OCR RS (philos and ethics) coursework

Ok, so I have the most rubbish teachers there ever were. last year I had two fantastic teachers, now they've both left and we have a woman who's only ever taught in holland, and a man straight out of uni (i think). well, neither of them have a clue how to teach for starters, there's been loads of problems with them with my sister's class but anyway:

neither of them have a clue about the course. they don't even seem to have read the syllabus cus they say 'have you done this', and also explain basic AS stuff to us. well the other day the man gave us our coursework. what he did was right the quesion on the board and told us to start it then.

ok, so we were all kind of baffled, where was the word count, the deadline etc? so we spent the lesson trying to find out this vital information because he had no idea. he went online to find out the word count and also said the deadline is january (which i'm pretty sure is the final final exam board one, even though he's not told us this), while some of us went to our old teacher's classroom to find last year's coursework, to see what kind of thing is needed.

Basically, I would really really really appreciate ANY help anyone could give me with this - what does the coursework involve, what's it marked on, what structure should you use, how much depth...ANYTHING you can tell me, or any info you have from your teachers, I would be so greatful!!!

Sorry about the slight rant, i am sorry but everyone in my class is so worried lol! (can i rant some more? about 2/3 of the class got As last year, and the rest Bs, and our new teacher read out our predicted A level grades and didn't think we would manage the B and C predictions, when most of us NEED As)

Sorry! Any help at all ... xxx thanks so much

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Reply 1

Potter

Hey i may not be much help but our teachers are just teaching us the 3 units that we can base out coursework on- religious experience, life after death and religious language, we can then select a question of our choice from 1 of these 3 areas. The coursework should be about 2,500 words (about 5ish pages) and should go into quite a lot of depth, considering the word count! It's basically marked like normal essays that you've done previously- philosoophers views, opinions etc etc, you just basically have to answer the question! Sorry if that wasn't much help havn't actually started coursework just going through the preparing process!

Reply 2

AlmostInsane

What's your question? We got given a choice of 3. I've actually been given quite a lot of help & advice about the coursework but I need to get myself together & start to write the damn thing. I honestly have zero motivation so far this year which is bad! I need to have a plan of what I'm going to do drawn up by tomorrow & I'm stressing.

Reply 3

ange de la nuit

aww.

ours is something like 'our ethical decisions are not free. discuss' so it's basically letting us write everything about free will and determinism i guess. any definate things we should include/stucture, or basically anything important? thanks people xxx

Reply 4

Potter

That's a weird question, but kinda easy! Did you only get one? We had 3 and all were crap. One on heaven and hell, one on religious experience and the toronto blessing and one on analogy for God or something. HARD. We have to read loads of books for research so we can include qoutes from different philosohers with footnotes in our essay. It's got to basically be like a normal philosophy essay, like with all your philosophers and views and stuff. We can't do over 2750 words and our deadline's 8th december so we can get it sent off to the examiner etc. We havn't really been told much about structure etc, just basically deadline and format (typed, double spaced etc) Oh and also it's third of our A2 and 20% of our final grade- whoopee... Sorry, not much help but havn't really been told what to include really, gotta figure it our ourselves... how fun!

Reply 5

AlmostInsane

I'm doing the religious experiences/toronto blessing one. I also got the choice of those 3 questions & it looked the easiest! My philosophy teacher went on a course last week where a bloke talked about the coursework & he said the heaven/hell one was the hardest so I'm rather glad I didn't choose that one!

Reply 6

Realist101

i did religious experience for as coursework, gt 85/100. all you should do is concentrate on a max of 4 areas of debate concerning this topic, tight writing, well cited and well analyzed and evaluated.

Reply 7

ange de la nuit

Hi, thanks so much guys, I don't even remember starting this post!

Well, I've written my coursework (omg I have spent one whole week working on this draft along, it has taken so long), handing it in tomorrow as a draft. Think I've got quite a few quotations and philosophers in there, and lots of criticsms etc. Kinda worried about my structure and the flow of it but all in all I don't think it's the disaster I was expecting!

Ok, your deadline worries me a bit because we're handing our final copy in after the Xmas holidays. Might ask him about that cuz can you imagine missing out of 1/3 of your A level cuz of a stupid teacher? Also, I didn't know about all this double spacing stuff. Hm...And yeah, I have to get my word count right down, it's almost 4000.

Anyway, thanks people! And good luck with your pieces!

PS there were 3 questions on the exam board's question paper thing but we were told we had to answer this one, which was fine by me cuz our old teachers taught us it!

Reply 8

jomo

AlmostInsane

Yeah, I had the three questions too - and stupidly chose to do the heaven/hell one. ¬¬ I thought i'd set myself a 'challenge.' :rolleyes:

It's a really interesting question but such a wide topic...

Reply 9

rahmara

i dont understnad :confused:

im doing OCR philosphy and ethics too but we're not doing any coursework :frown:

Reply 10

jomo

rahmara

i dont understnad :confused:

im doing OCR philosphy and ethics too but we're not doing any coursework :frown:

I think it depends on your teacher's choice of how they want to do the course. A few of my friends at the 'brother' college of my school are taking the OCR phil/ethics and don't have coursework either, I guess it just depends where you are...

Reply 11

AlmostInsane

My teachers said that if we do badly on coursework we can still do the exam, hopefully the coursework will go well though!

I've handed in a rough draft, only 2000 words so could do with writing a bit more. Mine has to be done & handed in by December 13th I think? My teachers think it's best to get it out of the way before the xmas holidays & I agree.

Reply 12

ange de la nuit

Anyone got any idea how strict the 2500 word limit is??????????

Reply 13

tulipsandsunshine

rahmara

i dont understnad :confused:

im doing OCR philosphy and ethics too but we're not doing any coursework :frown:

I'm doing the same course and we're not doing any coursework either. I think basically my year is doing the equivalent of coursework, just on an exam paper. I'm fairly sure that we get to choose what we write about, I just can't remember what my teacher keeps calling the type of exam that it is. I think its something beginning with "O"...

Reply 14

jomo

ange de la nuit

Anyone got any idea how strict the 2500 word limit is??????????

I believe it has to be between 10% either way - so no smaller than 2250 and no bigger than 2750. Mine's currently on 3000 so I have some cutting down to do. :frown:

Reply 15

Realist101

it was an easy coursework i found neways.

Reply 16

ange de la nuit

hey, i've been told that the absolute maximum is 3000 words, is anyone leaving theirs over 2750? Apparently the footnotes are included, which is annoying, because otherwise i would be under the 3000 limit.