Eng. Lit. ? What has happened?

Question

to the standards.
People are asking for homework help for 'the great gatsby', whilst others remember studying 'the handmaidens tale' at 'A-Level'.
Is it just me or has the standard dropped?

Answer 1

I did Eng Lit at A Level, and studied The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), Heart Of Darkness (Conrad), A Franklins Tale (Chaucer), Hamlet (Shakespeare), Tender Is The Night (Fitzgerald), Postcards (Annie Proulx), poems of William Blake, and The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster)... And this lot was on just the syllabus alone, this doesnt include wider reading, and ive probably missed out a text somewhere... so more to the point, altho Gatsby may not be the most challenging read, it contributes along with a selection of challenging and not so challenging text to a varies A level syllabus... so until you attempt to study this lot in depth in 2 years, then you'l see the standards of A levels havent gone down,.. they've quite probably gone up!!! hehe, well I got a D at A level and an A at GCSE. I know that doesnt really show anything, but that i was good at english until those texts entered my sight lol, and im not stupid either! hehe

Answer 2

My A Level was about 10 years ago now and I remember studying Chaucer's Wife of Bath and Milton's Paradise Lost as well as some Shakespeare thrown in for good measure. It was hard but we had excellent teachers that never told us the answers but pointed us in the right direction.

I would imagine that yes, standards have probably dropped somewhat since then. My younger brother is just doing his A Level and most of the literature he has to study is more like my GCSE.

Answer 3

At English A Level I did:

Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (we had to write a piece about where we lived in the same style. I wrote my ex-boyfriend in as a junkie! XD And the teacher was shocked by it! I still don't why... *shrugs*)
Poetry by Sylvia Plath (Why, God, WHY?!?!?!? Used to leave classes wanting to kill myself)
Chaucer's The Wife of Bath (No Comment)
The Alchemist - a play by Ben Jonson

I think you have to study one contemporary work, one classic, one play, one Old English work and a specific poet, along with making various poetry critiques. I don't remember much about the two THREE HOUR exams. In the end I only got a D. *meh*

What's scary is stuff that used to be taught at O Level standard (taken by 16 year olds about 30-40 years ago) doesn't crop up in the curriculum until A Level these days! O_O

Answer 4

I did Eng. Lit on the Beano Annual 1983. Dennis the Menace was a child with discipline issues, homophobia and repressed sexual urges toward Minnie the Minx.

Answer 5

No. Litrature exams nowadays are less dependent on memory and more on full comprehension of the themes and issues, as well as the ability to express and support a coherent opinion. If anything, the change of emphasis makes them tougher.

Answer 6

we still do shakespear & charles dickens, we just finished last year 'a midsummer nights dream' and are working on 'a christmas carol' at the mo. we make it fun too, but we still take in all the info and write tonnes of essays. not everything has changed although it IS a grammer school

Answer 7

They have to choose books other than those by shakespear and charles dickens because its to easy for someone to copy someone elses work from the net or even from their parents. So they have to choose novels that haven't been over-done hundreds and hundreds of times in the past years.

Answer 8

but I thought The GG is a(n American) classic. Does that mean some sort of a compromise in standards.

Answer 9

will be you're prepared to position in writing a tale on some ones biography, a guy or lady that's interesting to you or you're intrigued through. likely your fashionable artist or actress even a historic ascertain.

Answer 10

Both Fitzgerald and Attwood are excellent literary authors. I don't see this as a fall in standards.