Thorogood English

Blog

  • A-Level English Language: Power and Language

    The relationship between language and power is one of the central concerns of linguistics — and one of the most intellectually rewarding areas of A-Level English Language. How does language construct and maintain power relationships? How do powerful groups use language to reinforce their position? How do less powerful groups use language to resist? Here’s a clear guide to the key concepts.

    Power In Language vs Power Behind Language

    Norman Fairclough makes a useful distinction between power in language and power behind language. Power in language is visible in specific interactions: the doctor who uses technical vocabulary the patient doesn’t understand; the teacher who controls who speaks and when; the politician who frames an issue in terms that favour one interpretation. Power behind language is the broader social power that shapes language itself: whose dialect gets called “standard”, whose way of speaking gets called “articulate”, whose writing gets published and studied.

    Instrumental vs Influential Power

    A second useful distinction: instrumental power operates through language directly (laws, commands, explicit authority), while influential power operates more subtly — through the power to shape opinions, frame debates, and set the terms of discussion. Politicians, media, and advertisers use influential power constantly: they don’t tell people what to think, but they shape the language through which thinking happens.

    Language Features That Signal Power

    • Interruption and topic control: Powerful speakers interrupt more, change topics more, and hold the floor longer
    • Terms of address: Who uses first names and who uses titles? In asymmetric relationships, the higher-status person often uses the lower-status person’s first name while receiving a title in return
    • Hedging and tentativeness: Less powerful speakers often hedge more (“I might be wrong but…”, “sort of”) — or are expected to
    • Passive constructions: The passive voice removes agency — “mistakes were made” rather than “I made mistakes.” Politicians use this constantly.
    • Lexical choices: What something is called shapes how it’s thought about. “Collateral damage” vs “civilian deaths”; “freedom fighter” vs “terrorist”

    Critical Discourse Analysis

    Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), associated with Fairclough and others, analyses language with explicit attention to power relations — treating texts not as neutral communication but as sites where power is constructed, contested, and reproduced. In exam responses, drawing on CDA means asking not just “what does this text say?” but “whose interests does it serve?”, “what assumptions does it naturalise?”, and “whose voices are absent?”

    Language and power — alongside all the other major topics in A-Level English Language — is taught and applied throughout Thorogood English’s programme. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

  • How International Students Can Prepare for IGCSE English

    IGCSE English Language is taken by hundreds of thousands of students around the world every year — the majority of whom are not native English speakers. The qualification is designed to be accessible to international students, and with the right preparation, students who have English as an additional language can perform extremely well. Here’s what that preparation looks like.

    What IGCSE English Language Actually Tests

    It’s worth being precise about this: IGCSE English Language tests reading and writing skills — the ability to understand written texts and to produce clear, effective writing for specific purposes. It does not test spoken English, listening comprehension, or everyday conversational fluency. This matters because many international students are stronger in written English than spoken English, which is an advantage here.

    The Vocabulary Gap — and How to Close It

    The most significant challenge for most international students is vocabulary — particularly the vocabulary needed to write with precision and to infer meaning from unfamiliar words in comprehension passages. The most effective way to build this is reading widely in English: fiction, non-fiction, newspapers, long-form journalism. Passive exposure to a large number of words in context is more effective than active memorisation of word lists, though both have value.

    Building a personal vocabulary notebook — noting unfamiliar words encountered in reading, with their meaning and an example sentence — compounds over time into a genuinely useful resource.

    Grammar and Accuracy

    IGCSE English Language marking does penalise errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation — but not as heavily as many students fear. A response that communicates clearly, uses varied vocabulary, and demonstrates awareness of audience and purpose will score well even with occasional errors. Systematic errors — consistent misuse of articles, consistent tense shifting, consistent comma splices — are more damaging than isolated mistakes. Identify your recurring patterns of error and target those specifically.

    Reading Comprehension for EAL Students

    If comprehension speed is a challenge — if reading the passage and processing it fully takes longer than it should — timed practice is the main solution. Regular timed reading of English texts (news articles, short stories, opinion pieces) builds the automaticity that slows down under exam pressure. The goal is for reading to feel effortless enough that cognitive resource goes to comprehension rather than decoding.

    Use Your Multilingualism as a Strength

    Students who speak multiple languages often have a stronger conscious awareness of how language works — of grammar as a system, of meaning as constructed, of the relationship between form and function. This linguistic metalingualism is genuinely valuable in IGCSE English, especially in questions that ask about the effect of a writer’s language choices. The ability to step outside one’s own language use and reflect on it analytically is a skill multilingual students often have in abundance.

