linguistic and arty subjects (Choosing A-Levels in general)

Member Name: strange_child

Product:	Choosing A-Levels in general
Date:	26/03/02 (110 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good if youre going to university, better than wokring!

Disadvantages: hard work, some courses are different than you expect

I am a student in my second year of A-levels, so here I'm going to write about the courses that I have taken, and hopefully advise the year 11 students in which subjects would be best suited to them. I wasn?t given a huge amount of advice on what the actual courses would be about when I started, but I hope this will be of use to someone! At my school I think that the policy for taking A-levels is that you get at least 5 A-C grades in GCSE, and personally I would advise people to have at least a C grade in their chosen A-level subjects. This may not necessarily apply for subjects such as art, but it would for the sciences, English, foreign language and maths. My year was the first to start the A-S system, and I do think that this is quite good. It may be a bit disorganised at the moment, and the workload uneven, but I find it good that if you change your mind after a year then you will still get a grade.

English language
I was attracted to do this after an interesting discussion about accents and dialects. It really drew me in, and I thought that it would be quite psychological. It seems that this attracted quite a few people in my year as well, as we had one of the biggest groups in year 12. It's true, we do a lot about language and society, about how different genders and stereotypes are portrayed in our language. I find this part of the course very interesting, but unfortunately we also do semantics (the meaning of words), which I find tedious, and grammar, which although I'm strong at (I do French as well), is very boring. In year 12 we did one piece of coursework, which included creative writing for a purpose. I wrote a newsletter in the style of a Christian Church group, warning parents against 'The dangers of rock music', and then a response letter in which I included my own views on censorship. This was a great coursework to do, because we were able to do it about anything we were interested in, or example I had friends who li
nked theirs to football. In year 13 we had a longer study to do about a particular area of language, and I did the language used in chat rooms, this was quite hard because we had to include detailed analysis of the language and parts of speech. I did have a few friends who did theirs about the language used in rap, and how the media portrays women. I would recommend this to students who are good at language, or analysis. It has defiantly helped that I also do french, but there are a lot of essays to do, and this year I have been quite bored.

French
I got an A at GCSE French, and so did everyone who started off doing AS level French, so we were quite high in our standards. However, the first French lesson we had, we were all ready to give it up! It is a huge leap from GCSE, which centres on simple, useless phrases and words that are just enough to get by abroad. The aim of A-level is to get you speaking grammatically correct. You should see the list of grammar that we had to learn in year 12 - about 30 different bits - compared with the 5 little bits that we have to learn this year. I don't enjoy French lessons - I find them very tedious and boring, but I enjoy the fact that I am just about fluent in French now. I would say that there is no point in dropping after doing your AS, although we did start with nine last year and now we are two! We have one piece of coursework to do this year, which can be about anything as long as it relates to a French speaking country. This is really hard, because most of the marks go on content rather than the quality of language. I did do one about immigration in France, but ended up with an E because it wasn't relevant! However, I am doing another one on the legalisation of cannabis in France. I would only recommend taking this if you are good at French, and can speak it well. If not, then you will start to hate it, and won't learn anything.

Psychology
This was a new subject for me, and I was att
racted because I've never done it and it sounds interesting. In year 12 we had to learn a number of core studies that we had to write about, and do four small pieces of coursework studies of our own, which we could write notes on and take into the exam! It is true that this is a very easy AS level course - most of the people in my class got at least a C, and this is good! It's a good one if you enjoy debating different things and question everything! However, this year, we had two parts of applied psychology to do - criminology and organisational psychology, which we as a class chose from a list of about 6. I really hate organisational psychology ? it?s really boring, and I can only think that it would interest business students, it concerns itself with personnel management and performance appraisal et al. Criminology is brilliant though - I have really enjoyed it, as do I think everyone in my class. It looks into the reasons of why criminals do what they do, and about victims and crime prevention. It has been quite hard though, and I'm really not looking forward to my exams.

Art
Lastly, it comes to art. It sounds just like a doss lesson, where you can get away with doing nothing, but at A-level it isn?t that way. It is comprised of 6 units - 2 art projects and an exam in year 12, and one art project, a written essay and an exam in year 13. I have really enjoyed art - we start off with a title, for example this year we had 'change' - a vague and wishy-washy title. From this, I looked at death, and how the Mexicans celebrate this. I have had a great opportunity to experiments - making masks, a huge painting and lots of other things. I am currently writing an essay about how death is portrayed in different art movements, and this has been really interesting and vastly improved my appreciation of art. We have to keep a log book of all technicalities of what we do which gets really annoying at times because we can't be bothered,
but this is how it is different to GCSE art - we actually have to think about what we do and develop our ideas rather than draw a vase of flowers. It's a very individual subject, and a huge range of pieces have been done - my mate Gary has done a really impressive painting inspired by September the 11th with the New York skyline and the American flag in the background, and my friend Gemma has done a series of self-portraits using a whole range of materials.

Basically, it's up to you, but hopefully if you are thinking about taking these subjects then you have now got a better insight into whether it is up to you - oh and another thing, I do 4 A-level subjects - be sensible and only do 3!!!

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