English literature a level

For anyone who’s doing English literature at a level could I please just have a quick insight into it. Difficulty? Work load? Etc.
I’m just deciding whether it would be right for me.

hi,
i do edexcel english lit and it's easily my favourite subject! honestly the workload isn't the worst (besides the chunk of reading and essays you sometimes have to do yourself at home) even though it seems like a lot to get through. i also think that the mark schemes are much more fluid in terms of your own opinions of the texts and poems. however, i do think that if you aren't the biggest fan of it atm it won't get any 'easier' at alevel. in terms of difficulty, i do think that it's really not that hard if you really enjoy literature in general - hope this helped !!

hey! i do ial edexcel lit, and honestly one of the best decisions ever. I find it really enjoyable and therapeutic in comparison to my other subjects (socio and psych). For edexcel ial, AS level, I've had 3 texts and a book of poems (20-ish poems), compared to other exam boards i dont think its a lot, since it's technically only 4 texts. Analyzing is the easy part, as for coming unique interpretations, thats tricky, especially if you end up with not such a good teacher. Plus, if you end up with a text without many resources online, it gets hard. Although i enjoy the subject, the writing essays with awesome interpretations is really tricky, i got an A with one mark away from a B whilst doing an exam in january. So its def tricky but the subject is enjoyable if you like analysing things and history/context. I would suggest you look at the spec of the exam board your school is offering and see how many texts youre tested on. Good luck!

i do edexcel as well and i absolutely love it, it's 100% my favourite subject at the moment (other two are classciv and psych). i've looked at a few other exam boards for the subject (ocr and aqa) and i think edexcel is definitely my fave

i've found the workload to be alright - though i think my school specifically is a bit weird with how they assign us essays. on average, it's about an essay a week for me across the two units we're being taught simultaneously (so one essay on prose one week, another on poetry the next and so on...)

i have noticed that a lot of the course is quite dependent on your teacher - for example, i got rather unlucky with my prose teacher which makes studying the texts much harder, but so many of the texts are so famous and widely read that there's already so much published (not so much for the modern novels though, unfortunately), particularly on . the rest of the course is much easier, for example all the poems are analysed on like 3 different websites as well as on genius (the song website!)

as a jump from gcse, i've found it to be alright (i got an 8), with the only change really being in essay style. by and large, it's the same, but there's a far greater emphasis on comparison (between prose texts, poems, etc) and overall evaluation. it's been a bit of a change, but if you're getting good feedback from teachers it's quite easy to improve (e.g., making sure you're switching between texts across the paragraph rather than one block after another). the grade boundaries are just as tight as at gcse i would say, maybe ever so slightly in the top band of prose simply because there's an extra 10 or so marks up for grabs, but a good teacher will make it clear what you need to do to improve (context, evaluation, etc)

if the school you're planning on going to lets you drop subjects, definitely definitely do it! it's lots of fun! i know lots of people that took it as a fourth for a month or so and then dropped it, but equally i know lots of people that didn't expect to keep it on that have because of how much they loved it.