Anyone do History and English Lit A Level??

Wow, you are so lucky that you can do GovPol - my school doesn't offer it but I wish I could take it, but I can see, combined with History, why A Levels might become quite political Which subject did you drop after AS (if you dropped any)?

Biology was my favourite science, and I have considered taking that for A Level, but at the same time I can't imagine myself doing it any further on through education and I don't think there would be as much common sense in A Level than there was in GCSE

Ahh that sucks you can't do politics! I've dropped Biology luckily - it gets way too hard at A2 and it's not relevant to what I want to do at uni.

It does suck, I feel as though I'd enjoy it and judging by the past papers I've looked at I would know a lot of the basics already. o

What are you wanting to do at university? (Sorry about all of my questions lol)

Haha it's okay! I've got nothing better to do because I've luckily finished all my exams!!

I'm wanting to do economics (with politics maybe) at university! What about you?

Urgh you're so lucky that you've finished your exams, I have History tomorrow then another History exam next Tuesday it could be worse, though

Degree wise, I honestly don't know yet. Even though I kind of have an idea of what I want to go into, it changes on a weekly basis Usually it's languages, but it has been politics a lot, but also law, just plain history (if I take it next year) or even economics (however most unis either want A Level Maths for that or an A in GCSE Maths (which is what I'll hopefully get)). But going back to what I said earlier on in this paragraph, 80% of the time it is languages. They are my strong point and I can definitely see myself studying them at university.

Your A Levels would be perfect for Economics + Politics, considering you're doing History, Gov+Pol and Maths!

Good luck with your last two exams!! I'm sure they will go cracking!

Languages are really flexible and you can have courses which combine something like law or politics with languages!

They really would be!! I just hope I get decent AS grades to apply to a good uni haha, really liking the look of Durham at the moment

Which ones are better for the following categories:

Workload
Essay Writing
Difficulty
Interesting-ness
Fun-ness
Grade Boundaries

Thanks :P

Workload- this of course depends on your exam board, but I find that history has a lot more challenging reading than English literature (ironically)
Essay writing- this year(I'm just finishing my AS levels) I have wrote a lot more English literature essays, however history essays are more challenging. It would take me 2/3 hours to write a good English essay compared with 1/2 days for a good history essay.
Difficulty- for me, I prefer history so I find English to be more difficult. I think your teacher definitely effects how difficult you find a subject, my history teacher is amazing yet my English teacher is awful and so uninteresting that it really puts me off the subject
Interesting ness- again, this definitely depends on your personal preferences but I find history on the whole to be a lot more interesting than English. Parts of our course, such as Gatsby have been interesting however I find that English at a level is quite restrictive in that you have to stick to key terms and fulfill success criteria so much that your arguments seem formulaic and basic, which I didn't expect coming into alevel English.

All in all I am happy with my decision to study both English lit and history, I think they both complement eachother and although I definitely prefer history and plan to do it in uni, I will keep both that and English on next year. I suggest that you should defiantly consider doing both as people who are good at one of these subjects always tend to be good at the other, and as I said they defiantly help eachother !! Good luck, hope you're happy with your choices

Thank you - I hope so!

Yeah, that's why I think I'll stick to them - they really do open a lot of doors with them, and I don't even treat them like a subject, they're more of a hobby. And yes - I can combine subjects if I want the best of both worlds as well, which is nice

I hope you get what you want in your AS's! Durham is a great university in a very beautiful city - it's also up north which is an added bonus

You're going to do very well if you treat those subjects like hobbies!!

Do you perhaps live up North

Our school starts it in Year 12 and finishes it in November of Year 13 which is great as we don't do AS Level anymore so it doesn't interfere with any exams Unfortunately though I think we are assigned a teacher to help us with it and we can't choose our own - as I'll probably be doing it about languages/modern history/politics, I might be lucky and get a teacher who is knowledgeable on them, but on the other hand I might not, however I'm not fully sure with how our school goes about assigning teachers..

