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Book a Lesson

  • A race against time

    Jake’s mother Mary (both names have been changed for privacy reasons) approached me in November 2017 to help Jake retake his GCSE English Language exam in June 2018.

    Jake was a shy but extremely polite and kind 17-year-old boy who already suffered from low self-esteem after his failed English and Maths exams that year. He struggled with poor reading comprehension skills and was further held back by memory retention problems. He found it difficult to identify explicit information and literary devices, to analyse the language of texts and see the overall structural building blocks of both fictional and non-fiction works. His written responses clearly indicated a missing sense of grammatical correctness as his sentences generally lacked cohesion to the level where it impeded understanding and made him unable to clearly communicate his ideas. Evidently, the 6 months until the GCSE would be strenuous, hard work – a race to establish basic skills that should have been developed throughout his school years.

    I identified four key areas that needed immediate improvement: 1) a basic familiarity with the most common literary techniques and parts of speech so he could find things to analyse; 2) a basic introduction to language and structural analysis techniques so he could engage with what he has found to analyse; 3) a rigorous enhancement of his written responses so he could communicate his analysis in an understandable manner. Finally, it was vital to practice all the above in the context of his Edexcel exam papers.

    To tackle the fact that his poor memory rendered anything without repetition useless, we spent months with the repetitive task of identifying language devices in short quotes, identifying the part of speech of words from newspaper extracts, reading and discussing 19th century fictional texts and 21st century business articles until I was confident that he could face any previously unseen extract. Having laid down the foundations of basic reading comprehension, I focused his efforts on reading and analysing model answers to Edexcel exam style questions. This served his learning outcomes twofold: firstly, he could familiarize himself with the essential subject terminology that is required from students at GCSE level and could see how they are used in context of an analysis; and secondly, it provided a template for him to follow when we started to practice constructing individual responses. Due to the many months dedicated to improving his close and critical reading skills, Jake’s own writing became more logical, his syntax clearer, and his vocabulary richer.

    Jake passed his Edexcel English Language exam in 2018 and got a 5. He was 2 marks off a 6.

    “Judit managed to bring my son back from desperation and motivate him so much that he was actually relaxed the night before his exam. It was everything I wished for.”

  • A race against time

    Jake’s mother Mary (both names have been changed for privacy reasons) approached me in November 2017 to help Jake retake his GCSE English Language exam in June 2018.

    Jake was a shy but extremely polite and kind 17-year-old boy who already suffered from low self-esteem after his failed English and Maths exams that year. He struggled with poor reading comprehension skills and was further held back by memory retention problems. He found it difficult to identify explicit information and literary devices, to analyse the language of texts and see the overall structural building blocks of both fictional and non-fiction works. His written responses clearly indicated a missing sense of grammatical correctness as his sentences generally lacked cohesion to the level where it impeded understanding and made him unable to clearly communicate his ideas. Evidently, the 6 months until the GCSE would be strenuous, hard work – a race to establish basic skills that should have been developed throughout his school years.

    I identified four key areas that needed immediate improvement: 1) a basic familiarity with the most common literary techniques and parts of speech so he could find things to analyse; 2) a basic introduction to language and structural analysis techniques so he could engage with what he has found to analyse; 3) a rigorous enhancement of his written responses so he could communicate his analysis in an understandable manner. Finally, it was vital to practice all the above in the context of his Edexcel exam papers.

    To tackle the fact that his poor memory rendered anything without repetition useless, we spent months with the repetitive task of identifying language devices in short quotes, identifying the part of speech of words from newspaper extracts, reading and discussing 19th century fictional texts and 21st century business articles until I was confident that he could face any previously unseen extract. Having laid down the foundations of basic reading comprehension, I focused his efforts on reading and analysing model answers to Edexcel exam style questions. This served his learning outcomes twofold: firstly, he could familiarize himself with the essential subject terminology that is required from students at GCSE level and could see how they are used in context of an analysis; and secondly, it provided a template for him to follow when we started to practice constructing individual responses. Due to the many months dedicated to improving his close and critical reading skills, Jake’s own writing became more logical, his syntax clearer, and his vocabulary richer.

