Books you studied for GCSE English

wasn’t too bad. although have nothing to measure it against

The Mayor of Casterbridge, Macbeth and The Crucible for GCSE. Definitely some WWI poetry too.

As You Like It, Great Expectations, Dubliners, The Pangs of Love (modern short story/ can’t remember), Murmuring Judges (modern play/ can’t remember) and The Franklin’s Tale at A-Level.

I like it as an adult reader but I can’t trying to teach all of it to 15yr olds.

Oh yeah, teacher question…

What books are your students studying now?

Another vote for davidoff cool romeo and juliet + of mice and men

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same here

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GCSE (Standard Grade)
Lord of the Flies
Othello
Flowers for Algernon

A Level (Higher)
The Catcher in the Rye
MacBeth

Currently a selection of Carol Anne Duffy poetry and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde.

I don’t love either of them.

We did To Kill A Mockingbird. Can’t remember anything else we did. It was a loooong time ago

Christ - it was 30 years ago this year I did my GCSEs. Thanks for making me feel really old DiS.

I have never met anyone outside of my English class who had heard of it, never mind read it.

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Of Mice and Men. Assuming we did something else too but I can’t remember.

Teacher took great delight in reading the N word out in OMAM which was deeply troubling in retrospect.

Can’t believe they didn’t know it from the 1978 BBC mini-series starring Alan Bates

I have read several Hardy novels for fun though.

That edit indicates you are a sickening monster.

I have read Jude The Obscure and Wessex Tales since, and neither have convinced me that I was wrong to find Hardy grim and unrewarding in 1998.

In fairness it was probably a mixture of ‘fun’ and ‘I ought to like this’. Love a few pages describing a flock of sheep, me.

I really liked far from the madding crowd. Not read any of his others.

Maybe Macbeth then. We did both as well, but sure we did Merchant of Venice as the GCSE one.

Before GCSE: Macbeth, The Crucible, probably others
GCSE: Wuthering Heights, Mayor of Casterbridge, Of Mice and Men, An Inspector Calls and Romeo & Juliet. Hated all of them other than OMaM, got my only D in English Lit

For bonus info, A Level French lit module we did Les Mains Salles, which I actually really liked and was one of the exams I did better on because the question just let me ramble on about existentialism.

GCSE I read a big old book of poetry though the ages, the Shakespeare was The Merchant of Venice, Of Mice & Men and Wuthering Heights again yes
Only unique one was A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller. So glad we did, easily one of my favourite books now.

Why everyone needs to read Wuthering Heights is beyond me, drivel

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For A-level French lit we did Thérèse Desqueyroux (blegh) and Le Gone du Chaâba (pretty good)

French lit modules at uni were so terrible that I haven’t read a book in French since I finished

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