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
Daphne du Maurier knew a thing or two about obsession. Her writing often makes us intimate with people so alive to their own point of view that any other viewpoint… Read More »Daphne Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel: Analysis Two-Believing something does not make it TRUE!
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!
Years ago there was a song by The Smiths’ Morrissey with the happy sing-a-long line ”shyness is nice”.It might have been catchy but I didn’t agree with him at all,… Read More »English Tutor/tuition Manchester, Bolton and Bury: How to be shy and enjoy it! Part One
I was walking Frankie, one of my dogs today and met a grandfather out with his brightly adorned grandaughter, who spotting ‘Frankie’ on her lead, held up her string-gloved hands… Read More »Private English tutoring in Bolton, Manchester and Bury: Katherine Mansfield’s At The Bay.
‘ Why is reading so important?’ This question needs a direct answer as it is one of the most important activities any human being, let alone ‘student’ can enjoy. Of course… Read More »Private English Tuition Bolton and Manchester: Why reading Dickens helps writing.
Tuesday 7th February was Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday. Bolton School, Girls’ Division,celebrated the UK’s most famous novelist’s birthday in style, as all the pupils and the staff, came to school,… Read More »Dickens' Great Expectations: An analysis at Bolton School.
I was just playing with the google search engines when I saw this entry about Carol Ann Duffy’s Education For Leisure on page two. Sometimes when I write something and… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s Education for Leisure: An Analysis Revisited
PART ONE. On Saturday I was enjoying a thoughtful discussion of Susan Hill’s novel, The Small Hand. We were analysing the opening line of Susan’s Hill’s ghost story, and exploring several… Read More »AQA/WJEC/Undergraduate English Literature: Analysing a text
George knew all about rooms. He had read about rooms where people started to rot inside and stare at each other across furniture where dust sat waiting, denying them light.… Read More »The Plasticine men three: The importance of Rooms.
We came from our own country in a red room which fell through the fields, our mother singing our father’s name to the turn of the wheels. My brothers cried,… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's 'Originally' poem from 'The Other Country' and 'Selected Poems':Stanza One.
Carol Ann Duffy’s Demeter is one of my favourite poems and moves me intensely. I think its position at the close of Duffy’s The World’s Wife is essential as it… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Demeter inspired this story about Shapes!
Hour Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich. We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers or wine, but… Read More »AQA Carol Ann Duffy's 'Hour' – love's timely bargaining?
Private English Tutoring improves your learning. It empowers you as it gives you the opportunity to ask any questions you want and to get individual advice and attention for your… Read More »Private English Tuition: How can you enjoy better marks and grades for your English studies?
On they went together. Rose and this strange boy and his dog. It felt like a pilgrimmage somehow, but no one had a notion why they had decided to take… Read More »Refuge: Surprise
Writing a story under examination conditions can seem daunting. You have just half an hour in which to show to the examiner that you can write effectively. You want to… Read More »Bolton School Entrance Examination Tip Two: Openings a short lesson with David Almond.
I have always believed that certain things are only ever finished never finished with and when I was reading Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Scheherazade’ poem in her new collection The Bees, I… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Scheherazade with a hint of Rapture's Give!
Bees Here are my bees, gold blurs on paper, besotted; buzzwords dancing their flawless airy maps. Been deep, my poet bees, in the parts of flowers, in daffodil, thistle,… Read More »Bees by Carol Ann Duffy in her latest collection: The Bees!
The UCAS Personal Statement is a very powerful means of revealing to the University Admissions’ Tutor just how YOU are the very student they want to see in a seminar… Read More »UCAS Personal Statement: Expert Advice and Help.
I wrote The Face in The Wall as a sketch a few years ago on the Tusitala blog, under the category Writing Demeter. This category has a whole series of fragments… Read More »Reflections on Writing The Face in the wall and Katherine Mansfield too!
Father’s Bedroom In my Father’s bedroom: blue threads as thin as pen-writing on the bedspread, blue dots on the curtains, a blue kimono, Chinese sandals with blue plush straps.… Read More »OXFORD ELAT English Paper example: Robert Lowell’s ‘Father’s Bedroom’.
Here is the rubric from an ELAT sample paper: Select two or three passages(a) to (f) and compare and contrast them in any ways that seem interesting to you, paying… Read More »ELAT English Entrance Examination: Practical Criticism tests your close reading confidence?
I have just started reading David Almond’s new novel The True tale of the Monster Billy Dean.It’s windy outside as Bolton gets the ‘tail’ end of Hurricane Katrina. Oddly enough… Read More »Reading The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean by David Almond.
