A fresh start and a new resource!

KS5 - a steep climb 

So – you’ve been back a couple of weeks and the first major assignments are rolling in. The reality of studying English Literature and Language at Advanced / Higher Level is starting to bite…

It has been said for years that the academic jump required between the demands of GCSE and A Level is greater than that between A Level and Undergraduate study, so don’t worry if you are starting KS5 and feeling somewhat swamped – everybody is at this stage!

We do hope that, if your mates and teachers don’t yet know about how Crossrefit.info can help with your A Level studies, you will have mercy on them and share the good news that help is at hand (yes, even teachers need help sometimes!).

Even better, we are about to launch a major new development which will support anyone approaching Literature from a thematic basis, using comparative texts.

‘Only Connect’

E M Forster’s famous adage ‘Only Connect’ (from his novel, Howards End) heads up a new section of the Cross Reference website. In it we have taken a unifying theme and then looked at how that runs through various texts featured onsite.

Most A Level syllabuses have a section where they want you to understand how different writers have dealt with similar ideas, be it the experience of war, the handling of romantic love or the portrayal of ageing. But where to start when there are so many texts and aspects to choose from?

In Only Connect the Crossref-it team have done a lot of the hard work for you, providing hundreds of helpful links to a variety of onsite sources. From next week you can access the following themed collections:

• Parents and children
• Women finding a voice
• Love, lust and marriage

Thereafter a new theme will appear every other month. Look out for ‘Attitudes to death’ and ‘The impact of location’ as term unfolds.

Meanwhile, keep writing, keep reading and above all, however challenging A Level English might seem right now, KEEP GOING!