    Thorogood English welcomes international students and students with English as an additional language. Our small group format means Jacqueline can tailor support to each student’s specific needs. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

  • Writing for Different Audiences: How to Adapt Register in IGCSE English

    One of the things that separates top-band IGCSE English Language writing from average writing is the ability to adapt register — to write in the right tone, vocabulary, and style for the specific audience and purpose the question asks for. A letter to a local council is different from a speech to Year 9 students is different from an article for a travel magazine. Here’s how to do it well.

    What Is Register?

    Register refers to the variety of language appropriate to a particular situation — formal or informal, technical or accessible, authoritative or personal, distant or intimate. It’s shaped by who you’re writing to, what you’re trying to achieve, and where the writing will appear. Getting register right is a sign of real linguistic awareness; getting it wrong — being too formal for a friendly article, too casual for a professional letter — signals a failure to read the task.

    Read the Audience Clue in the Question

    IGCSE directed writing questions always specify an audience. “Write a speech for your school’s Year 10 assembly.” “Write a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.” “Write an article for a magazine aimed at parents of young children.” Each of these implies a different register — and your job is to identify and maintain it consistently.

    Ask yourself: How old is my audience? What do they already know about this topic? What is their relationship to me as the writer? What do they expect from this kind of writing? The answers shape everything from vocabulary level to sentence structure to tone.

    Signals of Register

    • Formality: Contractions (“don’t”, “it’s”) signal informality; full forms signal formality. Colloquial vocabulary signals informality; Latinate vocabulary signals formality.
    • Address: “Dear Sir/Madam” vs “Hi everyone” vs “Ladies and gentlemen” — each places the relationship immediately.
    • Sentence structure: Formal writing tends towards longer, more complex sentences; informal writing uses shorter, more conversational structures.
    • Use of humour: Appropriate in some registers (a light feature article), inappropriate in others (a formal complaint letter).

    Consistency Is the Key

    The most common register mistake is inconsistency — starting formally and drifting informal, or mixing tones in a way that feels jarring. Once you’ve established a register, maintain it throughout. A speech to Year 10 students can be warm and engaging, but it shouldn’t suddenly become as casual as a text message. A formal letter can make a pointed argument, but it shouldn’t adopt the register of an opinion column.

    Register, audience awareness, and directed writing technique are practised in every Thorogood English IGCSE English Language session. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

  • What to Do If Your Child Is Falling Behind in English

    Finding out that your child is falling behind in English can feel alarming — especially if exams are approaching. But a gap in English performance is almost always recoverable with the right support, and identifying the nature of the gap is the first step to closing it. Here’s how to think about it.

    First: Identify Where the Gap Actually Is

    “Falling behind in English” can mean several very different things. Is it reading comprehension? Writing quality? Vocabulary? Analytical essay skills? Exam technique? Motivation and engagement? The support that helps with each of these is different, and treating them as the same problem leads to generic interventions that don’t land.

    Ask the teacher specifically: what is my child doing well, and what specifically needs to improve? A vague “needs to work on their writing” is less useful than “they struggle to structure analytical paragraphs and their quotation analysis is underdeveloped.” The more specific the diagnosis, the more targeted the support can be.

    Don’t Wait for the End-of-Year Report

    By the time an annual report signals underperformance, several terms of a gap may already exist. If you notice your child struggling with homework, avoiding reading, or expressing frustration about English class, that’s worth investigating sooner rather than later. Early intervention is much easier than crisis management in the term before exams.

    Address Confidence Alongside Skills

    Children who’ve fallen behind in English often carry a story about themselves — “I’m just not good at English” — that can be as much of an obstacle as the skills gap itself. Any intervention that improves skills without also improving confidence will only partially work. The confidence comes from earned success: small, specific, genuine improvements that the child can see and recognise.

    What Doesn’t Help

    Putting pressure on without providing support. Making English a source of family conflict. Generic online resources without targeted feedback. And doing the work for them — which masks the gap without closing it. What helps is specific feedback, regular practice, and a gradual rebuilding of confidence through genuine achievement.

    What Does Help

    A specialist tutor who can identify the specific gap and work on it systematically. Regular reading — any reading, in any genre, but consistent. Writing practice with feedback, even short pieces. And patience — English skills develop more slowly than content knowledge, and the progress is cumulative.

