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Original poster

A level English set books - clutching at straws for help!

60 replies

tobee · 17/07/2015 14:18

My 16 year old son is on long summer break after GCSEs. He wants to do English lit for A level and just been sent a compulsory reading list from school of 3 books for the summer for the AS part.

He's very good at the subject but is a slow reader for various sen reasons. We thought of audible (and whisper sync) . It's surprisingly hard for teenager to get into the habit of audio listening.His dad is planning to download the first book and they can each read a chapter or two a day and then compare notes.

The books are Jane Eyre, A Room With a View and Wide Sargasso Sea. He's mostly read modern novels and Shakespeare for GCSE.

How can I encourage him to not been downhearted if he finds them girly or alien (especially Jane Eyre being Victorian) ? Part of me realises it might just be tough luck!

OP posts:
hackmum · 27/07/2015 08:08

The gender thing is interesting because I think unless teenagers are already enthusiastic readers, a book that is mainly about the other sex can be a turnoff. I was quite annoyed that the two novels DD had for GCSE were The Lord of the Flies (no female characters) and Of Mice and Men (one nameless female character, who winds up dead). There is no hook that a teenage girl can grab on to and say "I recognise that". Of course reading should be about widening your experience and understanding of the world, not just reflecting your own experiences, but if you're trying to get teenagers to read, it does help to have something to draw them in.

AgnesGrey · 26/07/2015 23:21

Can I PM you ?

antimatter · 26/07/2015 21:39

I'll havs look but not sure if my ds woukd read it
www.englishandmedia.co.uk/e-magazine

Preminstreltension · 26/07/2015 21:36

"Very very female " .... Meaning they are by women and about women's lives? Why is this even noteworthy?

Original poster
tobee · 26/07/2015 20:53

Good grief! I had no idea that those magazines existence. Thanks, will get onto it.

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Toadsrevisited · 26/07/2015 20:38

how.about subscribing to the A level magazines emag or English review? lots of articles on set texts from interesting perspectives so he will be fired up and informed before tackling the texts? he should get a discount rate as a current student and it will help with coursework (Or Nea as it will be from September)

Original poster
tobee · 26/07/2015 20:28

Oh, that's interesting. My daughter (now 20) has always read for pleasure. But she never wanted to do eng lit A level. She thought she was no good at it. But I know about the problems of choosing the wrong a s and A levels. She choose biology for a s level and we said "yes, yes!" We were so excited at having a scientist in the family, as opposed to all the rest of us doing humanities, but she found it such a leap from GCSE she regretted almost immediately.

Ps we only had one boy in my 6th form college eng lit class. He was like our little pet! It's such a shame because you can miss out on the male perspective in discussion.

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Seriouslyffs · 26/07/2015 20:14

tobee my 15 yo is an avid reader, but not of fiction. Biographies, science philosophy etc. I did A Level English and Languages (3 set texts each) and there were very few boys in our classes. Now I think of it, the books were pretty unattractive for boys Tess, Emma, Look Back in Anger and Le Blé en Herbe (young love) and short stories by Merimée (inc. Carmen)
He's not doing A Level, but I bet the set texts at his Boys' School are more attractive.

antimatter · 26/07/2015 20:06

My son is in sellective Grammad school and says none of his friendsvread ANY books! He at least reads some. He said is thanks to me encouraging him and taking him to bookshops where they could buy books to read at home. That was one of tricks I devised. It worked but not as well as I hoped Grin.

antimatter · 26/07/2015 20:00

I tricked him into borrowing my Kindle to take for his 2 weeks holiday with his dad.
First he was saying that he prefers to read a real book. I know he does. But only during holidays away from home he reads more. Constantly Harry Potter in the summer and Hunger Games during our winter trips to visit family!
Pretty little liars bt Sarah Sheppard is what he got into this time. Via Kindle because he left late to order them. He read 3 and downloaded 4th. I say to myself - better that than nothing!
As we know there are so manh great books he could raed. I read lots and thee are thousands of books about the house. Building houses and furnishing rooms for Sims are more interesting....

nooka · 26/07/2015 19:57

Mine used to, but stopped reading 'real' books last year in favour of fan fiction. It's a point of contention!

Whether or not you enjoy English is I think very dependent on the quality of teaching. I was a total bookworm at that age and hated English lit. My ds on the other hand got his best grade in English last year, and looking at the feedback he got from his teacher I could totally see why, she really helped him to think.

Original poster
tobee · 26/07/2015 19:03

Do people have 15/16/17/18 year old sons who read a lot for pleasure?

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Seriouslyffs · 26/07/2015 19:01

They're fantastic books, but very, very female!

Original poster
tobee · 26/07/2015 18:56

It's interesting to see what you say, antimatter. I think it's such a shame about, for want of a better way of putting it, how little reading goes on. I know loads of really bright boys, with no learning difficulties etc. but just can't think of any who's parents would say they read books at the age of 15 or 16. I hope I'm wrong. My son's English teacher is very keen to teach him but says the a s books are dull but a2 are much better. Which seems unfortunate when students often drop a subject after the first year at 6th form.