    Jake passed his Edexcel English Language exam in 2018 and got a 5. He was 2 marks off a 6.

    “Judit managed to bring my son back from desperation and motivate him so much that he was actually relaxed the night before his exam. It was everything I wished for.”

  • The distance between thought and paper

    I met Kelly (her name has been changed for privacy reasons) in early 2019. She was in her final year of A Level studies and needed help with essay writing and coursework.

    She told me during our telephone consultation that she found it difficult to put her thoughts down on paper and that was all I needed to assist her in. The extent of this problem, however, was yet to be revealed.

    Kelly was a brilliant student. She was confident, articulate and widely informed in all aspects of her subjects. I found her subject knowledge impeccable and she had the ability to incorporate it with her analytical ideas seamlessly and in a self-assured manner. She knew her books and extracts inside out, was familiar with the historical and social contexts, and to top it all off, she had original ideas that were refreshing to discuss.

    But.

    I soon realized that her “difficult to put my thoughts down on paper” problem actually meant that this verbally remarkable and impressive student reverted back to the syntax and sentence cohesion of a 12-year-old with some big words thrown into the mix. The difference between her verbal and written responses was astonishing. What we had to achieve in a few months’ time was a complete shift in the way Kelly constructed her essays: they had to contain all her ideas in an organised manner. The problem was that she did not see the chaos in her own writing.

    My hypothesis was that with detailed and thorough feedback I could focus her attention on the technicalities of her mistakes and with time, she would learn to see them for herself. This would prove useful not only in her English exams but all other subjects in her course. I had no doubt that with a bright student like Kelly, explanations and corrections go a long way. From subject-verb agreement through the punctuation of complex-compound sentences to signposting language, we covered the whole spectrum of essay writing nuances. We spent hours on end discussing her mistakes and improving her answers. There wasn’t anything else to do. Kelly knew her stuff; she just lacked the language check function.

    During the early months of the year, she wrote exams and completed assignments that were graded U. Her progress, however, was rapid and with academically more potent essays came higher and higher grades. Kelly finished with an overall C, though for her coursework she was awarded a B.

    “It’s kinda hard to believe now that it was me who wrote those old essays.”

  • The distance between thought and paper

    I met Kelly (her name has been changed for privacy reasons) in early 2019. She was in her final year of A Level studies and needed help with essay writing and coursework.

    She told me during our telephone consultation that she found it difficult to put her thoughts down on paper and that was all I needed to assist her in. The extent of this problem, however, was yet to be revealed.

    Kelly was a brilliant student. She was confident, articulate and widely informed in all aspects of her subjects. I found her subject knowledge impeccable and she had the ability to incorporate it with her analytical ideas seamlessly and in a self-assured manner. She knew her books and extracts inside out, was familiar with the historical and social contexts, and to top it all off, she had original ideas that were refreshing to discuss.

    But.

    I soon realized that her “difficult to put my thoughts down on paper” problem actually meant that this verbally remarkable and impressive student reverted back to the syntax and sentence cohesion of a 12-year-old with some big words thrown into the mix. The difference between her verbal and written responses was astonishing. What we had to achieve in a few months’ time was a complete shift in the way Kelly constructed her essays: they had to contain all her ideas in an organised manner. The problem was that she did not see the chaos in her own writing.

    My hypothesis was that with detailed and thorough feedback I could focus her attention on the technicalities of her mistakes and with time, she would learn to see them for herself. This would prove useful not only in her English exams but all other subjects in her course. I had no doubt that with a bright student like Kelly, explanations and corrections go a long way. From subject-verb agreement through the punctuation of complex-compound sentences to signposting language, we covered the whole spectrum of essay writing nuances. We spent hours on end discussing her mistakes and improving her answers. There wasn’t anything else to do. Kelly knew her stuff; she just lacked the language check function.

    During the early months of the year, she wrote exams and completed assignments that were graded U. Her progress, however, was rapid and with academically more potent essays came higher and higher grades. Kelly finished with an overall C, though for her coursework she was awarded a B.

    “It’s kinda hard to believe now that it was me who wrote those old essays.”