I’m 26 now. 10 years ago I had sat my GCSEs and had given up my first part time job partially because it was boring as but also because I was spending all day Saturday at work and not doing my AS Italian homeowkr because I couldn’t physically do it – I remember one weekend spending most of Saturday and a chunk of Sunday desperately trying to do it. They tell you there is a step between GCSE and AS Level but don’t make it clear how big the step is!
Anyway, today Our Sidekick came home with French and Media homework, he also had History homework that was set last week but he couldn’t do it as he couldn’t get onto the school VLE system (we tried and failed like three times this afternoon!). The thing is I want to do his History assignment for him because of how interesting it sounds lol. I have to keep restraining myself and send him off to do something a task while I entertain myself playing on Facebook or tweeting people.
Why am I like this well I put it down to this, when I was at school, I was the kid who did extra work to attempt to get a better grade. I’d go home the day the homework was set and work really hard on it. If needed I’d spend all day Saturday working on it, and if I forgot a piece of homework I’d be gutted. Our Sidekick had French homework today and to try and encourage him I wrote a paragraph at the same time except my paragraph was longer – it wasn’t intentional it just happened….by the way I gave up French at the end of year 9 at Upper School, I carried on Italian until Year 12 but it’s French that I remember the best. I thought about posting it on here – then I thought that it might be really boring if people don’t speak French. But with some help with my cousin’s lovely wife I am going to post it. (There are a couple of mistakes apparently I’m muddled with le/la’s in places but it’ll come with practice I bet).
So in theory it goes something like this…….
Je m’appelle Hannah. J’ai vingt-six ans. J’ai le yeux marron. Mes cheveux marron et gris. J’ai 157 centimètres.
J’ai un frère il s’appelle Richard, il sont vingt-quatre ans. Ma mère elle s’appelle C. Mon père il s’appelle G. J’ai un grand-mère elle s’appelle G et deux grand-père(s) ils sont s’appelle A and T.
Je travaille dans les services clients. Je habite à Bedford à Angleterre. Bedford est 90 kilomètres au nord de Londres.
J’adore voyager le pays estranger (foreign countries) mon favorite place visite a vacances est Paris au Amsterdam. J’ai visite Amsterdam une fois et Paris trois fois. J’aime le Grand défense, le tower d’eiffel et la sacre cœur.
J’adore regarder la télévision et regarder des films au cinéma. J’ai déteste la football. J’adore lire des livres de fiction en particulier classiques.
What was the History project? I love History, but I was always rubbish at using sources to get my answers. Although, I would have tried harder with learning, had I not severly disliked the high school I moved to when I came back to England.
I love languages, too. I was really good at French in my first High School, and not too bad at German, but then the teachers were rubbish in my second. It seemed as though the school had just placed my in classes that had space, rather than those which catered to my abilities. I would like to go back to a night school and learn a load of things. I would do a few languages (maybe French, German, Italian, Swedish, Russian…everything, really – not Spanish, though.), History (although, it’s all ancient history and Germany, these days – not to my tastes) and possibly some other classes, but not sure which.
Its a research project of sorts. He’s learning about Victorian England and part of it is learning about the Whitechapel Murders a.k.a the Jack The Ripper Murders. He’s got to crest a detectives notebook containing information about the crimes, locations and things like that. It seems easy enough but it’s trying to get him to focus and do what needs to be done. My inner geek wants to fit in as much information as possible and include modern maps and this. I found an website which was a psychological analysis thing like a profile from a crime show and would include that but I don’t think it fits the criteria that he has for the assignment (I wonder if it could be included as a appendix or something.)
I love History but hated lessons. I know I used to hate it but really think the epic lessons my Dad gave me might have benefitted me more than some of my History classes. I struggled with remembering all the information in the exam. If I could have textbooks coming out my ears and be able to check over my work I think I’d have done better than a F but its all about exams rather than coursework. Grr!
“Back to England?” Where had you been?
I did Italian and French. I wanted to drop French and do Italian and German but because of the way choices were made I couldn’t do both. I learn the odd bits at work but really could do with someone to teach me properly (especially if it would benefit me at work). One of the distributors would teach me Dutch – he’d send his query in Dutch and I’d reply in English or attempt to reply in Dutch (usually cheating though lol). Russian always sounded like an amazing language to learn but again the options weren’t possible. At my school it was French, Italian or German. That was it. Someone in my class learnt Swedish either at university while studying European law or when she moved there for a sandwich year – I was never entirely sure and heard along the grapevine that was what she was up to rather than actually from her.
GCSE History for me was The World Wars an The Cold War. I loved Ancient History, so Greeks Romans and Egyptians but that was only covered up to about Year 7 then you were on Victorians and The Modern World as such.
Sorry virtually wrote a whole other blog post as a comment there!
Oof, that sounds amazing. The Victorian times is my favourite, but that’s partly because of the way I began to learn about it and the teacher I had for year 5 – she was brilliant, I really liked her. I’m fascinated, for some reason, about Jack the Ripper, too.
I was never too keen on Ancient history, though we were given the same way to learn it as with the Victorians. My teacher made booklets and we had to use the library, or different websites, to find missing pieces of information. I finished mine first, I think. Favourite lessons ever.
I used to live on the Isle of Man; I moved back to England, after 10 years, in 2003.
In both of my high schools the languages were French and German, but I’d been learning French since year 3, Not sure why I did French instead of German for GCSEs.
We basically had a choice between 3 history types, but only 2 were done in the end. Modern History, Crime and Punishment through Time and Medicine through Time. I really wanted to do Medicine, as it had always interested me how they would knock someone out to take a leg off and stuff like that. Sadly, not enough people wanted to do that, so I did Crime and Punishment. It was mixed with a side of Modern history, but the other classes did that more in depth.
Ah I’m clever lol. The most I’ve spoken is to translate work emails which are usually one sentence and once you learn the keywords you can guess the rest or translate online if needed.
Correcting me would be good if you have time – it’s often the best way to improve when people correct you right?
Comments are closed.