So you want to tutor English, aye?
As Hamlet said, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt in your philosophy.” And whilst this might be true, don’t think for a moment that writers will ever stop trying to imagine – dream – those imponderable ‘things’ beyond us. After all, what are novels? What are stories and poems? if not little dreams we can grip in both hands, carry around with us on the tube — and read deep into the night?
Although our lives might be little, and barely scratch the surface of a multi-perspectival reality, teaching English offers a rich and rewarding engagement with texts that try to excavate the philosophies of, and the ‘things’ around and above, the drama of human experience.
No matter which syllabus you teach at GCSE, you will engage with breath-taking works of fiction and poetry: from the tragedies of William Shakespeare to classic works of American fiction by writers as varied as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Toni Morrison. You’ll also have to teach your students how to imagine their own stories, and participate in that collective act of ‘dreaming’.
Know Your Syllabus(es)
Now, it’s important to remember that there are two English GCSEs: Literature and Language. And each subject is taught according to a range of different specifications, so before your first lesson make sure you know which specification the student is working toward. (Note: Exam boards like Edexcel offer both an international qualification, known as an ‘iGCSE’, as well as a standard, domestic GCSE, so don’t get caught out here!)
Once you know which exam board your tutee is working toward, it’s really important to review their specification. Do this by going to the exam board website, and remember to make a note of adjustments being made for your student’s academic year. Have a clear understanding of the Assessment Objectives the specification has identified and learn which exam questions are testing which Objectives. (Where students often fall down, for instance, is by analysing language when the question calls for an interrogation of structure!)
Get an overview of the syllabus and review specimen papers for a sense of what students will be asked to do in the exam.
I always make sure to read not just mark schemes, but also examiner’s reports: these describe in great detail the general trends of the previous academic year, including: which questions students liked to answer most, common mistakes made, as well as standout answers examiners encountered in their marking. Examiner’s Reports are a real asset for any classroom teacher – and a useful resource to keep up your sleeve as a tutor.
Be Well-Equipped For Online Learning
These days, a lot of tutoring takes place online and luckily for us there is a wealth of free online software to simulate (and even enhance) the experience of in-person teaching. Firstly, you’ll want to use Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or Zoom to schedule your tutorials. These softwares also have in-built chat functions and screen-sharing capabilities, so you can always add visual aids to your lessons.
I also like to use Microsoft Word Online – although Google Docs is good too – to compile all the resources I’ll need for a lesson. Sharing this with your tutee means you can watch their writing in real time: offer instant feedback, highlight and annotate work and store hyperlinks to additional resources for future reference. When tuition comes to an end, your tutee will have an entire database of work to refer back to. How great is that?
Set A Good Example
Finally, when you’re setting the work out for your student, remember to include exemplar responses – again, these can be accessed from your exam board website, or you can even produce your own! It's always helpful for students to understand what practices they need to implement in their writing to maximize their mark potential.
I find students often skimp on the textual analysis – they often forget to put into their own words what their carefully selected quotations are communicating – and this is, really, the best means a student can take to illustrate their ‘original’ and ‘personal’ engagement with the text. And if they can then marry that personal inference with the key terms of the question — brilliant! Your student is well on their way to producing a full mark response. English is not like Maths and Science. It doesn’t have right or wrong answers, necessarily. It has persuasive arguments; and the clearer and more logical our argumentation can be, the better chance we have of persuading our examiners.
It’s a great life skill, persuasion. But there’s a heap of other skills English will give you: critical and logical thinking, psychological understanding, cross-cultural appreciation, and an awareness of what it really means for people to live in the world.
Blog Post Crafted by Will
William read English Literature at Cambridge University. He wrote plays for the ADC Theatre, winning the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Other Prize in 2015.
He studied for an MSt in Creative Writing at Oxford University, before moving to New York City, completing an MFA in Fiction at Columbia University as a Chair’s Fellow.
Passionate about literature, Will loves to share his passion for reading and writing with the students he tutors.
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