Jasmine

I am a soon-to-be second year English Language and Literature student at Oxford. The first year of my degree has introduced me to new ways of approaching texts which I didn't have access to during my own A Levels and which would have made my experience learning English at school more rewarding and interesting. English Lit A Level can often feel mechanical: hit the AOs, write this number of PEEL paragraphs, look for these features in the text... these years should be an opportunity to explore literature in depth in new and exciting ways. I want to support students who may be in a rut -- I know I was! -- and to help them develop their own critical toolkit for writing essays and reading texts in ways that are meaningful to them.

Tutoring Experience

I have tutored before for GCSE Maths and German and for KS3 but I am looking forward to tutoring at a higher level and one where I could apply my degree.

Tutoring Approach

I hope to offer support in essay writing, close reading and analysis, and techniques for understanding more difficult texts. I am particularly interested in metre and prose style and I am eager to help students struggling to write about prose style or poetic form. My sessions are ideally aimed at students who are keen on English Literature but who may be currently lacking the tools to handle texts with a precision which matches their enthusiasm.

I like to have a hands-on approach to learning. For example, for a student struggling with close reading, I would provide an unseen extract and draw the tutee's attention to areas which they are missing while encouraging them to provide their own input. This technique which has helped me in my Oxford tutorials would help me to gauge the tutee's strengths, weaknesses, and interests, while allowing me to broaden and support their approach to a text. For a student struggling with essay writing, I can offer support marking essays or help them to plan and write essays in response to questions, encouraging them to develop a diverse range of interests with regards to literature and showing them different ways of structuring different forms of argument.