The more I teach students preparing for International AS and A levels in English…
… the more aware I become of how inadequately the curriculum is taught by teachers and institutions switching from the NSC for the first time. I have also become aware, both from people’s results and students’ comments, that English seems to pose unique problems for both staff and students, so much so that parents are well-advised to ask some probing questions before making a commitment. .
Indeed, the administrative and, above all, academic pitfalls are so numerous that it is vital for anyone wishing his or her child to make the switch to make certain that the institution concerned has an established track record. My most recent experiences have shown that the need for caution is true across the board as I have encountered the same problems again and again regardless of whether those who made the switch are being home-schooled, attending one of the many new online schools/colleges that have sprung up in the last two years or so or are attending established institutions.
Administrative Blunders
Some schools which offer International AS levels in English for the first time get into trouble even when choosing which course options to offer. One can do AS Language, AS Literature or an AS Language and Literature combination in which students do half the AS Language papers and half the AS Literature papers. This last is sometimes what schools decide to offer.
There is nothing wrong in principle with this, but in some cases the school was either unaware of the fact that one cannot do full A levels in the language/literature combination or did not communicate this fact to students and parents. The result? Some who only chose this AS option because they wished to proceed to A levels find out that they could not. Should they wish to have A levels in English Language or English Literature to study abroad, they could now only do so at the cost of backtracking and losing a year (AS levels with a language component can be used for admission to local universities).
Please note though that neither AS nor even full A levels in English literature are recognized for university entrance in South Africa even though they can be used throughout the EU and North America. The moral of the story should be clear enough: the Director of Studies at the institution in which you enroll your children should be thoroughly familiar with the new system.
Unfortunately, errors need not be confined only to the question of whether the AS Language/Literature combination is an academic dead end or could be pursued at higher levels. I have also detected confusion at times in students I have dealt with concerning the contents of the AS Directed Writing and Composition Paper, the AS Language Paper done by those who take the combination under discussion. This confusion can also drastically affect the fortunes of those studying AS English Language as they too have to do the Directed Writing and Composition Paper.
In Question 2 of the exam, the Extended Writing question, students can in principle be asked to do four kinds of writing, namely narrative, descriptive, argumentative/discursive and review/critical. So far so good. However, it is sometimes not made absolutely clear that only three of the four options appear in any given exam which means that there is a 25% chance that one’s favourite, if one has one, will not appear at all. If students are not aware of this, they cannot appreciate how important it is that one should be able to write a minimum of three of the four tasks competently.
Is it any wonder with blunders like these before teaching even began that results often turn out to be disappointing?
There are also administrative traps for the unwary in IGCSE studies, the level immediately below AS levels. In some IGCSE subjects, one can elect to do the subject either at the core level or the more demanding extended level. However, care is needed on several grounds: first of all, the core option is available in mathematics, but not in my subject, English. The Director of Studies must therefore have a firm grip on what can be done and what cannot.
More importantly, even if you get an A in a subject studied at core level, this only translates into a C for your final grade, such is the difference between core and extended. This might not matter if meeting school-leaving requirements are all you are after, but it could be shattering if your goal is university acceptance.
The moral of these stories should be clear enough. However, academic differences between International GCSE, AS and A levels are more important yet and it is here that the need for experienced teachers in the alternative curriculum is indispensable.
Academic Concerns
The biggest difference between the NSC and International GCSE, AS and A levels is an emphasis on rote learning (NSC) and conceptual understanding, the ability to master concepts and skills well enough to be able to apply them to materials one has not seen before
In the average South African school not much new is done in Grade 12. People go over a decade or so of past matric papers again and again knowing that it is all but certain that students doing their final exams will encounter questions very similar—sometimes all but identical—to those they have done throughout the year. In short, one can do well if one is a diligent donkey. In elite private schools this can result in three quarters of the students doing NSC subjects getting distinctions, something which only proves that the A is meaningless.
In fact, the situation is even worse: the mechanical mindset that informs the NSC is never more evident to me than when some of my students—reflecting the ethos of their entire schooling—ask me for a list of 8 or 10 things one must be sure to do in, say, a textual analysis question. Even worse, some have assured me that NSC teachers, when dealing with a particular task type or question, have even told them to use specific wording if they wish to obtain top marks.
The students are not to blame in the least for this. However, it is difficult to explain to some of them that thinking on these lines is the road to perdition in their new academic journey because in the exam room they are guaranteed to come across something they have never done before and that any little grocery list of tips or instructions I might give will no doubt be inapplicable at least in part. Worse yet, the natural human desire to use what you have painstakingly remembered often results in an academic equivalent of force-feeding in which one does not reflect on the requirements of specific cases.
