Latin A2 AHHHHH

Caesar was awful! I just looked up the translation and got soo many bits wrong :frown:

I looked up the grade boundaries for last year's prose paper, 73 for an A, and in the verse only 70 for an A, which comforts me slightly lol

Is that 73 for the whole paper? so an average of Caesar and Tacitus? and that's 73%? That gives me some sort of hope after that terrible Caesar- looked it up too, what a muck i made of it! :frown:

Reply 181

aliceb

Original post by Salvius

Is that 73 for the whole paper? so an average of Caesar and Tacitus? and that's 73%? That gives me some sort of hope after that terrible Caesar- looked it up too, what a muck i made of it! :frown:

Yep 73/100 raw mark for 80 UMS, so hopefully this year it'll be 70 or something. I guess it also depends on how you did last year, and i'm guessing most people did better last year so you can afford to not do amazingly this year and still get an A.

Reply 182

phiddy23

11

Original post by m_wooly

i was thinking about that, and it can only be fair for OCR to determine separate grade boundaries for each section. So the grade boundaries for comprehension are separate from those of latin to english. Surely the same works for Tacitus and Livy etc etc. Because otherwise it would be akin to having the same grade boundaries for two totally different exams.

Please someone correct me if im wrong but from my perspective that is the only fair and representative way in which OCR could do it.

This probably doesn't make any sense BUT

I wouldn't be so sure because it is part of the exam that you choose which one you do... if you do prose composition it will always be the same level of difficulty because they can only give you a certain level of latin - it's hard to tell how well you've done while you're doing it because you can change it around to suit how much you've learnt, but you could end up still doing really badly even if you found it easy because of how much / little learning you did.

A lot of schools don't even bother with prose composition because it's seen to be 'harder' so arguably if you've chosen to do that you would see it as an injustice to not be compared against those who did the unseen... I probably only say that though because I did prose composition, if anyone actually knows please correct me! At the time I thought it was fine but I keep remembering specific mistakes that I definitely made and they accumulate to quite a high number :frown:

I agree with you about Livy and Tacitus though... which probably undermines my whole point lmao.

Reply 183

AmroTT

Original post by philly.tidd

This probably doesn't make any sense BUT

I wouldn't be so sure because it is part of the exam that you choose which one you do... if you do prose composition it will always be the same level of difficulty because they can only give you a certain level of latin - it's hard to tell how well you've done while you're doing it because you can change it around to suit how much you've learnt, but you could end up still doing really badly even if you found it easy because of how much / little learning you did.

A lot of schools don't even bother with prose composition because it's seen to be 'harder' so arguably if you've chosen to do that you would see it as an injustice to not be compared against those who did the unseen... I probably only say that though because I did prose composition, if anyone actually knows please correct me! At the time I thought it was fine but I keep remembering specific mistakes that I definitely made and they accumulate to quite a high number :frown:

I agree with you about Livy and Tacitus though... which probably undermines my whole point lmao.

Yeah, I agree. You opt to do whichever you'll be best at (which if you haven't done Prose Comp at all will obviously be the Caesar), so I believe you'll be marked fairly and on an equal footing with those who went for the other option :smile:

Reply 184

eve_m

4

I think for most schools, people don't have the option of 'choosing' between Prose Comp and the unseen - their school decide which to teach, and they do that. If I'd had a choice I think I would've preferred to spend the year doing Prose Comp practise instead of endless Caesar unseens, or even both, but my school chose the latter, so that's what I did.

Though I don't think the board will mark the two sections differently, they are meant to be equally difficult. Or if the Prose Comp's harder, they compensate for it by giving you less of it.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 185

Ceebes

Original post by eve_m

I think for most schools, people don't have the option of 'choosing' between Prose Comp and the unseen - their school decide which to teach, and they do that. If I'd had a choice I think I would've preferred to spend the year doing Prose Comp practise instead of endless Caesar unseens, or even both, but my school chose the latter, so that's what I did.

Though I don't think the board will mark the two sections differently, they are meant to be equally difficult. Or if the Prose Comp's harder, they compensate for it by giving you less of it.

That is generally the case, I agree. Our school teaches aiming for everyone to do the prose composition, however since a couple of students were struggling they were given the opportunity to study for the Caesar as well so that they had the choice.

Reply 186

AmroTT

Original post by Ceebes

That is generally the case, I agree. Our school teaches aiming for everyone to do the prose composition, however since a couple of students were struggling they were given the opportunity to study for the Caesar as well so that they had the choice.

Yeah, we were taught Prose Comp as well as the Cicero at AS. And we continued to practise them equally at A2, so we were equally versed in, and could do, both in the exam; of course, that inevitably means half of us did no work for the Caesar and ploughed all our hopes into revising Prose Comp, and vice versa. Though I'm not sure why, if you were taught both at AS and found yourself to be useless at the option the teacher was insisting upon, you couldn't just work on your preferred option out of timetable. After all, it's A-level.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 187

f1234

1

I was just wondering, as I might consider taking it, how difficult on a scale of 1 to 10 is A2 latin?

Reply 188

LawQC

1

Ye i self taught myself and did the english to latin since they always make it easier because they want more people to do it.

Reply 189

LawQC

1

Original post by f1234

I was just wondering, as I might consider taking it, how difficult on a scale of 1 to 10 is A2 latin?

3.4672

Reply 190

f1234

1

Original post by LawQC

3.4672

Okay, um thanks I think. :smile:

Reply 191

eve_m

4

Original post by f1234

I was just wondering, as I might consider taking it, how difficult on a scale of 1 to 10 is A2 latin?

I think it completely depends on whether you're naturally good at it or not - I'd say AS was 4, A2, 8. I felt like there was a big jump, though, I do think that's because I coasted through AS (without meaning to sound like a tw*t :redface:

). If I had put more work in then, I wouldn't've had to do so much this year. (Also I'm sure many people will have found it easier than me).
That said, it's still awesome. Before my exam, me and my friend were outside, cramming and she asked me something, and I answered, and then I just went 'I love latin'.
So that's proof that it's an awesome a level. :biggrin: