A level history. : Tue Aug 28, 2012 9:29 am  

fecked up my first year of college and need to change some subjects
anyone do A level history recently, and can give me some pointers? I don't want to spend another year of my life thinking I'm wasting my time on a subject I just don't get on with.
I tried at my college's induction week before enrolment last year and really liked the look of the content, I got a B in gcse history but didn't enjoy the content or my class full of absolute knobs, teacher spent 75% of the time dishing out detentions/isolations

Re: A level history. : Tue Aug 28, 2012 1:13 pm  

I did an AS-level in history (didnt do the full A-level because i was planning to do a science at uni) about 6 years ago, i doubt its changed much since then.

If you liked the look of the content then imo that is the most important thing, half our course was British political history which i loved, so i enjoyed AS history a lot more than GCSE.

Imo it wasnt a paticularly difficult course - for each exam we were given 4 exam style questions at the start of the module, and told the exam question consisted of 2 questions which would be slight variants on the 4 given, so there were absolutely no surprises on any of the exams.

On the whole i found it very similar to the GCSE course, the main difference being that the exams consisted of a couple of longer essay style question rather than lots of shorter questions, you get a lot of practice writing essays throughout the course so you only have to be vaguely competant at that sort of thing going into the course. Another difference is that in the 2nd year of the A-level you spend a lot of time doing your personal study, we had the choice to do absolutely anything we wanted (i assume your school is the same), all my friends enjoyed this part as you can choose what you are most interested in, it is quite a lot of work though, you have to be prepared to read a lot of books on the topic if you want a good mark.

If i were you i'd go for it, if you like the look of the content you'll probably really enjoy it and be willing to put in the effort requied to get a good mark, and if you got a B at gcse in what sounds like a nightmare of class then you must be pretty good at it. Dont be put off if you dont really like essays, you quickly get used to them.

Re: A level history. : Tue Aug 28, 2012 2:58 pm  

I've sorted it with college now, history teacher didn't like my other options so I got rejected! thanks anyways Cookridge Rhino

Re: A level history. : Wed Aug 29, 2012 6:02 pm  

Cookridge_Rhino wrote:

I did an AS-level in history ... Imo it wasnt a paticularly difficult course - for each exam we were given 4 exam style questions at the start of the module, and told the exam question consisted of 2 questions which would be slight variants on the 4 given, so there were absolutely no surprises on any of them...

Meant to comment on this earlier, but was gasping at it.

Obviously absolutely not remotely your 'fault', but bleedin' hell.

I did O level history (one of my biggest regrets is not to having followed the subject further, but that's another story) and we had absolutely no such idea as to what questions would be asked, except that the questions would relate to the course work we'd done over two years. Revise the lot, in other words.

And it was the same with other subjects - and at A level too.

~shakes head in disbelief~

Re: A level history. : Wed Aug 29, 2012 6:44 pm  

Mintball wrote:

Meant to comment on this earlier, but was gasping at it.

Obviously absolutely not remotely your 'fault', but bleedin' hell.

I did O level history (one of my biggest regrets is not to having followed the subject further, but that's another story) and we had absolutely no such idea as to what questions would be asked, except that the questions would relate to the course work we'd done over two years. Revise the lot, in other words.

And it was the same with other subjects - and at A level too.

~shakes head in disbelief~

Minty, the exams are as hard now as they were then. I did O'level history in 1970 and it was pretty much as the OP's experience. Maybe not as obvious but basically the same. It was the same with English lit. One of the plays you'd studied would feature in the exam and as you might have done 4/6 or so plays over the 2 years then you were in with a chance and not too much swatting.

Re: A level history. : Wed Aug 29, 2012 7:38 pm  

Ovavoo wrote:

Minty, the exams are as hard now as they were then. I did O'level history in 1970 and it was pretty much as the OP's experience. Maybe not as obvious but basically the same. It was the same with English lit. One of the plays you'd studied would feature in the exam and as you might have done 4/6 or so plays over the 2 years then you were in with a chance and not too much swatting.

The point I was trying to make is that we weren't given quite as many 'clues' - ie a big hint at the beginning of the course as to what we'd be examined on.

Re: A level history. : Wed Aug 29, 2012 7:56 pm  

Mintball wrote:

Meant to comment on this earlier, but was gasping at it.

Obviously absolutely not remotely your 'fault', but bleedin' hell.

I did O level history (one of my biggest regrets is not to having followed the subject further, but that's another story) and we had absolutely no such idea as to what questions would be asked, except that the questions would relate to the course work we'd done over two years. Revise the lot, in other words.

And it was the same with other subjects - and at A level too.

~shakes head in disbelief~

Yeah to be honest i thought it was a bit of a joke, i was always better at maths and science but without too much effort i easily got an A (the highest grade at the time). I found what was expected of us extremely limited, the teacher was always banging on about judgement, she used to tell us we couldnt get better than a C if we were descriptive and didnt have judgement throughout the essays - i was shocked people in an A-level class were making such a ridiculous mistake, but even more shocked you could apparently get a C without actually answering the question.

In my history class out of about 15 or so (not including me) there was only one person who was in the top set for either English, Maths or science at GCSE - as opposed to a huge majority in my maths and physics class who were in the top set for all three. I dont know if my school was representative, if so it would explain the low expectations. On a side note it would be very interesting if they published the GCSE results of the average person taknig each different subject at A-Level.

They didnt explicitly tell us what the question would be, but they may aswell have done. We were given four topics and told two of them would be on the exam. One topic was the 1906 election (which happened to come up), and we were told all they could ask us was either why did the liberals win the election, or what mistakes caused the conservatives to lose the election, so for all intent and purpose it was a 'seen' exam paper.

If i were in charge of examinations i would definately have made the History exams much harder, i dont think people who arent particularly intelligent should be able to take easier subjects such as history and get good grades, i dread to think how easy it is to get an A in sociology. I dont mean any offence to anyone who like myself has recently studied history and is proud of the grade they achieved, i just think it should be equally hard to get the grades in every subject - if that means far more people get higher grades in the 'harder' subjects then so be it.

Re: A level history. : Wed Aug 29, 2012 8:14 pm  

I don't think anyone has ever had an easier history mock O level exam than the one my class took in Feb '73, not after our dateless old history master Pussy McNeil told us all one lesson that he was basing the exam on a paper from two years hence, waving the paper around in the air, then went and left it on the desk after the bell went for the end of the lesson

Must have been the first and only time a whole class got 100% in one of his exams.