I would also add that such prescriptions regarding exact formulation in my opinion all but cross the boundary between the inappropriate and the unethical because they obliterate any distinction between strict marking and negative marking. I am all for strict marking, but negative marking is different. If I tell you to use set phrases I am in effect constructing a model answer in my head—the one I would have written no doubt—and penalizing you to the extent that you deviate from it.
This altogether overlooks the possibility that what an imaginative student might come up with could be as good as what the examiner had in mind, or better. Any attempt at personal exploration becomes something to be feared: lackeys and acolytes are made this way, not scholars.
All this often has tragic consequences later when half of first year university students fail because they simply cannot think and are incapable of applying their theoretical knowledge in a way that is indispensable if one is to be of any use in the real world as an account, lawyer or engineer.
In short, NSC students are ill-equipped for university study. Below I wish to enlarge on this point.
From Description to Explanation
Another way to think about the same constellation of issues is to speak of the need to construct a bridge that leads from description to explanation. This needs to be done in basic ways even in GCSE studies, let alone AS and A levels.
All serious investigation begins by noticing something which captures our attention for better or worse. We often attempt to begin our explorations by labelling the phenomenon. Nonetheless, it is vital to realise that this essential first step does not take one far. Among my former NSC students, my biggest struggle is often to make them aware that there is much more to do and that their ability to progress to genuine explanation will determine their fate.
The most important single skill in AS English Language is textual analysis. Here the focus is not on what is said: the AS examiner simply takes for granted an ability to understand who did what and to whom. The focus is on how the write has said what he/she wishes to communicate and why the choices made influence our perceptions and emotions and create effects.
In the NSC students might well be given a set of definitions of similes (comparisons with “as” or “like”) metaphors (comparisons without the ‘as” or “like”), personifications, metonymies and so on. In a test a passage might be given in which the student has to identify a given number of each, a task which is essentially clerical.
Well, even at IGCSE level this alone will hardly get you many marks and any examiner will be able to tell you why. On its own, such basic description is simply boring and uninformative. All the interesting questions are bypassed: why did the writer use figurative language at all rather than bald literal statement? And furthermore what is the effect of the specific image used? Simply detecting similes, compound nouns or passive sentences is actually known pejoratively by International GCSE, AS and A level examiners as “feature spotting,” by analogy with “train spotting.” Feature spotting is something a computer or mechanical device can do and ends where human and critical responses begin.
Even when students feel some need to do more than simply note the existence of a simile or metaphor, their “explanation” often takes the form of simply paraphrasing the literal content of the relevant expression, precisely the opposite of what they are actually required to do. What is more, many find it difficult to adjust their habits as they tell me that the practices of which I am trying to wean them reflect what they have constantly been told to do.
Implications for Students and Teachers
The fundamental differences of emphasis I have been belabouring at such length have profound consequences for both students and teaches. In many cases, teachers have no idea that the methods of the NSC classroom will not merely limit success but often even undermine it. They do not know and perhaps do not even know that they do not know.
I have in the past dealt with students who got the dreaded UG (ungradeable), British for F or worse, in their AS English Language exams who needed to be brought up to a C for university acceptance. In one case, the student in question had been dealing with another teacher who—to his credit—ended lessons because he felt he could not help. When I asked what the focus of the lessons had been, it became clear that the teacher concerned had placed all his hopes on an ability to correct technical grammatical errors in the student’s prose.
Although these deficiencies were undeniably there, a glance or two at the student’s work made it clear to me that the teacher concerned had completely misdiagnosed the problem and was like a man looking through the wrong end of the telescope. It was clear that in attempting to answer textual analysis questions the student was simply paraphrasing the content of the original passage, exactly the opposite of what the examiner wants. He had in effect become like a plumber or electrician who comes into your house and does the wrong job: even if the work done is technically impeccable, you will not wish to settle his bill. So, even if the writing could be improved in this narrow sense until not even Winston Churchill would have been dissatisfied on grammatical grounds, the student would still have failed or gotten an E at best, a result which would still have been useless to him because he would have bypassed the set question rather than answered it.
For the student the results are worse: demoralization, loss of self-esteem and wasted time, perhaps even amounting to years rather than months. And all of this because those who only have NSC experience have not imparted an understanding of what is necessary because they often do not have it themselves.
What to Do?
So I beg you, vet any school or tutoring service you may have in mind thoroughly. Many sensing the worsening deficiencies of the NSC have seen in International AS and A level courses a money-making opportunity. Unfortunately, even if you exclude the rank opportunists and sharks many are not equipped to teach this curriculum and do not realise it.
Many also make their primary selling point the fact that they are cheap and this alone blinds many people to all reason. If you end up paying the price of not doing due diligence or chose on cost to the exclusion of all else you may find that, after your child has lost precious time and yet more precious self-belief, you end up paying twice in order to do what you should have done in the first place.