I am a highly approachable Independent Expert Private English/English Literature Tutor located in Greater Manchester with over twenty years teaching and tutoring experience from Secondary to Postgraduate Degree level.
Creating a convincing ‘voice’ for your story is essential and perhaps the ‘tone’ of the voice generates the content because it captures the heart of the speaker? When we hear… Read More »GCSE/GCE English : Creating a narrative voice with Keats’ Lamia.
(This is an excellent prompt exercise courtesy of York University used on one of their very stimulating online Creative Writing Courses. It encourages us to be spontaneous and helps develop… Read More »English Tuition Bolton Manchester: Creative Writing- Prompt Exercise!
An aside. This image reminds me of an attic record shop in Ormskirk where I used to buy records every week with my Saturday job money and first saw this… Read More »Private English Tuition Top Tip using Simon Armitage’s ‘Give’ for Undergraduate, GCE and GCSE Reading Prismatically!
THE TREES are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones 5… Read More »W B Yeats: The Wild Swans at Coole: Analysis and Review of AQA anthology poem.
They had been playing cards for hours and the fire was low. The boy smiled strangely as he turned over his last card. ‘But that’s not a card we play… Read More »GCSE/GCE English Tuition:50 word story-The Tower.
We all like telling each other stories about our lives and this is how we share aspects of who and what we are. We connect with others and with ourselves through storytelling as… Read More »Private English tuition/tutor Manchester and Bolton: Saki, William trevor and Katherine Mansfield- tales of the unexpected!
All stories are ghost stories at heart, even the heartless ones! (I have now posted another FREE analysis of Susan Hill’s Woman in Black on Tusitala. AND A FREE WOMAN… Read More »Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black: Analysis of First Sighting: GSCE/GCE English
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html Human beings synthesise experience all the time. This is how we make sense of what might otherwise seem a shapeless, chaotic world where even the act of knowing how to… Read More »Private English tuition/tutor Bolton and Manchester: Winterson and TED's Brene Brown on vulnerability and making connections.
The kind old face, the egg-shaped head, The tie, discreetly loud, The loosely fitting shooting clothes, A closely fitting shroud. He liked old city dining rooms, Potatoes in their skin,… Read More »John Betjeman ‘On a Portrait of a Deaf Man’: AQA Analysis and Review
Move him into the sun— Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it awoke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow.… Read More »Wilfred Owen's Futility: Analysis of AQA Anthology Conflict poem.
Wind This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and… Read More »Ted Hughes 'Wind':Analysis of AQA anthology- Place.
In every cry of every Man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear. Consider the use and effect of the… Read More »William Blake’s ‘London’ analysis: AQA Anthology – ‘Place’ Part Two.
I am! I am! yet what I am none cares or knows, My friends forsake me like a memory lost; I am the self-consumer of my woes, They rise and… Read More »John Clare, 'I am' or 'Written in Northampton County Asylum': Analysis.
IT was a hot afternoon, and the railway carriage was correspondingly sultry, and the next stop was at Templecombe, nearly an hour ahead. The occupants of the carriage were a… Read More »GCE/GCSE English(IRONY)Saki’s The storyteller-Analysis of the pleasures of the big bad wolf.
I wander thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the charter’d Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every… Read More »William Blake’s ‘London’: Analysis of AQA Anthology Poem. GCSE English literature.
One summer evening (led by her) I found A little boat tied to a willow tree Within a rocky cove, its usual home. Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping… Read More »Wordsworth The Prelude(extract) Analysis of AQA Anthology poem.
The mountains gathered round me like bandits. Their leader swaggered up close in the dark light, full of threats, full of thunders. But it was they who stood and… Read More »Norman MacCaig ‘Below the Green Corrie’: Analysis and Review.
Are you writing something a little bit disturbing? Do you want to improve your descriptive writing or to think about setting and atmosphere? Thriller writers like John Connolly and James Lee Burke are… Read More »The Burning Light by John Connolly: Analysis and first thoughts.
What colour is sadness? What colour is passion? What colour is joy? Patrick Ness and David Almond both use a form of graphic novel to explore the profound sadness of… Read More »Patrick Ness' A Monster Calls and David Almond's The Savage: The Graphics of Grief
Effective writing engages the reader because they feel involved. In this way all writing must persuade the reader of something and one of the most vivid ways to engage a reader is… Read More »GCSE English Essay Writing Tip: Sensory Impressions!
Shelley’s Ozymandias is a striking poem about the abuse or the futility of power. I say striking because it contains images that remain with you and will not go away.… Read More »Shelley’s Ozymandias:An Analysis Revisited!
Shelley’s Ozymandias is a striking poem about the abuse or the futility of power. I say striking because it contains images that remain with you and will not go away.… Read More »Shelley’s Ozymandias:An Analysis Revisited of the AQA Poem-character and voice!
Here’s one of my favourite examination tips and it works for all levels of exam when students are writing analytical essays, doing close readings of texts and even writing creative, descriptive pieces. As you… Read More »GCSE/GCE English Tutor/Tuition, Bolton, Manchester, North West: A favourite examination tip!
This should prove my final analysis of the poem as the GCSE beckons this week. Giving voice through the dramatic monologue to a rather sinister, ‘seedy’,sexually predatory male ‘river god’ makes the reader feel they… Read More »Stevie Smith The River God: Final Analysis-the boastful predator who loves rhymes!
I said yesterday that we find the voice of the River God progressively alarming. His voice provokes unease as he tries to pretend to be innocent if not benevolent. ‘I bless their swimming.’ Do… Read More »Stevie Smith's The River God: Part Two.
I may be smelly, and I may be old, Rough in my pebbles, reedy in my pools, But where my fish float by I bless their swimming And I like… Read More »Stevie Smith, The River God: An Analysis of surreal intimacy?!
Charlotte Mew’s poem, The Farmer’s Bride leaves this reader rather glad to be alive in this age rather than the oppressive time of the poor Farmer’s Bride, whose voicelessness is brilliantly captured… Read More »Charlotte Mew’s The Farmer’s Bride-commentary and afterthought!
It was a mean house nowadays. Even when the rooms were filled with visitors, laughing and eating, there was this deposit of smallness on everything, like cold fat after cooking.… Read More »English Tuition, Bolton, Manchester and Bury: The Face in the Wall-Meanness Defeated.
How can you successfully answer an examination question on a poem, whatever the poem may be, even with bad headache and no confidence?! This short blog will help you tackle… Read More »James Fenton, In Paris With You: An analysis.
This is a disturbing poem, not least because the speaker, who we assume to be the ‘farmer’ narrates the story of the unfortunate’bride.’ I say unfortunate as she has no… Read More »Charlotte Mew, The Farmer’s Bride: An Analysis of sexual repression, fear and violation?
