Monday 23 May 2011

Riddle Me This, Textilenerd

Exactly a month today, as any A level textiles student will know, the A2 textiles exam will take place. This would fill me with joy as it is also my last exam, if it weren't for the fact that we have not been taught any of the syllabus. It's a very long story as to why which I can't be bothered to go into right now. Anyway, one lesson a few weeks ago I humored my textiles teacher by pointing out to her that we had missed one part of the syllabus out. Here's where the problems begin, and the main reason we haven't learned anything this year; the AQA GCE Textiles Unit 3 does not have a textbook (why? God knows...) and our teacher doesn't actually know anything about A Level Textiles. This meant that she had to trawl google for source materials for the topics, this particular one was global and cultural woven traditions. 

Whilst doing this she came across an "A2 Textiles Revision Site" called "Textilenerd". (She felt the need to point this out to me in front of the entire class, sparking laughter from my friends. My own teacher calling me a textile nerd?) This instantly caught my attention as since there was no revision book, perhaps a revision website would actually be useful. However, when I looked at this so called "revision site" I found it was a fellow blog. Now it would be hypocritical of me to abuse a blog but the particular post that our teacher had printed for us simply copied out AQA's specification for textiles. I could have read that myself. 

I was intrigued and when I got home I looked at the blog in more detail. From what I could see the posts were mainly a collection of websites with useful sources to learn from. This is fair enough, but that is what our teacher had already been doing, rather unsuccessfully, for us. What we were searching for was something more concrete to revise from. As good as the internet is, there is something slightly untrustworthy, and certainly unreliable, about it. Call me old fashioned, but the only dependable way to revise is from a book, especially an exam board approved book - which is frankly the only way I can be given peace of mind when learning. But there lies the issue: AQA has no approved textbook! So where else does one look?

The mark schemes provided by AQA are quite possible the vaguest things I have ever seen. The average "answer" given goes like this:

Limited description and poor quality answer 0- 4 marks
Reasonable description and a quality answer 5 - 7 marks
Detailed description and an excellent answer. 8 - 12 marks

WELL NO SH*T SHERLOCK! This kind of thing in a mark scheme would be tolerable if it came accompanied with an actually answer to the question, which in some cases is given but at an extremely basic level which if you were to write you would probably get 1 or no marks. This means there are virtually no resources to refer to when revising for this near impossible exam. No wonder over 50% of candidates get C's and D's.  

So it appears that it is not only my teacher who is poorly equipped to teach a lesson; AQA need to learn a few things about writing an A Level. God help us all. 
Lyric of the Day: "They're gonna clean up your looks with all the lies in the books, to make a citizen out of you" - Teenagers, My Chemical Romance

    

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