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A level edexcel synoptic implications

katied1990

anyone have any idea how to do the implications paper?

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what part of implications are you doing? ethics or philosophy of religion etc?

we're doing philosophy of religion- ayer, westphal and davies/donovan and im really struggling :frown:

Reply 2

katied1990

i'm doing philosphy of religion as well and struggling i just don't know how to structure the essay and I don't know whats appropriate to write :frown:

Reply 3

wolfie__22

our teacher told us that one college isn't even bothering to do westphal because they think the other two are far more likely to come up...

what we did with ayer was to go through sentence by sentence the key ideas and vocab, which was sooooo tedious, and really didn't help a lot. i don't have proper notes and im starting to panic as i've yet to see a sample answer.

what have you been doing with the passages?

Reply 4

Jrizzle1

Im doing ethics, but were doing the same as you star light, just going thorugh the texts each line at a time, and the people in our set doin philosophy were gna miss westphal out but then got scared so doin all of it lol, weve been set essays but no structure. i think teachers are as confused as us. I hate being a giunnie pig...

Reply 5

katied1990

yeh we're not doing the westphal either because my teacher went on a course and the person writing the exam was doing it and strongly hinted that it is unlikely to come up

Reply 6

wolfie__22

our teacher's told us that being a guinea pig is gonna work in our favour because they won't want to mark us all down because the school's will stop going with edexcel...

none of us are convinced though! does anyone have a sample paper/answer? i can't believe no one's managed to write a revision guide for it! or why the exam board hasn't given us more guidance!

my philosophy teacher's been on one implications course but seeing as she really can't teach her ideas succinctly we're all still in the dark about what we have to do! i wish there was a student one :frown:

Reply 7

katied1990

we're going to a philosphy of religion conference and hoping that they talk about the implication paper but i doubt they will

Reply 8

wolfie__22

is that the one sarah tyler does in london?

do you have any more details? when is it?

Reply 9

katied1990

ermmm i just know its the 7th may!! i'm really sorry but i don't know much else about it as my school are organising it and they have the details
i'm pretty sure its the one sarah tyler is doing but i can't tell you for defenate

Reply 10

wolfie__22

thanks, i've just had a look online, and we went to the same one back in march, but they didn't mention implications at all :frown:

so annoying they don't do one for the ethics topics too

Reply 11

katied1990

i know its soo frustraiting!! especially considering how difficult the meta ethics section is!!

Reply 12

sunburnt_note

I have a sample answer from Edexcel that's supposed to give you an idear of how to answer it.

The second section's a bit tricky, and I don't actually think Edexcel's answer rises to the challenge very well, but basically in the first question, you just do what it says on the tin - what's the philosopher saying in the passage? You back it up with philosophers by going "Ayer's argument relates to the Verification Principle as set out by the Logical Positivists in the 1920s..." (for example). In the second section, you give reasons to agree/disagree with the philosopher's points, and discuss what the implications would be if their argument was true - e.g. Ayer says God-talk is meaningless, so what implications does this have for people who lead their whole lives around religion?

As for various passages - we've only finished Ayer and started Donovan; with 5 weeks at school left, I remain unconvinced we're going to get through it all lol.

Reply 13

DeepStar

I hate being a giunnie pig... - Plenty of us this year! :eek:

The implications paper is causing everyone to panic - some of the themes mentioned in the philosophy pack were not known even to the teacher which didnt really help with the confidence levels of those who were already worried :s-smilie:

I've seen a few sample answers for Ayer and Westphal, but its tricky, I've never seen a more complicated paper :confused:

After the holidays the teacher said we would be doing timed essays on each possible paragraph we can get in the exam - but with 5 weeks left and a whole text to get through - I dont know how well thats going to go!

If anyone wants the sample answer - you can go on the edexcel website. The lack of guidance and support about this paper from edexcel is such a let down :mad:

Reply 14

wolfie__22

[QUOTE=DeepStar
The implications paper is causing everyone to panic *agrees*

I've seen a few sample answers for Ayer and Westphal /QUOTE]

in plural? i've only found the one edexcel sample, would you be so kind as to direct me in the right place?

thank you :smile:

Reply 15

exposed_angel

I thought i was the only one who did not understand this paper! :confused:

My rather small class all understand it and make me look like a complete idiot. Thank God it isn't just me. This is all a load of crap and i bet that after seeing how this paper turns out with us, it wont be used again!

Apparently question B is pretty much always the same, so we should create a model answer for each 3 sections. I don't know how to do A though, i will have NO idea whatsoever about what i'm meant to write having been given a random passage. There's just so much to know. With 5 weeks left to go, i'm not at all optimistic about this paper. I thought RE would be the subject i do best in, i no longer see this happening.

What idiot decided to introduce this paper. I don't even think uni student would be able to do it with ease. :frown:

Bring on the summer!!!!!!!! :smile:

Reply 16

Boo_2

Argh I'm really not looking forward to this paper!! We haven't even been shown one of them yet so I have no idea what I'm going to be getting but my teacher has explained it and it doesn't sound like much fun!! Philosophy exams are so fecking hard! :frown:

Reply 17

qwirtykid

I'm left unconvinced about this paper as well! We currently have 3 ethics lessons left until we go on study leave, and we haven't even finished going through the Ayer passage. As most of you seem to have been doing, we have been going through each sentence word for word...analysing the "implications" of what it is exactly Ayer is saying. Not only is it tedious, and quite hard work sometimes as my philosophy & ethics classes are quite large, I'm left feeling (after trying my best to be as enthusiastic about this as possible) that I simply don't care anymore about the god damn :smile:

IMPLICATIONS!! Basically...Isn't Ayer just saying all talk of God is meaningless (as the title indicates!) and therefore shouldn't we take the hint and STOP TALKING ABOUT IT! Maybe that's just me? So we're doing the same in Philosophy with Donovan, and we're skipping the Westphal as my ethics teacher also said that she was told it was unlikely to come up. So all in all, sorry for the rant, I am on the verge of giving up...

Reply 18

katied1990

i know the feeling qwirtykid!! its such a stupid exam!! bascally the ayer is what you said!

Reply 19

AlphaWulf

I feel at home here among the confused and scared students. :smile:

Basically I normally enjoy this sort of thing, but the language that the philosophers use here makes even the easiest paragraphs seem like wading through mud. I tried to read the Donovan essay this morning, but it took me well over an hour to do even the first page, besides understanding it fully or having answers to questions on it. The problem was I've got 3 lessons left in class now, and when we went through the stuff in class I couldn't understand a word, so I was (honestly) just staring blankly at the paper as the rest of my class, who are all a lot better at this than me, read on and discussed it.

Having said that, I've got conflicting thoughts on this. It feels like it "should" be easy enough. It's about 12 pages of texts to read and understand, with some background work that I'm doing anyway. Besides that, we have 75 mins to read the passage and then get 40 marks, so that's about 1.5 mins per mark +15 mins planning and reading. I don't feel very optimistic, it's just that I feel like I should be able to get at least 30/40, which is as close to an A as I can manage.

Maybe we should all just start making notes on here. I know I'm not going to learn much in my lessons, as I need people who can communicate it in basic enough ways that I might be able to get it. :biggrin: