DS 15 and A level English?

[Boedatives]

NC recently for this as it feels hugely disloyal......

DS is 15 and doing GCSEs next year. He is predicted all 9s - he's not a genius, just an all rounder at a very expensive school that spoon-feeds the boys, for want of a better word.

He is thinking of doing English A level ...... but he has read ONE book in the last year. I can't think of any before that.

It was Arsene Lupin by Maurice Leblanc, translated from French and it took him 7 months. He has never read anything by a classic english author - this is all apart from what they read and study in class. I mean for 'pleasure'.

By his age, I'd was deep into Thomas Hardy, all the Brontes, JD Salinger, Harper Lee.

I've given him short stories by HG Wells and a couple of PG Wodehouse schoolboy tales. If he doesn't look at them this summer, wibu to go into school before he makes a level choices and advise the teacher of his reading habits, or lack of? It seems ridiculous.

Why is that? My child waiting for his gcse results this year. He wanted to pick English Lit for A Level as predicted a 9 and got 9s in both mocks but has been guided towards combined English instead, plus he saw the texts for both and preferred the combined English ones!

I said it can be, not that it must be.

Why does he want to do English A level? My DC wanted to do it because they loved the analysis and discussion, not because they loved reading books. They did very well at it despite never reading a book by choice and I'm not convinced they actually read any of the set books all the way through

Our English Lit for this year is 3 components. First one is love through the ages and that's made up of one Shakespeare play, 1 piece of text pre 1900 and 1 poetry plus they have to answer on two unseen poems.

The second component is texts in shared context and they pick from either World War 1 and its aftermath or literature from 1945 to modern day. One of the students last year chose to do a book released in 2022.

The third component is comparative critical study of two texts, one of which has to be pre 1900

I know this year one of the pre chosen texts for English Lit is Rebecca.

English combined are doing A Handmaid's Tale, A Streetcar named Desire and The Great Gatsby.

Let him chose what he wants, if he's predicted 9s and getting 9s, he's unlikely to fail that spectacularly. My son was pushed by his Teacher to go for combined English as she thought he would prefer the texts and when he saw the list, he preferred them too. He also is predicted a 9 and got 9s in both mocks.

I have an English Lit degree and I think I fully read maybe 3 of the books for my degree and A Levels...

I had a knack for skim reading and being able to pick out the best quotes. My A Level teacher even complimented me on my ability to find the quotes.

I just didn't enjoy the books we had to read for the courses 🤣

We did the Hobbit for GCSE at school, for two years. The Teacher was awful and absolutely ruined the book with all the analysing and said no written book can ever just be what it is, you must only ever read to find the true meanings. I never touched a book again till I was 20 because he almost killed my love of reading! Sometimes I just want to read something light to escape, not annotate and find hidden meanings!

Fair point.

I think Eng Lit is a different thing from reading for pleasure. I read a lot but I don't analyse and question what I'm reading.

@clary Is Chaucer compulsory now for A level English Lit?

I think I have proved my point. Chaucer at O level, or The Hobbit? I think I know the easier read!

Ooo that's awful.

I do enjoy the analysis but I also think it can be taken too far and think sometimes it's like they forget books are there for pleasure.

OP i hated reading 'classics' when I was a teen.

Yet I got an A for Eng Lit Alevel in the 1990s.

My GCSE teacher always told my parents I needed to stop reading Stephen King and Virginia Andrews and read Hardy. Took until I was in my 20s to start reading classics.

I found the analytical part of eng lit very easy. I was really good at writing essays. It comes down to that really. If it's an easy Alevel for him and he can pass the exam and it makes him happy, then 🤷🏼‍♀️

Btw I also work in a girls version of one of those high achieving spoon fed schools and a lot of those young people do it purely by determination and no specific love for their subject.

Honestly, it’s his choice and not yours, and if you are worried about his lack of reading you should be pleased if he chooses English A level as at least he will read some texts.

Perhaps you need to work on accepting that your kid will do things differently from you as he grows up, and that’s fine and as it’s meant to be. I suspect the psycho drama you have here about his a level choices may roll over into other things.