    Thorogood English works with students at all levels — including those who’ve fallen behind and need to rebuild both skills and confidence. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

  • IGCSE English Literature: How to Write About Drama

    One of the distinctive challenges of writing about drama at IGCSE is that a play is not primarily a text to be read — it’s a performance to be watched. The script is a set of instructions for live performance, and the most perceptive drama analysis keeps that performative dimension in mind even when working from the written text.

    Think About Performance

    Every time you read a stage direction, a pause, a silence, or a short line, ask: what would this look like on stage? What would the audience feel at this moment? How would an actor deliver this line — with what tone, pace, physical gesture? Analytical responses that engage with staging, delivery, and theatrical effect score higher than responses that treat the play as if it were a novel.

    Phrases like “a director might choose to…”, “an audience would feel…”, “the actor playing X could convey…” signal that you understand the theatrical context of the text.

    Stage Directions Are Evidence

    Stage directions are often overlooked by students who focus only on dialogue. But they’re as much part of the text as the words — and they carry analytical weight. A character who “speaks quietly” is doing something different from one who “shouts”. A pause in a tense exchange is a deliberate choice by the playwright. Enter, exit, aside, soliloquy — all of these are formal features with specific effects worth analysing.

    The Soliloquy and the Aside

    Two of the most important dramatic conventions: the soliloquy (a character speaking alone on stage, giving the audience direct access to their thoughts) and the aside (a character speaking to the audience while other characters on stage supposedly can’t hear). Both create dramatic irony, intimacy with the audience, and a distinction between what characters show others and what they reveal privately. These are always worth commenting on when they appear.

    Structure and Dramatic Tension

    Drama has its own structural logic — acts and scenes, rising action, climax, denouement. Comment on where in the play your extract falls: is this the moment before the climax? The aftermath of a revelation? The opening that establishes the world of the play? Position within the play’s structure shapes the effect of any given moment.

    Drama — alongside prose and poetry — is studied in Thorogood English’s IGCSE English Literature programme. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

  • How to Help Your Child With English Homework Without Doing It For Them

    Helping a child with English homework is one of the trickier parenting tasks — not because English is hard, but because the temptation to just fix the work yourself is strong, and it’s surprisingly difficult to know where the line is between helping and doing. Here’s how to be genuinely useful.

    The Golden Rule: Ask Questions, Don’t Give Answers

    The most effective support you can give is asking questions that prompt your child to think rather than providing the answers yourself. “What do you think this word means in this context?” “Why do you think the character does that?” “What are you trying to say in this sentence?” These questions do the same work as direct instruction but leave the thinking — and therefore the learning — with the child.

    Read the Work Before Commenting

    Before offering any feedback, read the whole piece. The most common parent mistake is commenting on the first paragraph before seeing whether the later paragraphs address the issue. Read everything, identify the one or two most important things to improve, and focus there — not every possible improvement.

    Be Specific About What’s Working

    Specific praise is as valuable as specific correction. “That sentence is really clear” or “I liked that word you chose there” tells a child what their good instincts look like, so they can repeat them. “This is good” tells them nothing they can act on.

    When to Step Back

    If a child is genuinely stuck and becoming frustrated, it’s sometimes better to step back entirely than to push through. Suggest they take a break, come back to it, and try again. Forced writing produced under stress is rarely good, and the habit of pushing through frustration is worth building gently rather than by force.

    Don’t Edit the Work Yourself

    This is the line that’s most often crossed. Editing a child’s essay — even lightly — means the work is no longer theirs, the teacher’s assessment is of your writing rather than your child’s, and your child hasn’t learned what needed improving. If there’s a problem sentence, point it out and ask them to fix it: “This sentence is a bit confusing — can you say it a different way?” Not: rewriting it yourself.

    At Thorogood English, every session includes specific, targeted feedback that students can act on themselves — building independence rather than reliance. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

  • The Best Revision Timetable for IGCSE English

    One of the most common mistakes students make when revising for IGCSE English is applying the same approach they use for content-heavy subjects. You can’t revise English the way you revise biology. There’s no list of facts to memorise, no formulae to learn. English revision has to be skills-based — and this changes what a good timetable looks like.

    How Much Time Do You Need?

    Unlike content subjects where revision in the final weeks can dramatically improve performance, English skills build slowly over time and consolidate with practice. That said, focused revision in the 6–8 weeks before the exam can make a real difference — particularly for technique, timed practice, and text knowledge (for Literature).

