Definitely do some readings before classes :) I found that it is much easier to manage the general highschool workload already knowing the contents of the texts your doing - not the ins and outs but just a general idea of the storyline :) The class itself is very interactive - people are always willing to give out their ideas and help out there peers! I thought that was very nice too. Ms Ali is always willing to give as many resources as you need and - even go as far as bringing her own personal copies and lending them to students, allowing them to achieve the best possible grade. In my year, most of the students were drama students and so when studying King Lear, having some of them play parts or even Ms Ali playing scenes of a play online was very helpful for the class as a whole. The class offers many internals and two externals - with additional internals and externals. While it does mean that the class becomes a big hectic - with back to back internals- there was still a strong structure and thought to the course. For example, after doing our Critical Text Essays, we went straight into our speeches - allowing us to use our Critical Text information for that internal specifically. This was super helpful because you can imagine how useful it would be to not re-research a whole topic for another internal and instead reword key elements of your previous internal and use it for the next. Overall Ms Ali is the most supportive teacher I can think of, she is kind, reassuring and always available should you request for help - metaphorically and literally - her door is always open.

Mrs Ali is a lovely teacher, but be prepared for a hectic last week of the year. She’ll give extensions all over the place and then everything ends up due at the same time, and she’ll write on your hand-ins “talk to me about it” and then completely forget about you. Disorganisation is just the way that the class runs which has its pros and cons, so if you are a person who loves organisation, do not take this class. Also, just a quick piece of advice, don’t forget to do all of your internals before the end of term 2 because if you hand them in any later she’ll hold onto them until the end of the year and then you’ll end up getting a terrible grade because you never got any feedback on them. So yeah. Lovely teacher. But in the class you are guaranteed to fail your essays and unfamiliar text because you don’t actually study a text you just do King of Lear by Shakespeare and a whole lot of feministic poems that are very graphic and metaphorical for other things (and if you hate the poems there’s nothing you can do about it). Also (and I know that I’m writing a lot btw) if you really want to take this class but are afraid of failing your exams, (which quite a few people do so I have heard- I’m an ex student and I did in year 12 in this class and then when I switched to the Normal English curriculum in year 13 I got Excellences... I was the class of 2018 by the way (in case you planned to look around for this anonymous commenter)), take Scholarship English with another teacher and use those texts in your exams... and you can just not turn up to the scholarship exam (but it doesn’t hurt if you do) and I can guarantee you that this will help you with your essays. Summary: lovely teacher; disorganised and unstructured curriculum/class.