A Levels - What did I study?

Recently, the lovely Merrin from ‘M is for Merrin’ asked if I would do a sort of review post on the courses that I took for A Level and basically how I got through them. So I thought I’d give it a go, especially if some people may enjoy it or find it useful.

Background info:  I went to a rather small secondary school with roughly 600 pupils spread across 5 year groups. When the time came to choose what to do after year 11, I opted for a sixth form, relatively nearer my house, therefore out of the 120 in my year group, only 2 of us were to attend the new sixth form.

And honestly, going to sixth form was the best decision of my life! The sixth form I went to was part of an academy school which was insanely larger than my previous school (3 times larger to be exact!), which made it seem quite overwhelming at first but I soon got used to it and settled in quite nicely.

For A Level I took French, English Language and Textiles. I also took Maths for AS but dropped it before the end of year 12 as it wasn't for me.

In my opinion, if you take Maths you really have to enjoy it and have a passion for it, which will spur you on to put all your effort in to lessons and work out of lessons. This is where I failed. I hated maths. And have no clue why I took it. But hey-ho, it was a learning experience I guess.

Ok, so now I’m just gonna go through each course and how I found it, giving advice where I can, hoping that you find it useful!

French

A Level French is hard. That is a fact. If you want to take it, you will need to prioritise it. I found that the jump from year 11 to 12 was much harder for me than others in my class, as I was already a bit behind due to my lack of knowledge of some rules/tenses which weren’t really covered at my old school. This was really disappointing for me as I really loved French, but I soon caught up and really got in to the subject.

Year 13 French is considerably harder than Y12 as it’s in this year that you can become fluent. The one thing that will really help with French (or any language course) is constant revision of vocab. I suggest making a little book organised by topic, that you can easily revise from, and as my French teacher would say “the more vocab you have under your belt, the safer you’ll be in the exam”.

PARIS TRIP - MARCH 2014

I found Year 13 French really enjoyable, it was insanely hard, as you have to study a French book and other cultural topics, so constant revision throughout the year was important. But we got to go to Paris (!) which really helped us get an idea of the french language in use which was really fun and we learnt so so much while we were there (just in time for our oral exam!)

English Language

Honestly, I didn’t find English Language very hard at all compared to French and textiles since they required so much dedication. But overall I did really enjoy it! At AS we did ‘Language and Power’ and ‘Language and Gender’ which I found really interesting and this inspired me to do an Extended Project on the Gender Stereotypes in the modern society. Then at A2 we studied ‘Language
Change’ and ‘Language Acquisition’ (how children learn to read/talk).

I found that the main thing that will really help you sail through this course is being able to understand and recall all the linguistic terms that you learn at AS well, as they are the basis for A2 as well.

Textiles

Before AS, I had never really made anything before. Unless you count an oversized felt phone case I made in year 8. Other than that I had no clue what I was getting myself into.

After a while, and with the help of two wonderful teachers I had learnt many new skills and mastered hand embroidery, machine embroidery, beading and dress-making!

The textiles course that I took was actually called ‘Textiles: Art & Design’ which meant that the quality your observational drawings needed to be really good as it made up about 30% of your grade. This didn’t really sit well with me. I got an A in GCSE Art, but this was nothing compared to the Arty skill level in my Textiles class, which was very high.

A few things I made this year for Textiles.

Overall, Textiles was great. I learnt a lot and really enjoyed it. But it was a lot of work. You really do get what you put in, and I spent the majority of my free periods in textiles making samples and doing artist connections. I do recommend Textiles as an A Level course and I think that it goes really well with Art or Double Art, as the courses are very similar.

-     Fin –

Unfortunately I have another 2 weeks wait until I find out my A Level Results, which I am anxiously awaiting! But hopefully I’ve answered most of your questions but don’t hesitate to leave me a message if you have any other queries – I’d be happy to help!

Lots of Love

From Roseanne

xx