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Which texts did you study for GCSE and A-Level English?

I'm training to be an English teacher, and want to increase my subject knowledge by reading as many texts taught at GCSE and A-Level as possible. So, what did you study? Thanks!

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For GCSE I read: Romeo and Juliet, A view from the Bridge, Animal Farm, Balzac and the little Chinese seamstress. I didn't do A-level but I know alot of people in my year read Othello and The great Gatsby.
(edited 6 years ago)
Reply 2
Original post by Cereidee
For GCSE I read: Romeo and Juliet, A view from the Bridge, Animal Farm, Balzac and the little Chinese seamstress. I didn't do A-level but I know along of people in my year read Orthello and The great Gatsby.


Thank you. Balzac, I would never have imagined! Which of his novels, specifically? And I haven't heard of The Little Chinese Seamstress either.
Original post by Perfuddled
Thank you. Balzac, I would never have imagined! Which of his novels, specifically? And I haven't heard of The Little Chinese Seamstress either.


Nahh the title is 'Balzac and the little Chinese seamstress' its written by Dai Sijie.
Hi, for GCSE i did Macbeth, Jane Eyre, Blood brothers. And for A Level I'm doing Frankenstein, Small Island and the importance of being Earnest
Reply 5
Original post by Babyangelana
Hi, for GCSE i did Macbeth, Jane Eyre, Blood brothers. And for A Level I'm doing Frankenstein, Small Island and the importance of being Earnest


Thank you. Who is small island by? And out of interest, did you enjoy any of the GCSE ones or those you're studying now?
For GCSE I did an inspector calls, heroes and to kill a mockingbird (plus romeo and juliet for coursework.
For a level I'm doing othello, jane eyre (though some people in my class are doing the great gatsby), journey's end, the first casualty and the jon stallworthy poetry anthology.
For GCSE I did An Inspector Calls, Macbeth and Animal Farm. I know people who did To Kill A Mocking Bird and The Great Gatsby.

For AS, I did The Road, Kite Runner and Loot. And for A2 which I didn’t do, but knew from my friends, they did Withering Heights, Dracula and Jane Eyre
For GCSE year I read:
Of Mice and Men in Y10 alongside poetry
Heroes (loved this) in Y11 along with An Inspector Calls

For AS levels I read:
A Streetcar Named Desire and Once in a House on Fire (misery lit)

For A-Levels I read
The Great Gatsby, The Color Purple and King Lear (though they also offered the choice of reading 1984 or Animal Farm in place of TGG)
Original post by Perfuddled
I'm training to be an English teacher, and want to increase my subject knowledge by reading as many texts taught at GCSE and A-Level as possible. So, what did you study? Thanks!


GCSE: Blood Brothers (Yep, a play!) Romeo and Juliet (for coursework) and for exams, Of Mice and Men and The Woman in Black

A-Level: Weathering Heights, Great Gatsby and Frankenstein

☺️☺️
I can't imagine the Scottish and English choices are too different. At national 5 I did 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' and at higher I did 'Othello'.
For GCSE we did R & J, Jane Eyre, Of Mice and Men, The Caretaker (Pinter), Lord of the Flies, and for a media section we did Edward Scissorhands and Rear Window (the original Hitchcock version).

For IB HL English, we did (in no particular order) The Handmaid's Tale, Fear and Trembling (Amelie Nothomb, which was genuinely one of the funniest and most enjoyable little books I ever read. I actually read my sister's copy the summer before starting because it was entertaining), L'Étranger (Camus), Waiting for Godot, Othello, John Donne's poetry, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Colour Purple, Walt Whitman's poetry (mainly from Leaves of Grass), some boring working class northern poet, A Doll's House (Ibsen), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Death of a Salesman, the poetry of Ocatvio Paz, Hemingway's short stories (various, all terrible because Hemingway is a terrible writer who knew he didn't deserve that Nobel prize), and Glengarry Glenn Ross (by David Mamet, and yes I DID use one of those quotes in my exam :wink: ).

