A-Level English

Are you one of those people?

For whom GCSE English is

A bit like this?

Do you find it…

Frustrating?

Too much to bear?

We’re not surprised

We understand

At times for us, GCSE feels like one of these:

But don’t you remember when English was

About you?

About your thoughts?

About your ideas?

Not just about what you need to say for an exam?

Does it really get any better?

Will I ever feel like this?

When you study English Literature at A-level, we

can’t promise you

Or

But we will give you the chance

To discover

To push yourself further

To develop your own ideas and be original

I know that’s not really original, but everybody

loves a picture of a hamster coming out of an egg.

So what’s A-level English like?

We read

We discuss

We write some essays

But not as many as you’d think

(and did I mention, we get amazing exam results…?)

But isn’t it all hours spent reading these…

Old books in language I don’t understand?

Well, yes, and no…

We read some old texts

‘Othello’, by Shakespeare, for example

Which, if you don’t know it already, ends like this…

What does this mean to you?

What did it mean four hundred years ago?

What drives a man to do this?

This is the sort of question we ask

And you’ll be the one who’s challenged to

think for himself

And you don’t have to be someone who spends all

his time here

To enjoy English again

You won’t find yourself like this

But we’ll work together

So you gain the skills, understanding and

knowledge you need.

But hold on

Don’t I have to be this guy to get any kind of decent

grade at A-level?

No

He’s been dead for nearly four hundred years.

If you’re someone who thinks for himself

Is willing to take risks and explore new ideas

(and possibly hopes to get an A or A* at GCSE)

You’ll do brilliantly

(Did I mention our exam results?)

(Or our Oxbridge successes?)

Of course, we’d never blow our own trumpet

So, what will we study?

Tragedies

Othello

A modern play

Some poetry

You might read Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient

Mariner’

And travel with a man to the darkest hell a human

can experience

Or to Italy, with Robert Browning’s murderous

Duke

Or to the hedonist parties of the Jazz age in New

York

Right up to a novel written within the last ten years

Such as ‘Enduring Love’, by Ian McEwan

Which features one of these

And at A2, you can even choose the book you

write your coursework on

Perhaps?

That’s all well and good, I hear you say

But where will this take me?

I don’t want to leave school and end up like

this guy…

English can take you anywhere

To a degree at a top university

Or to any career where you need to analyse

information

and convey your views powerfully and

effectively

Like Law, for example

The Media

Or management.

And the skills in using written information

And producing clear, effective writing of your

own

Will be invaluable skills

Whatever A-levels you’re doing

So, if you’re a person who doesn’t want to be told

what to think

Who wants to develop his own coursework tasks

Who wants to be taken seriously as an individual

We’d love to talk

English at A-level

Skills

Understanding

Enjoyment