A-level Art. Don't leave it until last minute! (A-Levels)

Member Name: oopsy-daisy

Product:	A-Levels
Date:	05/07/01 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: If your timing is good you could get grade A

Disadvantages: If you timing is bad you might not finish the work!

Some people think that to be successful in A-level Art,all you have to do is splat a bit of paint on a canvas when you feel the inspiration.Believe me they are soooooooo wrong!

I took my exam under the EDEXEL examining body. I thought all examining boards wanted the same thing,but it turned out that some had a more stronger dependancy on the exam to coursework.If you can,find out what the board expects from you,and the coursework/exam ratio,to get you and idea of the course structure.

My course was 2 years long, but to be completely honest i thought the first year was acomplete waste of time. All the work i produced wasn't even submitted for a mark. I believe this was because the first year is made to develope ideas and experiment.The only bit of work which meant alot was my Personal Study:

The personal study is a project that you work on alone. You basically come up with an essay title,to do with a movement in art or an artist, the subject is entirely up to you. Then you have to spend time researching this subject,and make a written commentary. To go with this commentary you have to produce a book/folder of artwork. The artwork should show experimentation of the movement or style. Also mock images of artists work,and your on images in the style of the artist,or movement. You will be assigned your Personal study at th end of the first year so you can work over the holiday.MAKE SURE YOU START YOUR RESEARCH NOW!So many of my friends didn't bother and then had to rush it or didn't get it finished. The whole point of getting it at this time,is that you havn't got any other artwork to do yet,and in the next year your workload WILL dramatically increase. Trust me.This year your structure is:

Personal study- Title established and research started
Mock exam-Timed and sometimes used as Unit one!?!

During the second year it's alot of hard work. Especially if you have other subjects to negotiate arou
nd.The structure works like this:

Unit one- complete project includes research, body of work and a final piece.
Unit two- as unit one
Unit three- as unit one
Final exam

Your units each make up your body of coursework. This was the hardedst bit of the course,as the timingand planning needs to be organinsed for you to fit them all in. Each unit can be from any area you want. (My course was focused more on fine art which saw me doing two painting focused units and one sculpture based.)For each unit find out the dates for them to be handed in,and stick to them , otherwise they will leave you less time for you third and final unit. For each unit:

Make a plan of the start date and final date to allow you to plan the three main areas RESEARCH/ DEVELOPMENT / FINAL PIECE.Split your timetable into three to allow you time to research your subject. Deveope your ideas and create a body of work. Then create and finish a final piece.

Finally you will come to your exam. Because much of your final mark will be taken from the course work you will have a more relaxed time. In the exam you will be allowed a fixed time period. I think ours was ten hours, possibly 20 . This will be slotted into your periods, for example one day you could have three periods of exam which would account for three hours.But this will be established at your school/college. Our school sixth form was pretty laid back and allowed us to have the radio on and talk during the exam. Sometimes you may be required to work in silence.Obviously during the exam you usually haveto stay within the room your working apart from when you are collecting materials.

Basically it's not the exam you should worry about, it's the timimg and organisation of your coursework that provided the most problems. Within my class there were people graded from A to E, and this was generally due to how far they'd got with there coursework.

Hopefully,if you are doin
g a full A-Level in Art soon this will help. x Good Luck

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