The Student Room Group
Uni students - Complete our survey >>
Uni students - Complete our survey >>
Uni students - Complete our survey >>

What is classics at A-level like? Is it like the sources part of Latin GCSE?

Hi, I’m choosing my A-levels this month. My current options are maths, further maths, history, and Latin, but I’m considering changing history for classics.

Can someone who does classics please tell me what it’s like?

And if you have done Latin and/or history GCSE, is it more similar to history GCSE or the sources part of the Latin GCSE? (I enjoy history GCSE, just memorising information, but the sources part of Latin is really difficult as we have to memorise loads of sources to use in the exam and the specification is really vague- it tells us the topics we need to learn, eg. sacrifices but it doesn’t go into any detail about what info we need to learn, eg do we need to know how they were carried out, what they sacrificed, who did them? Whereas the history GCSE has textbooks which tell us all the info we need to know)

Thank you to anyone who replies!
Reply 1
Avatar for Lucia12
Lucia12
13
Original post by ginevrafanshawe
Hi, I’m choosing my A-levels this month. My current options are maths, further maths, history, and Latin, but I’m considering changing history for classics.

Can someone who does classics please tell me what it’s like?

And if you have done Latin and/or history GCSE, is it more similar to history GCSE or the sources part of the Latin GCSE? (I enjoy history GCSE, just memorising information, but the sources part of Latin is really difficult as we have to memorise loads of sources to use in the exam and the specification is really vague- it tells us the topics we need to learn, eg. sacrifices but it doesn’t go into any detail about what info we need to learn, eg do we need to know how they were carried out, what they sacrificed, who did them? Whereas the history GCSE has textbooks which tell us all the info we need to know)

Thank you to anyone who replies!


Hey, I did Latin a level last year and am doing ancient history this year, I did Latin and classics for GCSE but it was quite different as the spec changed the year after my ones. Ancient history and classics and fairly similar at alevel, only real difference is in the topics. I'm really enjoying it and there are a couple of major cross overs in my courses. For example I studied the annals by Tacitus in Latin which talks about the fall of the republic and the first emporers, and in ancient history I'm now studying the lives of these emporers which is really convenient. In the classics a level there are also quite a few cross overs from studying the Aenied, if you haven't read it it's quite hard going at the start with all the language but once you get into it it's actually pretty good and the Latin versions are really poetic, ik its a poem but still. For Classics there's a fair amount of material but it does flow quite well whereas Latin it's not as flowy. For Latin you need to learn your set texts very well, word for word or as close as can. And in terms of sources with both subjects you don't really need to know specifics but it really does help. Not sure jf you know but they mark classics papers so say a third of the marks go to evidence, a third to explanation and a third to analysis. So you can do a great explanation and analysis and still do good but know some specifics is always useful, just a couple of name drops or references to events, especially if it's not specifically mentioned in the textbook coz it looks like you've read around the topic. If you need any help with these subjects just let me know and good luck

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you