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English literature GCSE

Arran Cameron
What does the IET and the engineering community think of the English literature GCSE? Is it relevant or beneficial for engineering or is it (like food tech) something that hardly anybody cares about?


English literature is a near compulsory GCSE in England but is now optional in Wales where it has experienced quite a heavy decline in the number of secondary school students taking it.
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  • 0

    Andy Millar:

    Hmm...at school there is a difference between English Language and English Literature for good reason,....




    Not in Scotland, where there is only "English" which encompasses both Language and Literature. I think there are advantages and disadvantages in combining or separating the two. For instance, reading well written books will help your writing skills. My son vastly improved his writing ability when he suddenly 'got into' reading and read a lot of well written older novels - of course it was not necessarily helpful that a lot of his reading was P G Wodehouse as "What Ho!" in a university essay is perhaps not ideal. However he also read everything else from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to Conrad, Dickens and Shakespeare which did help greatly. The only issue we had was his claim to be 'studying' by reading them.

    I fully agree with your comment about communicating and understanding others. Co-operation is a tremendous survival trait, and how do we co-operate if we don't communicate and understand.

    Alasdair

Reply
  • 0

    Andy Millar:

    Hmm...at school there is a difference between English Language and English Literature for good reason,....




    Not in Scotland, where there is only "English" which encompasses both Language and Literature. I think there are advantages and disadvantages in combining or separating the two. For instance, reading well written books will help your writing skills. My son vastly improved his writing ability when he suddenly 'got into' reading and read a lot of well written older novels - of course it was not necessarily helpful that a lot of his reading was P G Wodehouse as "What Ho!" in a university essay is perhaps not ideal. However he also read everything else from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to Conrad, Dickens and Shakespeare which did help greatly. The only issue we had was his claim to be 'studying' by reading them.

    I fully agree with your comment about communicating and understanding others. Co-operation is a tremendous survival trait, and how do we co-operate if we don't communicate and understand.

    Alasdair

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