How good do I need to be to take an English A1 course as a second language speaker?

[GOGOGOHAHAHA]

Here is the case, my school has a wired time table in which you would not be able to do any 3rd language if you don't choose English as your A1 language, during the DP time.

I wanted to do the English A1(probably Language&Literature) because I really wanted to do Spanish Arbi..

Then again, I am not sure if I am capable of achieving a decent score on any English A1 course. I took TOEFL ibt with out any preparation 1 year ago, and it turned out to be a 91 out of 100.

I had the dean of English department interviewed me.She asked me to read a monologue of Macbeth, interpret it and tell her the meaning behind,during the interview. She did not agree on the point that I am capable of accomplishing an English A1 course. Also, I have not had any English literature course before.

How good do I need to be in order to achieve a decent score on English A1????

[Emmi]

Well an A1 (the new literature course) course is for native speakers or very very very good speakers. Mainly this is because in a literature course there really isn't a lot of creative writing or anything like that, it's mostly text interpretation and analysis of the literature, which requires an extremely good command of the language to be able to interpret and analyze the literature properly since you need to be able to look at the writing style, the figurative language, and all the little nuances of the writing that may be hard to do if your first language isn't the A1 language. At my school we have had non-native speakers take English A1 and they did do well, but they worked very hard to get their grades.

Since your dean didn't recommend you for the literature course (as A1 doesn't exist anymore) and you've never taken an English literature course before, have you considered taking the language and literature course? It's similar to the old A2 course (which was designed for people who weren't native speakers but spoke it on a near-native level). They studied some literature, but they also did some other things related to the language. Perhaps that might be a little better for you if your dean won't recommend you?

[Gaby]

Nooooooo. Em, don't do it. Don't tell the poor person to do Lang&Lit. I do Lang&Lit. In Polish. My very own mother tongue. Which I deal very well with, I pride myself in being very good at speaking and writing in a very nice style, making no mistakes, etc. But Lang&Lit isn't something I enjoy, or do too well in. I mean, I can do rather well, but most of my class is struggling, and we're all native speakers. TOEFL is not really a good judge of such things cause it's prepared specifically for non-natives like us. I, for one, wouldn't be able to deal with English A for my life. I'd cry every day if I had to.

I advise you not to do yourself harm, and take your own language as language A, as you're supposed to do, really. I'd have said otherwise if your teacher hadn't specifically told you that you shouldn't do it. Don't do yourself harm. Teachers, they know their stuff (usually, at least).

Edited June 17, 2012 by Gaby

[kiwi.at.heart]

At my school the only choice we had was to do English for A1 and so my friend who until she started IB didn't go to a purely english speaking school had to do it. By the end of IB, she was as nearly as good at speaking the english language as any of us, but she only still just managed to get a 4 in English A1 SL. A1 subjects can be hard in a subject that is a native language to people, let alone in a language which you have never done a literature course in. I would seriously recommend not doing English A1 because you don't have the experience needed and just give up the idea of doing three language courses in exchange for having a chance of getting good grades.

[Drake Glau]

Its not all about being able to read and write english. you need to be able to understand english sayings that might be older than the time frame of english you learned. I do not think that shakespeare was an appropriate choice for your interview since even native english speakers dont understand some of what is going on

I feel like you could probably do it based off how you wrote your post. You didn't say if this was HL or SL either. SL you could certainly do it in my opinion, and I'm assuming you are leaning towards SL since you are only doing it in order to do the spanish. HL A1s are not easy, even for the native speakers so I'd advise not trying HL if you can avoid it.