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Original poster
tobee · 26/07/2015 18:47

Thanks, curious. He wants to do English because he's very good at it. His teachers always say he can analyse texts in a very mature way and puts it down very well and clearly. His father read English at Cambridge and agrees about this. It's a difficult one though, isn't it? I was the complete opposite, for example, I really enjoyed reading for pleasure and so did English literature a level and degree but couldn't analyse texts very well or "put it into words". And subsequently didn't do that well.

I don't think he doesn't like reading, it's just there are. more distractions. I think he needs to get into the habit of reading or re-think. He wants to do history, government and politics and theatre studies too. And most of them aren't exactly light on reading. He's not dyslexic but has very high verbal comprehension but very slow processing speeds.

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antimatter · 26/07/2015 18:46

Curioushorse Is there a list of books an aspiring A-level student of English literature should attempt to read? My ds is very good at Eng Lit but I know he doesn't read enough to attempt it at A levels (he thinks he is). I would like to advise him about it. I am also going to gave frank discussion with his teacher because ge is her Golden boy and he thinks he will be able to. I don't want him to perform poorly because of it. I don't want to damoen his spirits during his Gcse's too! Very tough decision how to go on about it Sad

Curioushorse · 26/07/2015 18:12

Well.....several things:

  1. Those are books which are more likely to be appreciated by teenage girls, in my experience. There are a cracking range of texts on all the syllabi however, including some which he is more likely to find accessible. I suspect this is just a holiday list to get them reading (which is key to getting a top grade). If he does find that his set texts next year are not to his taste, get him to have a chat with his teacher. There is a hefty list with a pretty impressive choice.
  1. I mean this in the nicest possible way, but is English for him? It is a subject which is fundamentally about reading. If he doesn't like reading and struggles with it, he will find it really difficult to get a decent grade. I've had my first ever dyslexic A-level student this year. She's very bright and dedicated. She has spent a fortune on audio tapes and is entitled to extra time.....but the exam ultimately required her to analyse texts closely. It also required her to apply her further reading knowledge (and because she had not much more than the set texts we'd studied), which put her at a real disadvantage. Really, I'd be telling him to think very carefully before embarking on this course.
Original poster
tobee · 26/07/2015 17:57

Well, lots of replies while I was gone. He's now reading Jane Eyre and seems to be quite enjoying it. I think he was just daunted at first because he'd read things like "Of Mice and Men" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" for GCSE and great, big Victorian classics seemed daunting. But I think he lacks confidence. I lean more to the "get on with it point of view" and I certainly don't think you have to like/enjoy all your set texts at a level. I just would be sad if he sank himself before starting.

Interesting, too, about reading Wide Sargasso Sea first. Would have been better perhaps.

The difficulty is today there's so much less of a culture of reading for teens and schools worry about this and give children shorter books to read. We were given Thomas Hardy to read at 12 and that made me feel grown up and challenged.

Thanks for all the suggestions of different ways to read the texts. People are very thoughtful, in all the ways that word implies!

OP posts:
LIZS · 26/07/2015 15:10

Ds had similar last summer. He reckons you have to get stuck in but not to worry too much as many in his year hadn't actually read them in their entirety by the exam! The questions are thematic so you can be selective and you get unmarked copies in the exams. A2 texts are more appealing - 1984 , Life of Pi et al.not that he has started on them yet

hackmum · 26/07/2015 12:58

A room with a view is quite short and a relatively easy read. DD has been given The Tempest to read over the holidays and is already moaning that she doesn't understand any of it!

penny13610 · 25/07/2015 22:26

It is not hard for dyslexic teenagers to get the hang of audio books, my DS does about two a week. Think about changing subject.

EvilTwins · 25/07/2015 22:25

Start with Wide Sargasso Sea then move on to Jane Eyre - hopefully WSS will intrigue him enough to want to know what happened "next".

nooka · 25/07/2015 22:20

Thinking about it I think I'd just tell my ds to get on with it. If he really can't read books he might dislike then better to discover that now when he can probably change subjects without too much grief than in a few months time.

HettyD · 25/07/2015 22:16

What other subjects has he chosen? Just thinking if History is one of them you could begin by exploring the society of the period? Knowing the factual restrictions of Victorian women might put JE into context? Look for someone like Caroline Norton to give example of limitations on women. Also treatment of mental health issues in Victorian period is barbaric but v interesting... The concept of the 'grand tour' from RWAV might also appeal?? All 3 really interesting books (rap the combination of JE and WSS - read JE first!!) but strike me as quite limited in style and period of appeal. Is there something like WWI poetry to balance? Something modern?

Preminstreltension · 25/07/2015 21:57

I think you are going to challenge him on the girly thing - a) they are pretty tough books with tough subjects and b) half the world is "girly" Ask him to think about being Jane Eyre, being orphaned and friendless and bullied and penniless and having to survive on her wits. If he can't make anything of that then he shouldn't be doing Eng Lit.