    Aim for 3–4 English revision sessions per week in the final 6 weeks, each around 45–60 minutes. Longer than this with English becomes counterproductive — concentration dips and the quality of practice suffers.

    What Each Session Should Look Like

    The most effective English revision sessions each have a specific focus rather than general “reading over notes.” Structure each session around one of the following:

    • Timed question practice: Pick one question from a past paper (comprehension, summary, directed writing, or Literature essay question) and do it under timed conditions. Then check against the mark scheme.
    • Close reading practice: Take a passage (from a past paper, a newspaper, or your set text) and analyse it closely — word choice, structure, imagery, effect. Write two or three analytical paragraphs.
    • Essay planning: For Literature, pick an essay question and plan a full response — argument, evidence, structure — without writing the full essay. Planning is a skill and it needs practice.
    • Quotation consolidation: For Literature, review your key quotations and the analysis points attached to each. Test yourself: cover the quotation, write it from memory; cover the analysis, write it.

    Sample 6-Week Revision Plan

    Weeks 1–2: Focus on Language Paper skills — one comprehension question per session, one directed writing piece, one summary question. Identify which question type is weakest and prioritise it.

    Weeks 3–4: Focus on Literature — one set text per week. Close reading of key passages; essay planning for likely question types; quotation revision.

    Weeks 5–6: Mixed practice — full past paper attempts where possible; targeted work on remaining weak areas; re-reading of set texts for Literature.

    The Night Before

    Re-read your best piece of writing from the revision period. Remind yourself what your writing looks like when it’s good. Review key quotations one final time. Then stop — sleep is more valuable than late-night cramming for English.

    Exam preparation, including structured timed practice and feedback, runs through every term at Thorogood English. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

  • A-Level English Language: Language Change Over Time

    Language is always changing — in vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and use. Language change is one of the most reliably assessed topics in A-Level English Language, partly because the data for it (historical texts, etymological records, contemporary usage) is so rich, and partly because it raises genuinely interesting questions about how and why language evolves. Here’s what you need to know.

    How Language Changes

    Language changes across several dimensions simultaneously:

    • Lexical change: New words enter the language (neologisms — “selfie”, “ghosting”, “deepfake”); old words fall out of use (archaisms — “thou”, “forsooth”); existing words shift meaning (semantic change)
    • Semantic change: Words shift in meaning over time. Broadening (a word acquires wider meaning — “dog” once referred to a specific breed, now any dog); narrowing (a word becomes more specific — “meat” once meant food in general); amelioration (a word gains more positive connotations — “nice” originally meant “foolish”); pejoration (a word gains more negative connotations)
    • Grammatical change: Grammatical structures shift — the loss of inflections in English over centuries, the changing use of “they” as a singular pronoun, the spread of progressive verb forms
    • Phonological change: Pronunciation shifts — the Great Vowel Shift of the 15th–17th centuries transformed how English vowels were pronounced, which is why “bite” and “beet” are spelled with vowel letters that no longer match their sounds

    Why Does Language Change?

    The main drivers of language change: contact with other languages (borrowing — English has borrowed from Latin, French, Norse, Arabic, Hindi, and many others); social change (new concepts need new words); technology (new technologies create new vocabulary and new modes of communication); prestige and social influence (forms used by high-status groups often spread); and language internal pressures (regularisation of irregular forms, ease of articulation).

    The Prescriptivism vs Descriptivism Debate

    Prescriptivism is the view that language should conform to established rules and that change represents deterioration — this is the view behind complaints about “incorrect” grammar, split infinitives, the use of “literally” to mean “figuratively”, and so on. Descriptivism is the view that linguistics should describe how language is actually used, not prescribe how it should be used — change is natural, inevitable, and not inherently good or bad.

    Most professional linguists are descriptivists. Most newspaper columnists and language commentators are prescriptivists. In exam responses, demonstrate awareness of both positions and evaluate them rather than simply taking one side.

    Key Theorists

    • Jean Aitchison — described language change through three metaphors: damp spoon (lazy speakers corrupting language), crumbling castle (loss of a golden age), and infectious disease (change spreading through contact). She argued all three are misconceptions and that change is natural and value-neutral.
    • David Crystal — linguist who has written extensively on English in the digital age, language change, and the richness of linguistic variation. Generally optimistic about language change.

