0 level answer
Sir: Mr Andrew Brown is probably right when he says (`Waffle and drivel', 3 March) that original thought is not required in A levels. I myself am only approaching 0 levels, so, being one stage down the academic scale, what he says about A levels should hold true about 0 levels.
Not a bit of it. The average 0 level essay lasts for about 30 minutes, which is not very. long. In that time you have to consider fairly broad questions, and the work is not really in the writing of the essay, it is in the content. In that space of time, you have WI
decide which items of information are to be ,
written down, and which to be discarded.; There is no time to waffle, unless you dot not know the subject. Perhaps they want to turn us all into journalists, working to a deadline. The one thing that is annoying about journalism is when its perpetrators waffle. Waffle has 110 part in the average examination essay, and the skill that the student has acquired in manipulating information will be the deciding factor.
Jonathan C.R. Pugh
Shaftesbury House, Bryanston School, Blandford Forum, Dorset
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