), but I did really well!

 

I should point out that this was back in 2003-2004 when I was in my final year. I believe my brother and sister had different things they had to read (I think it's different each year). More importantly, these exams were meant for the highest level of secondary school education. I don't know what the ones of the lower levels were like. We have several levels of education people can do, one takes 4 years, one 5 and one 6. The one you do is related to your level of intelligence and skill, in primary school you take a test/exam as well as the teacher gives an advice. Based on that, you select the level of what you are able to do (always pick the highest that you can, of course. Otherwise it's a waste and you'll be really bored). Most people do the 4 year one (vmbo), some do the 5 year one (havo) and even fewer do the 6 year one (vwo) (because intelligence is shaped like a Bell's curve). I'm not sure what happens for the 4 year English literature exam (do they have that?), but the 5 year one is similar to ours but with less material to be taught about and study.

 

For comparison, for my Dutch literary exam I had to read, analyse and answer questions (oral exam) about 15 literary Dutch books, three of which had to be written before 1880, not all from the same time period (these books you'd read over a three year time period, you had to choose them from a list).

 

I'm glad it's all over! I do think I learned a lot.

 

Btw, I doubt any of you heard, but there has been exam fraud in the final exams of this year. It's the biggest one we've ever had. 24 exams were stolen. This happened on one school and all students of the school (of all the different levels, not all schools have all levels but this one does), have to resit the exams (those that were stolen)! I feel so bad for them (they have to do them all within three days too). I'm glad not all students in the Netherlands have to redo their exams, that would've been terrible!

Edited June 12, 2013 by Athena

[lauraloves]

At GCSE we studied Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Macbeth and various poems. If i had only done exams i am pretty sure that I wouldnt have got such a good grade as I'm not very good at exams.

 

I also studied it at A level and studied Tom Browns School Days (which i really hated!!), Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone and Hamlet. To this day Hamlet remains one of my favourite books as my tutor was so passionate about it and passed that on.

[Janet]

For earlier years, we read Truman Capote - To Kill a Mockingbird among others. The exam was oral, and two out of these three options you'd be asked questions on. Mine were on MacBeth (which I had reread just for the exam) and the poems. I was quite nervous (at that time speaking English wasn't so easy for me), but I did really well!

 

Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird - it's such a fab book.  

 

I did GCSE English in 2006 when I was 40.   It wasn't classified as Literature or Language as it covered both.  We did Othello (which we did all of, not just a bit).  We read the whole thing through in character - I read Desdemona's part!  We also did Of Mice and Men and poems from other cultures.    It was great - I loved it (and got an A*!). 

 

ETA:  I did A level English afterwards - for AS we did A Woman of no Importance by Oscar Wilde, Richard III (again, we read this - we also read Henry VI part 3 before it), Wise Children by Angela Carter and a collection of poems by Carol Ann Duffy called The World's Wife. 

 

For A2 we did A Winter's Tale as our Shakespeare, we compared The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Northern Lights by Philip Pullman.  For poetry we looked at John Clare and the synoptic unit was World War 1.      I got a B at A Level.

[Athena]

Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird - it's such a fab book.  

x

I'm sorry . I've mixed them up, we read Truman Capote - In Cold Blood and Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird. Yes it is a very nice book, I agree !

Edited June 12, 2013 by Athena

[Janet]

In Cold Blood is also an excellent book - I much preferred it to Breakfast at Tiffany's. 

[Eleonora]

Would you like to know how things work in Italy?

Our school system is really different from yours, we start our secondary school at the age of 14 and we finish it at 19. We take our final exam at the end of the 5th year and there are a lot of subjects and topics. We have to study the whole teaching program: I studied English literature and that's what I had to study:

- Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Tha Merchant of Venice and 3 sonnets.

- romantic poetry: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge

- Wuthering Heights, Bronte

- Jane Eyre, Bronte

- A passage to India, Forster

- Vanity Fair, Thackeray

- Oscar Wilde: The Importance of being Ernest, De Profundis, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windermere's Fan

- James Joyce: Dubliners, Ulysses

- Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse, Ms Dalloway

- The Great Gatsby: Fitzgerald

- The Catcher in the Rye: Salinger

- To kill a Mockingbird: Lee

- On the road: Kerouac

- I, Robot: Asimov

 

Those were the books I had to read during the 5th, and last year, but there were a lot of estracts from other books we read, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, Kim, all the beat poets and soo on.

I wrote a thesis for the oral exam and I choose to talk about how the role of women changed through the 1900s. Virgina Woolf and Hannah Arendt were my choice for English and Philosophy in English.

Then I had German, Spanish, Law, Art, Philosophy (in italian), History, Italian and Maths.

Believe me, it's sooo much to study.

[Raven]

I would imagine that A level students in the UK (age 16 to 18) would have to read a similar amount to the above.

[Michelle]

Eleonora - our education gets split, at 15/16 pupils take a selection of GCSE exams, my daughter will be taking 11 subjects. Then after 2 further years they take A-level exams, which are a higher level, and it's usually 3-4 subjects. By the time my daughter reaches her GCSE English Lit she would have studied a lot of books, but for the exam itself they concentrate on a few, and study them over 2 years.

[Eleonora]

It's interesting, really. I quite regret posting my experience because it was so useless.. I thought it would be nice knowing how things work in other countries, but - still - my post is really useless. Sorry. And good luck to your daughter.

[Michelle]

I was simply comparing - no one said your post was useless. I find it interesting to know what happens in other countries.

[Eleonora]

Yeah I know you didn't say that!! I just re-read your first post and I thought I wasn't adding anything god to your discussion. That's all.

[Michelle]

You did though, because I went on to ask what happens in other countries!

[ian]

I took my exams in 1986, which I think was the last year of O-levels before GSCE took over. I remember reading "Romeo & Juliet", "To Kill A Mockingbird" plus World War One poetry. We must have read other texts, but I can't remember them other than my own choices. (We had to read and review 1 a month - I distinctly remember that as I asked for an extension as I read Lord of the rings!)

 

I agree with other comments here - too much emphasis on romantic or 19th century fiction may turn teenagers off reading. I didn't read Jane Austen or Bronte sisters till I was in my 30's. Any earlier and I wouldn't have enjoyed them.

 

I really disagree with the taking away of all coursework. Some people don't do sao well in exams as they do with homework, plus you can have a bad day.

A case in point - for my English Lit mock exam I got a B, so was moved to the top group. On the day of the exam - I had a complete brain freeze, and ended up with a U. (Fortunately, the only exam I did that in, and not one that was important to my future plans.)

[Janet]

I totally agree regarding coursework, Ian.   I think this sums it up...

 

[Raven]

I took my exams in 1986, which I think was the last year of O-levels before GSCE took over.

 

'86 was the penultimate year, I was in the last round in '87 (and I failed English three times!).

[Palagrin]

I would imagine that A level students in the UK (age 16 to 18) would have to read a similar amount to the above.

Having just finished my AS exams ~ I had to study Brighton Rock and A Clockwork Orange for the exam and Shakespeare's Othello and A Merchant of Venice for the coursework as well as a selection of poetry.

[Raven]

AS is between GCSE and A level, isn't it? 

 

I'm guessing the above isn't all you did during the year, so can you tell us how current courses work?  What else have you read? (in part or in full!).