Things ain’t wot they used to be

Change is something we’re used to. Our grandparents’ experience of being a teenager was probably very different to what it is like today. Life as reflected by Hollyoaks is a world away from the radio programmes, books and magazines they read.

The A Level syllabus you are studying has built into it a concern that students really grasp how texts are the product of their times. But how much do you really need to know to make sense of an author’s output?

• It helps to find out what were the key events of the era
• The tangible world of transport and technological advances, political change and social upheaval affected how people survived
• The intangible world of philosophy, faith and ideas shaped people’s expectations about life – expectations shared by both author and reader
• The existing literary world influenced how any text was received by its original and subsequent audiences

www.crossref-it.info has focussed on all these areas to help students get the most out of literature created in other eras. You don’t need to spend too long reading the material before it starts to make ‘difficult’ works seem much more accessible.

Some things don’t change

So some things are very different. What does not change however, is what writers throughout the ages have chosen as their subject matter: human nature. Love and anguish, greed and fear, the desire for power and protection – English Literature is full of human struggles we can identify with whatever times we live in.

Change in life and language

It seems like 21st century life is already quite different to 20th century life. Who, in the 1990’s, would have recognised any of the following:

Tweets and twitters that have little to do with birds
9 and 11 that have more significance than being 3² and a prime number
A bluetooth unseen by any dentist

These terms don’t just illustrate that our language is shifting at a mighty fast rate, but that our lifestyle and worldview is too.

Getting to grips with the past

If all this has happened just in the last ten years, imagine the changes compared to a 100 years ago (the era of Thomas Hardy, writing in Modern English), 400 years (Shakespeare, using Early Modern English) or even 640 years previously (Geoffrey Chaucer, a Middle English author)! The further back you go, the greater the cultural differences are.

Thank goodness for sites like www.crossref-it.info.

Aiming to do English at university?

You made it!

Congratulations to those of you whose results enabled you to make it on to your chosen degree course! Now you have had time to recover from Freshers’ Week, we hope you are enjoying your studies.

If you find yourself plunging into the mysteries of Piers Plowman or the medieval pageant plays, with the benefit of hindsight, you can now appreciate how helpful it was if you were lucky enough to encounter Middle English at A Level.

You want to make it!

However, if you are taking A’s right now, and struggling through Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for the first time, it might not seem that way! Middle English takes a bit of getting used to. Plurals and possessives are different and the spelling of words can be pretty fluid.

Actually, one of the best things to do when faced with a page of Middle English text is simply to read it aloud – it often makes the meaning clearer and you can start to get a sense of the humour and energy in much of Chaucer’s writing.

Help is on hand so you can succeed

The keen eyed among you will have spotted that www.crossref-it.info has got a new Chaucer text online – The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale. It is full of notes and background info to help you get to grips with a text which was as scabrous in its time as The Thick of It is today. Chaucer paints a wicked portrait of his narrator, whose corruption puts modern political scandals in the shade. Yet at the same time we are able to appreciate his audacity and persuasive sales ‘patter’.

It may be in Middle English, but this medieval tale has a contemporary punch!

Are A-Levels getting easier?

You are unlikely to agree if you are in the middle of taking them! However, the problem for employers and universities is that, as more students come out with a raft of A grades, they don’t know how to select who is the best when places are restricted.

Two recent solutions are:

• Reducing the coursework component - partly a bid to return exams to clearer tests of an individual’s ability under pressure, as well as trying to cut the impact of ever pervasive plagiarism (aka cheating).
• Introducing A* grades and ‘high powered’ courses like the CIE Pre U

Faced with this, what can help you make it to the top of the pile?

• Prioritising study, rather than squeezing it around your social life, will mean you have a greater sense of how each subject fits together
• Making time to read around the central texts / information will give you a wider perspective and impress the examiner
• Using web resources designed to help at A Level can give you the breadth of info your teacher may be too pressured to cover. That’s certainly the idea behind Crossref-it.info which aims to give Eng. Lit students the edge over their peers.

Unfortunately, as jobs become more scarce, so more students will opt for higher education places, and the need to differentiate students becomes even more pressing…

How are you going to get yourself noticed?