Yes and I was exactly the same. I barely read anything for my degree except for skim reading for quotes.

I was amazed when my husband told me he had read the actual reading list in full. What a dreadful waste of time 😂

Even now I skim read novels.

No compulsory Chaucer here.

I have a 2:1 from a RG university in English Literature, I didn't even read all the course texts

What do you mean by spoon feeding? Do you mean the teacher ensures that the pupils have a firm grasp of the curriculum? I would hope so, if it's a really expensive school! What on odd put down of your own very hard working DS.

On the English side, you have a point. If he's doing that well in all subjects, seems odd to go for English if he doesn't like reading that much. I wouldn't talk to the school, though. It's up to him. Haven't you had meeting with the school careers advice teacher to talk this through when making A Level choices.

In the mid eighteenth century?! Well yeah, things will have changed old timer…

I'm aphantasic and I love reading. I don't need to visualise the thing I'm reading to enjoy it.

I'm also good at creative writing and had a couple of short stories published in the past.

@Boedatives DH managed to get an A in English Lit without reading the entirety of any set novel...I don't think he's read a fiction novel since. I have no idea how he managed it.
You can also do an A level in English Language, but it's more difficult to find schools which offer it.

I think reading for pleasure (to immerse yourself in a story; understand different lives; feel vicarious emotion; find out what happens; escape from reality etc) is a VERY different ‘need’ to the desire to STUDY writing (how does a writer construct text; what techniques do they use and why; how does a text sit in its cultural and historic context: what is it ‘listening’ to; what is it telling to contemporary ears that we might miss? ) My dd has just completed a level language and literature (which is a fascinating course imo): she read avidly for pleasure up to maybe 12; then had a real gap and I would say has only really got back into reading in the final year of her A level - she’s hoping to do literature and linguistics at uni. But - she loves language; understanding techniques; analysing what’s going on in and around a text. She’s fascinated by how retelling the same story can bring out different stuff and different responses (she loves the modern retelling of Shakespeare plays or Greek myths for example). Is this stuff that echo’s for your son - I think if he loves the processes, the debate of what an author is doing and what it means, dissecting language, that’s what’s key for a level - it’s the detail on the set texts you need to have rather than the broad sweep
of all literature at A level!

My daughter wanted to do English Lit but when she saw what she was expected to read: both "core texts" and reading around the text, she independently came to the conclusion that it was just too much.
Either your son will decide the same or he will step up and do the reading or he will probably change his choices in the first few weeks ( almost every school allows this). The summer before can be a big eye opener as you usually get a huge list to read over the summer.

Leave the choice to him.

Comma required after 'changed'.

This stuff stays with you.

I’m not really following your posts!

Did you realise you said you did your GCSEs in the eighteenth century?

ps: fullstop goes inside quotation mark…

Yes, I did. And I also said that Dickens was our Modern Author. Short of a smiley face, it's difficult to see what more I could have done to suggest that that was whimsical little joke.

On the full stop inside or outside the quotes thing, there's a lot of debate about that, and most of it comes down to context. In this case, what's being quoted isn't part of a sentence that would have a full stop, but a single word specifically cited as a separate syntactical entity.

The first Google entry I found was this..

British English puts commas and periods (full stops) outside the quotation marks unless the quotation is also a complete sentence or the punctuation is part of the quotation.

But, actually, I found others that would say you were right.

Tbh typing on a phone even getting the punctuation in is a pain so I’ll let it go either way.

So did you do your GCSEs in the 18th century or not? I mean it would make you a ghost but I’m guessing these days it’s ageist or similar to point that out …

Tbh typing on a phone even getting the punctuation in is a pain so I’ll let it go either way.

Gee, thanks.

So did you do your GCSEs in the 18th century or not? I mean it would make you a ghost but I’m guessing these days it’s ageist or similar to point that out …

....somebody help me out here.

I did English Literature A level and got an A (in the days when A* didn't exist at A level) despite reading no classics outside of school. Presumably your son can read and has the ability to think critically, which are the two key skills for English literature. He'll be fine. :)