21st May 2014 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The exam board OCR recently released a new controversial English exam which features unconventional texts such as interview transcripts and twitter feeds from celebrities. This has, as expected, cause outrage in the higher echelons of the department for education, and, as with any new syllabus, will cause teachers a headache when adjusting to the new approach to teaching English. But how should private tutors feel about this new development? Should we be trying to preserve the traditional English A’ Level, or is it time that we adapted in order to get through to a new generation of students?
The first thing to say is that the syllabus causing all the controversy isn’t quite as radical as it seems. It still features plenty of classics including Shakespeare, Emily Dickenson and Blake. It also features modern novelists writing about non-western cultures. In short, it is a more diverse curriculum, which attempts to link traditional texts to modern writing and culture. The department for education responded to the curriculum by saying that it was insulting to students to suggest that they can only study English if it is through the medium of twitter and celebrity. But that isn’t what this syllabus is doing. It is engaging with the society in which these students are growing up, and bringing traditional texts to life in a way that previous, dry programmes have failed to do. They only insulting thing is that the department for education wants to deny students the right of studying texts from modern and non-western contexts.
As tutors, we should not only support the diversification of the English A’ Level, but also see what we can learn from it. Tutors of all subjects have to find ways to bringing their topics to life for their students, to link it to their lives and experiences, and broaden their world views. For this reason, even tutors who remain teaching the traditional syllabus should take note, and ensure that they do right by their students by relating their topics to modern and relatable contexts.