KRITTIYASRISUMET

Pimpichada Angie Krittiyasrisumet

Mr. Abel Cadias

English 10 / 1008

June 5, 2019

Students’ Awareness on the Difference between General and Accelerated Class

According to the article The 10 Most Popular Jobs (2018), some of the most popular

jobs in the 21st Century are Physicians, Physical Therapists, Engineers and Nurse

Practitioners. All of these jobs require Science knowledge and skills. Before students can

apply to medical colleges or universities, they need to collect credits from Science classes in

high schools. In every school, there are science classes, not just to meet these students’ needs,

but also, it is the demand of the Ministry of Education. However, not all students have the

same abilities to learn as fast as others, so some schools support the idea of having both

General and Accelerated classes. Mahidol University International Demonstration School is

also one of those schools. Yet, there is only General Biology for Grade 10 students’ Science

class. Some Grade 10 students at MUIDS are unable to decide their choices for the Science

electives they will study in Grade 11 since they have no idea whether they will be fine with

the harder courses. So, MUIDS should offer General Chemistry and Physics as core subjects

for Grade 10.

The purpose of this research report is to find out how many students wish to have the

three major Science classes in General as their cores before making their decisions. The

importance of this report is to bring awareness to the students on the differences of General

and Accelerated. The author uses three academic articles from different sources to corroborate

the results and the interpretation of the survey conducted by the author.
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In the survey created by the author, there are four questions, asking Grade 10 students

about their decisions for Grade 11’s electives. However, there are three main questions that

the author focuses on. One question asks for the number of students who will take Accelerated

class next year, one asks whether they would want to have General Chemistry and Physics in

Grade 10 as their guideline to Grade 11 and another asks for their opinion on the difference of

General and Accelerated. The choices for the first and last questions are yes and no. Figure 1

below shows that most of the students will be taking the Accelerated class next year, with the

number of 45 students to 19 students or 70.3% to 29.7%. Students’ ideas on the difference

between General and Accelerated class is shown in Figure 2. From the survey, 46.3% of the

students say that Accelerated class goes faster and covers more topics, 42.6% say that

Accelerated class is harder and more complicated, 11.1% are saying that Accelerated class is

designed for the people who want to study further. Figure 3 tells that a lot of students want to

study General Chemistry and Physics in Grade 10. The number is 48 students followed by 12

students who are not interested or 75% and 25%. Most of the students choose to study

Accelerated subjects, but what they know about Accelerated class are only the speed, the

number of topics it covers and whom it is for. The students do not know much apart from

those points. They have not experienced the real situations of studying Chemistry and Physics,

so they want to have these two subjects in General during Grade 10.

Accelerated class covers more topics in the same amount of time as the General one,

meaning that there will be lesser time for each individual topic. Students will need to be able

to focus and understand the subject clearly in the shorter amount of time. This requires the

students to manage their time wisely, dealing with their scheduling skills (Fernandez, 2016).

If the students are unable to do so, there would be overloaded work. For some students who

want to challenge themselves, but are not very good at understanding the information, this will
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become the source of stress and concerns (GCSA, n.d.). It is important that students are

prepared for these situations, so they will not get too stressed out. To get the students ready,

the school should offer the subjects in General course to the students. The students will get to

learn the basics of the subjects and they will get to know their abilities in learning that

particular subjects as well.

Figure 1 Number of Students taking Accelerated class

Figure 2 Students’ Ideas on the Differences

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Figure 3 Number of students wanted all three General Science classes

This research report concludes that getting the students ready by offering them the

certain subjects before entering harder courses will benefit the students in many ways. Most

students at MUIDS are choosing Accelerated class as their cores next year. If they are not well

prepared, some of them can get very stressful and may be discouraged. MUIDS should provide

particular General subjects for the students before they choose whether they want to go on to

the Accelerated course.

References

Fernandez, M. A. (2016, July 15). Pros and Cons: Taking Honors Courses. Retrieved May
28,
2019, from https://www.collegeraptor.com/find-colleges/articles/student-life/pros-
cons-taking-honors-courses/

Pros & Cons of Honors & AP Courses. Global College Search Associates (GCSA), LLC.
(n.d.).
Retrieved May 28, 2019, from https://sites.google.com/site/globalcollegesearch/pros-
cons-of-honors-ap

The 10 Most Popular Jobs, Salary.com (2019, March 18). Retrieved May 28, 2019, from
https://www.salary.com/articles/the-10-most-searched-jobs/