English lit revision

Hi I wonder if I can have some advice please. One of my sons is currently in yr 12 taking Eng lit. He got an A* for both Eng. lang and Eng. lit at gcse but has realised A level is completely different. He found the subject quite challenging at first but is now regularly getting As and Bs for his work. His teacher is pleased with him and feels his 'weakness' is perhaps exam technique. He has his own way of revising which seems to suit him and usually has an effective outcome. Obviously the Christmas hols have been taken up with revision and that is fine but the problem is that he has been given 2 A4 sheets of revision tasks to complete. They have to be done and the teacher expects everything on these sheets to be handed in on the first day back. I won't write everything out but there are things such as producing prompt cards, posters, mind maps etc. While I appreciate the time teachers have taken in putting these sheets together, many of these tasks have nothing to do with how he revises successfully. In fact he is taking such a long time to complete these tasks he has not been spending enough time on what and how he wants to revise. It seems strange that in yr 12 the class are being told how to revise (and he has checked this out with other members of the class). The exam coming up in Jan is obviously very important and I feel he should be 'left' to revise in the best way for him. How would you feel as teachers if he didn't complete these tasks but showed how he had been revising in other ways? This is all new to us!

 

IMO early entry is barmy, anyway. As you say, AS is quite different from GCSE and very few Yr 12s have developed the necessary skills to tackle the paper in January, nor have they had time to digest the set texts properly.
I assume that the teacher has found these techniques to be successful in the past, but it sounds a bit prescriptive to me. If a pupil of mine could produce evidence that revision had been done, I'd be quite happy - but I may not be typical.