The main thing I'm worried about however is how much independence you get. I'm worried that I might not be able to research well, or I might even get bored on what I'm doing my research on - were you able to combat those issues at all? I know that the supervisors give you guidance with how you research, but I still might mess it up somehow Sometimes I just feel as though I'd be able to do better writing an essay on something the whole class has been assigned.

Good luck with your English exam, by the way! I know there must be a lot of pressure which is put on this exam so I do hope you the best

Sorry for the late reply! And that's a brilliant time frame to work in for the EPQ! I forgot about the whole AS change . I would say in the event/worst case scenario that you are assigned with a teacher that has little or no knowledge in your topic, then you should discuss this with the course leader (There WILL be a co-coordinator for the EPQ at your school who basically moderates everything).They will understand, especially if you emphasise that the topic you have chosen is really specific.

I find that it's extremely difficult to get bored,as it's a topic you have chosen, and providing it's something you find great interest in, then that shouldn't be an issue. I mean don't get me wrong, there were moments when I thought "this is as boring as watching paint dry" but then I would either take a break from it for a bit, or try and find different avenues to explore. The whole part of the EPQ is that it's not something your teacher has assigned,but it's there to challenge you and essentially prepare you for independent essays you may do in university, I found it incredibly rewarding because it gave me the confidence in my other A levels where I ended up doing an entirely different coursework topic from the rest of my literature class, because I had all this extra knowledge I gained from research. I'd say if you're up for a challenge, have a topic of interest that you won't study in detail/or at all in your A level, then the EPQ is right for you.

And thank you so much!!!

I did both. I'm taking my A2s at the moment, with AQA as my exam board for History and Edexcel for English. Funnily enough, I'm hoping to study English and History at university next year!

Workload - personally, I found History to require a lot more work.

Essay Writing - I think History essays are harder to write. English essays are longer though. (my exam for History is 2 45 mark essays and for English it's a 40 mark essay and a 60 mark essay).

Difficulty - I definitely found History harder, and it reflected in the fact that it's probably my weakest subject. I enjoy History, but I found the units for this year absolutely mind-numbing. History also requires a lot of memorisation of key dates/policies/etc, as well as historians' quotes. I wrote most of my English coursework in the few days before it was due and got 79/80, whereas I was working on my History coursework for weeks and got about 38/60 if I remember correctly.

Interesting-ness - depends. In English, I've studied A Clockwork Orange, Brighton Rock, Othello, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Great Gatsby, and I've loved those books/plays, whereas other people in my class have hated them. Same applies to History - it all depends on what YOU find interesting.

Fun-ness - same as above. Also depends on the teachers you have - my English teacher is so passionate about his subject and it shows, whereas the History teacher I had last year would tell us to make notes from the textbook for the lesson. If the teacher enjoys teaching, then it makes the lesson a lot more fun.

Grade Boundaries - not too sure, but I think they're about the same. A difference between an A and a C is about 20 marks, although I recall getting about 70% in a past paper and my teacher gave me a high B/low A. I think History is a bit more unforgiving.

Thank you for this! what topics did you do for History, if you don't mind me asking?

At AS I did HIS1N (Hitler and Stalin, can't remember the exact course name) and HIS2D (Charles I). I found HIS1N tolerable, ended up with a B. I absolutely hated HIS2D with my very soul and got a C in the exam, which was miracle for me. Ended up being 2 UMS off a B as my final AS grade. To think I got full UMS on 2 out of 3 of my GCSE History units...

This year I did HIS3K (the USSR 1941 - 1991) and HIS4K on German nationalism in the late 18th/19th centuries. HIS3K was interesting, but a LOT to remember, and I'm pretty sure I flopped the exam. HIS4K bored me to tears on several occasions, but I'm pretty sure that was because of the topic rather than having to do the coursework! I ended up with a B (I think) in my coursework, which I believe was due to divine intervention more than anything else.