English language/ English Literature A-level

[kham]

Hi all,

I'm having some trouble decided which school i should go to for 6th form.

It's between two schools. One school offers all four courses i would like to do: maths, biology, chemistry and English lit.

The other school can only offer me: maths, biology, chemistry and english LANGUAGE.

I rather study Literature but according to my research, English language is very different to what you do in GCSE.

so my problem is, i could very easily go to the first school, but there's a catch, i must also do a extended project and citizenship as it is compulsory. i feel that i would be completely wasting my time doing citizenship lessons as it is very irrelevant and i would rather spend my time on the other subjects. i could just go to the other school and sacrifice doing lit. by doing language instead but i wasn't very good at it, i also wouldn't have to do anything else other than my 4 subjects. if you could tell me a bit more about how Language is different to what you do in GCSE, that would make my decision a lot much easier.

i start school on monday so i don't have very much time left.

thankyou.

[intexasatthe moment]

I'm afraid I can't advise but have you tried asking here

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=82

or http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=80

or here

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary ?

[DrinkingBuddy]

English Language A'level (at least when I did it 16 years ago) was a far more scientific course and really is a completely different beast to English Literature at this level. You will largely be doing a lot of work for high level grammatical structuring, a lot of text analysis similar to literature, but from the perspective of what and how people are trying to communicate rather than studying the literary merit. There was also a large focus on deconstructing speech phonetically including transcription.

From the other three subjects you're taking you may well find that English Language is a good fit for your interests, but then again, maybe you're looking for something that will provide some respite from all of the science subjects!

[kham]

thanks for the feedback. what i would like to know is if i would have to do a lot of..writing my own pieces. I remember when i was given the task to write my own article, i was terrible at it! i just havent got that natural ability to write fluently.

oh and just for your information, i got grade B in both language and literature, which make it ever more difficult for me to decide.

[Townleygreen]

I think you are wrong about citizenship being "very irrelevant"! It is meant to help you cope with the modern world. At least their shouldn't be any homework with it. It sounds like Eng Lang wouldn't suit you at all either. The extended project WILL be more work though, but at least you can choose a topic from one of your A levels to do it on, which should help, especially if its on a science subject.

Can you give up one of the 4 subjects in year 13? That would be good. Most unis are only interested in 3 A levels.

[peckhamboy]

Reading your posts makes me think you might be best off avoiding English Language. HTH.

[womanofdulwich]

its quite unusual to be able to find English Language A level- I thought Harris Upper Norwood was the only school that did it. I would stick to English Lit and enjoy citizenship as a chance not to swot but enjoy .