A-level advice/prep

Hi everyone, current yr11 here, planning on taking Eng Lit, Eng Lang and German (all aqa i believe) next year. Is there any particular advice or planning that you would recommend before I start the A-levels, or good resources for the subjects post-gcse? thankyou sm

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 1

ALEreapp

21

For languages try and get very comfortable with them outside of classroom stuff. Eg read articles, watch your favourite Netflix shows/movies, read books because that’s exactly what you do at a level. The more confident you are in the language the easier the step up to a level will be!

Reply 2

StudyMind

8

Original post by LookItsLiv

Hi everyone, current yr11 here, planning on taking Eng Lit, Eng Lang and German (all aqa i believe) next year. Is there any particular advice or planning that you would recommend before I start the A-levels, or good resources for the subjects post-gcse? thankyou sm

Heya!
I would recommend just glancing over the content and perhaps asking your teachers for some recommended reading :h:

For german you could possibly watch some movies/read some recommended books. For English lit, there are plenty of articles on how to do well on it, so perhaps check some out!

I hope this helps!
Milena
UCL PFE
Study Mind

The step up from GCSE to A-Levels for languages can be a shock to the system. You'll be reading German literature books, so if you can practice beforehand to read some short novels in German and try to slowly work your way through understanding them, that's a good start.

I did French and Spanish A-Levels. The literature nearly killed me.

Reply 4

LookItsLiv

OP

3

Original post by PinkMobilePhone

The step up from GCSE to A-Levels for languages can be a shock to the system. You'll be reading German literature books, so if you can practice beforehand to read some short novels in German and try to slowly work your way through understanding them, that's a good start.

I did French and Spanish A-Levels. The literature nearly killed me.

Thankyou! Have a charity shop near me with a foreign lang section, so will deffo check that out :smile:

Reply 5

purplepengu1n

6

Original post by PinkMobilePhone

The step up from GCSE to A-Levels for languages can be a shock to the system. You'll be reading German literature books, so if you can practice beforehand to read some short novels in German and try to slowly work your way through understanding them, that's a good start.

I did French and Spanish A-Levels. The literature nearly killed me.

You can do the same for English lit (don't know about Lang) but for my course there's a contextual study eg you cover a couple of books which are Dystopian, Feminist? or Gothic etc. We did Gothic, so I read one of the texts I knew we were going to study and a few other Gothic texts in advance, which was useful :smile:

I didn't think I did any prep for French... We did get set a homework project over the summer, but honestly the improvement you make from having language lessons 4-5 times a week is amazing. If you're worried, then have a look at a German article every now and then, but pick a topic that interests you!! The work will come in year 13, I promise ahah. I guess judge how much you want to do based on your foundation in German. eg Are you quite comfortable using different tenses? And ofc if you want to read a German book then go for it! But don't stress about it :smile:

Reply 6

Ahsoka5!

12

For German, I would definetly recommend reading, watching films / episodes (English subtitles are fine) and learning more about the culture. I personally found that my German GCSE covered very little culture, and there will be a lot more about it at A Level, which is really interesting!

How do you find German grammar? If your school has put a fair amount of emphais on grammar then you're already ahead of most people in Y11! A few people in my German A Level class had done very little grammar before, and that was the biggest transition for them. Don't stress out about it if you can't / don't want to do this, I totally understand that grammar can be less interesting than other areas of languages. It might be worth familiarising yourself with the declension tables, cases and propositions. But again don't worry about it, as your teachers will cover this at the beginning of Y12, this is just a way to get ahead. If it comes to choosing between reading / watching / culture and grammar, do the former, not the latter. It's more fun and none of this is compulsary! Have fun and Happy Easter!

A-level advice/prep

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