    Language change is covered alongside all the other major A-Level English Language topics at Thorogood English. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

  • How to Write a Narrative Essay for IGCSE English Language

    In the extended writing section of IGCSE English Language, students typically choose between descriptive and narrative writing. Many choose narrative because it feels more familiar — everyone knows how to tell a story. But familiar isn’t the same as easy, and top-band narrative writing requires deliberate craft. Here’s what it takes.

    Choose Your Moment Carefully

    The best 45-minute IGCSE narratives cover a very short period of time with great depth — not a whole adventure story compressed into three pages. A single conversation. A ten-minute wait. The moment before a decision. The narrower your timeframe, the more space you have to develop it richly.

    Students who try to cover a long plot — character introduced, problem develops, climax, resolution — in 45 minutes end up with a summary. The reader gets told what happened rather than experiencing it. Zoom in, not out.

    Establish Voice from the First Sentence

    Your narrator has a voice — a way of seeing and describing the world. That voice should be consistent and distinctive from the opening sentence. Compare: “I walked into the room and sat down.” (No voice.) “The chair scraped. I pretended not to notice how everyone looked up.” (Voice — suggests tension, self-consciousness, relationship to others.) The second version tells us who the narrator is before we’ve been told anything explicit.

    Use Dialogue Purposefully

    Dialogue is one of the most powerful tools in short narrative — but only when it’s doing something. Dialogue that moves the story forward, reveals character, or creates tension earns marks. Dialogue that fills space doesn’t. Each line of speech should be doing at least one of those three things. If it isn’t, cut it or make it do something.

    Control the Ending

    The ending of an IGCSE narrative doesn’t need to resolve everything — in fact, a slightly ambiguous ending often lands better than a neat conclusion. What it does need is to feel intentional. A final image, a final line of dialogue, a final observation that means something. The ending should feel like the story has arrived somewhere, even if it hasn’t answered every question it raised.

    The Technical Craft That Earns Marks

    Examiners marking IGCSE narrative writing are looking for: varied sentence structure and length; vocabulary that is precise and well-chosen; effective use of language techniques (imagery, sensory detail, figurative language); a consistent narrative voice; paragraphing that is controlled and purposeful. These aren’t extras — they’re the criteria the marks are awarded against.

    Narrative and descriptive writing technique is practised in every Thorogood English IGCSE English Language session. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

  • What Is Verbal Reasoning and Why Does It Matter for 11+?

    If your child is preparing for the 11+, you’ve almost certainly come across “verbal reasoning” as one of the subjects being tested. But what is it, exactly? How is it different from English? And why do grammar schools and independent schools test it? This guide answers all three questions.

    What Is Verbal Reasoning?

    Verbal reasoning is the ability to think logically and solve problems using language. It’s distinct from general reading comprehension or writing ability — it tests how well a child can identify patterns, relationships, and structures in words and language, often in formats that look more like puzzles than traditional English questions.

    Typical verbal reasoning question types include: word analogies (“hand is to glove as foot is to ___”), finding words hidden inside other words, completing word sequences, identifying the odd one out, codes and ciphers using letters, and rearranging letters to make new words.

    How Is It Different from English?

    English at 11+ tests reading comprehension, inference, vocabulary in context, and creative/analytical writing — skills developed through reading and writing practice. Verbal reasoning tests reasoning ability using language as the medium — it’s closer to a logic test than a literacy test, and the question formats are more constrained and puzzle-like.

    A child can have excellent English skills but find verbal reasoning unfamiliar at first — and vice versa. Both benefit from preparation, but the preparation looks different: verbal reasoning improves most quickly through familiarity with question types and timed practice.

    Why Do Schools Test It?

    Grammar schools in particular use verbal reasoning because it’s designed to test underlying reasoning ability rather than the quality of a child’s schooling. The theory is that a child from a school with excellent English teaching and a child from a school with weaker teaching can both demonstrate native reasoning ability through verbal reasoning — making it a fairer measure of academic potential than pure English attainment.

    In practice, verbal reasoning is absolutely coachable, and preparation makes a significant difference — so the “fairness” argument is imperfect. But it remains the primary tool for this reason.

    How to Prepare

    Familiarity is the biggest single factor. Children who’ve never seen a verbal reasoning paper before often lose marks simply because the format is unfamiliar and the time pressure is unexpected. Working through a range of question types and doing timed practice papers is the most efficient preparation — alongside the vocabulary building that comes from wide reading.

    Thorogood English’s 11+ English preparation builds the vocabulary, comprehension, and analytical skills that underpin strong verbal reasoning performance. Join the waiting list for January 2027.