Eng Lit GCSE - going rogue with set text choices

[tpmumtobe]

Has anyone's DC answered Eng Lit questions in the exam about a text they weren't officially taught in school?

DS is doing GCSEs this summer. Voracious reader and talented creative writer, but hates English lessons. He's managing ok with R&J, Great Exp and Conflict Poetry, but he's really struggling with the modern text.

Half the cohort is doing Animal Farm, but the other half (including him) is doing My Name is Leon. He says it's such a slog, depressing, boring, he doesn't find it engaging at all and hates studying it.

I'm struggling to help - it was new to the curriculum last year and there are virtually no revision guides online or to buy. I should probably read it myself but he's not selling it to me!

In contrast (as a huge fan of History and Politics) he absolutely loves Animal Farm. He just "gets" it and is far more interested in analysing it. There are also piles of resources available to support exam prep.

Technically there's no reason he can't answer the AF question on that paper rather than MNIL. But is it a stupid idea?

I understand that he absolutely cannot just read it, he'll need to do proper independent study (we may get him a tutor to help). But my gut says that he'll do better on a book he loves than one he hates.

Has anyone else's kid gone rogue on set texts?

If he is a strong reader, writes exam answers well and is scoring highly in mocks etc, I wouldn’t worry and would say he should be fine answering questions on a text he dislikes. Both my DC are avid readers and got A*s in English Literature - neither of them enjoyed any of the set texts and didn’t do a great deal of independent study into them but just memorised what their teachers said about them and told them to write. Depressing but it worked and hasn’t affected their lifelong love of reading!

He's dyslexic, so things aren't that straightforward unfortunately. He works very hard to overcome processing problems and got a mix of 6/7/8s in most of his other mocks, but a 5 in Lang and a 4 in Lit, partly I think because he just can't engage with the content, hence thinking of trying a switch.

I once had an A level student answer on a book he loved rather than the one we'd studied. He still got an A*.

As long as they cover the assessment objectives, we have no idea which texts they've studied. We just mark what's there.

If the other half of the cohort are doing Animal Farm, is there scope for him to move classes? Or take part in any intervention sessions aimed at the students studying AF?

I think it’s a great idea. DD1 hated her books (particularly Macbeth and Women in Black) and I know she’d have done much better if she’d studied R&J and AIC like her sibling.

I did this. Got an A grade. Ended up writing my dissertation on the same book.

English teacher here. Students do this all the time. I’ve had students who never turned the page and just answered on the set text on page 1 - this usually happened with Shakespeare when they answered not on Romeo and Juliet which we’ d studied, but on Macbeth (year 9 text) or The Tempest (year 7 text). Because there’s an extract, they can make a good stab at it.

I am a marker too. The candidates are completely anonymised and each question goes to a different marker. School cohorts are split up too. No one knows what is written unless it is clearly offensive or worrying from a health and safety perspective. So if a student appeared suicidal or wrote about abuse in the privacy of the exam room, I would have to report it.

He could study both texts if you feel he has the capacity to do that, and answers on the question he feels happiest on the day. But it’s a lot more work and he needs to know the boxes he needs to tick. Alternatively ask the school to switch him; it’s really whether the timetable can accommodate that. But no, there is nothing to stop him answering any questions he wants to on the day.

Thanks everyone, that's really helpful and reassuring. I think school would probably grumble about him switching sets at this point in the game, but equally they probably won't mind if he attends the AF intervention sessions rather than the Leon ones, can't see how that would be a problem as they're outside timetable hours. I'll see if we can get him some extra lessons on AF to catch up with what they did last year and go from there.

As someone else also mentioned he needs to be ticking boxes on the mark scheme such as analysing language and explaining/linking the social context behind the text. I would definitely get him some help if he decides to go for AF to make sure he's confident with the assessment objectives and he knows what he's got to include in his paragraphs.

My DP did this many moons ago (sort of). He moved schools in Y10 and only caught the end of one of the texts they were studying. He decided to choose another one of texts to study himself rather than tackle the one they were doing. He got an A*

Good luck to your DS @tpmumtobe! What's he decided to do now that exams are looming?

My dd was very tempted to do a pride and prejudice question yesterday as it’s one of her favourite books. She did her ‘actual’ texts in the end but had seriously considered what she’d write.

she is tempted to do the same in DT - she didn’t get her preferred option of raw materials and ended up with textiles which she’s crap at. She did RM in one of her mocks and got the same grade as when she did the actual textiles question. I think the main reason why she didn’t in Lit is because she’s a 7/8 student for most subjects whereas for DT she would be baffled with more than a 4……

@Jellyjellyonaplate thanks for checking in - he's going with AF and much happier for it. I don't know that he'll necessarily do any better than if he did Leon (we have learned over the last few months that it doesn't matter how much you love reading and writing if you can't write to the specific mark scheme formula then you're stuffed!) but he is much more relaxed knowing he'll at least be writing about something he 'gets'.

Funnily enough he studied R&J, but the Macbeth extract yesterday was the one he performed for his Drama exam so he was seriously tempted to swap for that one too!