Any English teachers about who can help me rant about the AQA GCSE Paper 1 today?

[oneofsuesylvesterscheerios]

Did anyone else see this? Absolutely bonkers paper.

[IHeartKingThistle]

Oh no, what was it this time? More especially bonkers than usual?

[oneofsuesylvesterscheerios]

You are honestly going to think I'm joking:

Item 1 was from The New Statesman - yes, you heard right - and it was about introducing skateboarding in Afghanistan; very dense text and very very boring, so even the skater kids whose eyes lit up when they saw the picture will have lost the will to live by the 3rd paragraph.

and Item 2 didn't even have a title; it was from what I presume is a skater magazine with 3 dire photos and very little text but which was littered with skater terminology.

I mean.... how do they decide on their source material??

[IHeartKingThistle]

That's horrendous. They probably thought they were being cool and modern. Those poor kids!

I swear AQA take pleasure in trying to trip up kids. I still haven't got over the one from a couple of years ago where it asked them to describe the 'words' in the text.

Just moved to a school that does WJEC and the exam questions seem positively friendly in comparison.

[oneofsuesylvesterscheerios]

I'm just hoping that so many kids up and down the country will be so completely bewildered that the grade boundaries will come right down when they realise they have nowhere near any As and A*s this year.

My group are real high-fliers but were so confused after the exam. It was nothing like anything they'd looked at in past papers. or in the books written by the bloody AQA for that matter

[Danthe4th]

That explains what dd was trying to tell me earlier when I asked how it went this morning, she said she'll be lucky to scrape a B. I

[IHeartKingThistle]

They really are idiots. AQA, not your kids!

on your behalf.

[gingeroots]

Gosh ,that's enlightening .
I can still remember the excruciating Sunday afternoon I spent looking at Dc's homework ,which was an old AQA English paper .
I simply couldn't get my head round it - I'm an English graduate and thought I'd completely lost it .
Thought it was just me !

[gramercy]

Wot is this down wid de kidz business?

I remember in his SATs ds was a bit flummoxed when asked to come up with four features for a great pair of trainers.

Could they not have a choice of poncey and unponcey questions

[LornMowa]

If it is this this article then I would dispute the idea that it is a boring article. A GCSE in English should mean that the student can cope with this level of detail surely?

[BudaisintheZONE]

What was boring about it? I thought it was an interesting article. Much more interesting than some of the stuff we got in exams way back when!

[swanriver]

very interesting article but what is a NGO?

[BudaisintheZONE]

Non-Government Organisation I think swanriver.

[Tanga]

Much better than the dreadful one last summer with the pre-war female suffrage posters - I ask you!

Thought it was a bit busy but generally fair - although the higher paper seemed clearer than the foundation.

[DustDustDust]

God that sounds dreadful. Skateboarding in Afghanistan and pre-war female suffrage posters?!

Some of my friends did that paper and they weren't too thrilled with it either.

I'm so glad I did English with WJEC.=S
The questions we got were usually specialised, but still interesting enough for everyone. Reading the examiners reports, I reckon the chief examiner has a sense of humour too. =P

Get your school to switch to WJEC!

[DustDustDust]

Hmm. Just read the article. It's not as bad as I expected, but I wouldn't want to write about it in an exam.