For IB, at least when I did it, you didn't need to use all the texts in all the assessments though. I ended up only using Handmaid's Tale (which I loathed, but had to use because the other options were worse or precluded me using something I wanted to write about in one of my world lit essays), Fear and Trembling, A Doll's House, L'Étranger, GGR, Streetcar, Othello, and TCP across my various exams and prepared courseworks, and I also had I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for my unseen/unprepared oral (thank god, since the alternative was Donne or Hemingway. I was so sure my teacher was gonna give me Hemingway, I'm so glad he gave me Caged Bird since it's so much easier and nicer).

We also had some supporting texts alongside these but they weren't "examinable" in the proper sense and were more just to provide context to the above. It's also quite possible I forgot one or two, as IB HL English was the pinnacle of anxiety for me at the time, and I've blocked most of it out (as well as am now incapable of reading for leisure, despite reading 4-5 books a week before then :/ ).
(edited 6 years ago)
Reply 12
Original post by Perfuddled
I'm training to be an English teacher, and want to increase my subject knowledge by reading as many texts taught at GCSE and A-Level as possible. So, what did you study? Thanks!


For GCSE I did An Inspector Calls, Frankenstein, Macbeth, Of Mice and Men, and poetry - Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage and a selection of modern (poems from other cultures) and older poetry (Shakespeare, Shelley etc). The exam board created its own specific poetry anthology/textbook.

For AS - On Chesil Beach, the poetry of Edward Thomas, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Death of a Salesman.

For A2 - King Lear, The Wife of Bath's Prologue & Tale, Look Back in Anger, The L-Shaped Room, and The Whitsun Weddings (collection of poetry of Philip Larkin)
Original post by GoodGirlFaith
For GCSE I did an inspector calls, heroes and to kill a mockingbird (plus romeo and juliet for coursework.
For a level I'm doing othello, jane eyre (though some people in my class are doing the great gatsby), journey's end, the first casualty and the jon stallworthy poetry anthology.


Which Stallworthy anthology? The war poetry one? Thanks!
Original post by Perfuddled
Which Stallworthy anthology? The war poetry one? Thanks!


I think it's just called the Oxford book of war poetry, it has a poppy on the front (though there's a slightly older edition which caused some confusion in my class xD)
Original post by Perfuddled
Thank you. Who is small island by? And out of interest, did you enjoy any of the GCSE ones or those you're studying now?


Small Island is by Andrea Levy :smile: Also I enjoyed Macbeth but didnt really enjoy Jane Eyre at all
Original post by GoodGirlFaith
I think it's just called the Oxford book of war poetry, it has a poppy on the front (though there's a slightly older edition which caused some confusion in my class xD)


Found it, thanks! Is Heroes the one by Robert Cormier about the deformed war veteran?
Moved to English study help :h:

IGCSE: To Kill A Mockingbird, A View from The Bridge, Much Ado About Nothing, misc. poetry (bits of Shakespeare, Browning, Rosetti, some more contemporary stuff)

A-level: Frankenstein, The Handmaid's Tale, Othello, A Streetcar Named Desire, some contemporary poetry anthology whose title I've forgotten and some poems by John Donne (and contemporaries)
IGCSE: Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, misc poetry inc. Duffy, Armitage, Kipling, Achebe etc., Moniza Alvi’s Poetry and the Edexcel non-fiction IGCSE anthology for English Lang
A Level: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde, Othello, A Streetcar Named Desire, the Edexcel contemporary poetry anthology compiled from Poems of the Decade selected from the forward book of poems and John Donna poetry (penguin classics edition)
For A level coursework, as a group we studied The Great Gatsby, Death of a Salesman, and the poetry of John Keats. I then also studied a Great Expectations independently and chose to compare this to the Great Gatsby on the theme of the past
Hey, for a-level English lit I've studied : Various love and War poems, war poems mostly from Wilfred Owen. Texts: Othello, Atonement, My Boy Jack, The Great Gatsby, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Woman In White (which was a choice of my own), Regeneration and i need to chose another book which is similar to Regeneration.
(edited 6 years ago)

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