Category: Tutoring Advice

Every English teacher says it. Every study confirms it. Children who read for pleasure perform better in English — and in most other subjects too. But knowing it doesn’t tell you how to actually get a reluctant child to pick up a book. Here’s what works.

Let Them Choose

The single biggest mistake well-meaning parents make is steering children towards “quality” books before the reading habit is established. A child who reads every Wimpy Kid book is a reader. A child who has been told Wimpy Kid is beneath them and who therefore doesn’t read anything is not. The habit comes first. The quality comes later, naturally, as taste develops. Let them choose — whatever they want, within reason.

Read Aloud — For Longer Than You Think

Reading aloud to children doesn’t stop being valuable when they can read themselves. Many children who find reading effortful will happily listen to a story read well — and listening to good prose builds vocabulary, comprehension, and a sense of story in exactly the same way that independent reading does. Read aloud to your children as long as they’ll let you. The conversation it generates is also genuinely valuable.

Make Books Visible and Accessible

Children read what’s available. Books that are visible, accessible, and in appealing locations — bedroom, living room, the back seat of the car — are more likely to be picked up than books that live in a box or on a high shelf. Library visits make a bigger difference than most parents expect: the sheer variety of choice, and the child’s ownership of the selection process, changes the relationship with books.

Model It

Children who see their parents reading are more likely to read themselves. This doesn’t mean performing reading ostentatiously — it means genuinely reading, and occasionally talking about what you’re reading in a way that communicates that it matters and that it’s enjoyable. “I read something really interesting today” is more powerful than “you should read more.”

Don’t Turn Reading Into a Reward or a Punishment

“Read for 20 minutes and then you can have screen time” makes reading a chore to be completed before the real reward. “No screen time until you’ve read” makes it a punishment. Both frame reading as something external to be endured rather than internal to be enjoyed. The goal is for reading to feel good in itself — and that requires protecting it from instrumental framing for as long as possible.

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At Thorogood English, we share book recommendations with every student — building the reading life that underpins everything else. See our Recommended Reading list for ideas across all ages. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

When parents first consider IGCSE English tutoring, the instinct is often to wait until closer to the exam — January or February, perhaps, when the pressure is starting to build. But tutors with experience working with IGCSE students consistently recommend starting in September. Here’s why it makes such a difference.

English Skills Take Time to Build

This is the fundamental reason. Maths tutoring can sometimes produce rapid results — a clear procedure, practised until it’s reliable. English doesn’t work that way. Analytical writing, close reading, quotation analysis, essay structure — these are skills that develop gradually through repeated practice and specific feedback. A student who starts in September has 7–8 months to build these skills. A student who starts in February has 2–3 months. The September student develops genuine competence; the February student improves their exam technique but may still have underlying skill gaps.

Early Tutoring Catches Problems Before They Compound

In English, gaps compound. A student who doesn’t understand how to structure analytical paragraphs in Year 10 will carry that gap into Year 11, and it will show up in every essay they write. A student who hasn’t developed inference skills will struggle with every comprehension question in every exam. Identifying and addressing these gaps in September of Year 11 — or even Year 10 — means they can be fixed properly rather than patched hurriedly.

Less Pressure Means Better Learning

September tutoring happens without the weight of imminent exams. The student isn’t anxious; the tutor isn’t in crisis mode. This allows slower, more thorough development of skills — time to experiment, to write badly and understand why, to revise and improve without deadline pressure. By the time exams approach, the student is genuinely prepared rather than desperately cramming.

Consistency Builds Confidence

A student who has attended regular sessions since September arrives at exam season with a relationship with their tutor, familiarity with the material, and a track record of improvement they can point to. That is qualitatively different from the anxiety of a student who started in February and is still trying to absorb material they don’t yet feel confident with. Confidence in an exam is built over months, not weeks.

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Thorogood English opens for January 2027 — which gives students a full exam season of consistent support before their IGCSE and A-Level exams. Join the waiting list now to secure a place.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

“I’m just not good at English.” It’s one of the most common things parents hear — and one of the most damaging beliefs a young person can carry into their exams. The good news is that confidence in English is not a fixed trait. It’s built through specific experiences of success, and those experiences can be engineered. Here’s how.

Confidence Comes From Competence, Not Praise

Telling a child they’re good at English doesn’t make them confident — it makes them feel good briefly and then vulnerable the next time they get something wrong. Real confidence comes from genuine ability developed through practice and specific feedback. The goal is to give children real, earned success experiences: things they actually did well, which they can do again.

Start Small and Make Success Concrete

For a child who believes they can’t write, a full essay is an overwhelming task. One paragraph is less overwhelming. One sentence is manageable. Start where success is achievable and make the success explicit: “That sentence is really good — look at the word you chose there.” Specific, earned praise for a specific thing the child did builds more confidence than general reassurance.

Reframe Mistakes as Information

Children who are anxious about English tend to experience mistakes as evidence that they were right all along — proof that they’re not good at it. The reframe that changes this: mistakes are information about what to practise, not judgements about ability. A child who makes the same error repeatedly needs to practise that specific thing; the error is showing you exactly what to work on. This is useful, not shameful.

Show Progress Over Time

Keep a piece of writing from early in the year. Six months later, write about the same topic and compare. The improvement is almost always visible and often striking — and seeing concrete evidence of progress is more persuasive than any amount of verbal encouragement. Children who can see how far they’ve come have a foundation for believing they can continue to improve.

Find What Interests Them

Children who feel they aren’t good at English often mean they aren’t interested in the texts they’re studying or the writing tasks they’re being set. A child who claims to hate writing might write pages about a video game, a football match, or a TV show they love. Starting from genuine interest builds the fluency and habit that transfers to other writing contexts. It’s a legitimate pedagogical strategy, not a shortcut.

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Thorogood English works with students at every confidence level — including those who’ve convinced themselves that English isn’t for them. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

The tutoring market is dominated by one-to-one sessions — private tutors working with individual students for an hour a week. It’s the default assumption: if a child needs help, you find a tutor and book a slot. But the evidence, and the experience of students and teachers who’ve worked in both formats, suggests that small group tutoring often produces better outcomes. Here’s why.

Learning From Peers

In a well-run small group session, students hear how their peers approach problems — different interpretations, different phrasings, different strategies. This exposure to multiple ways of thinking about the same text or question is something one-to-one tutoring simply cannot replicate, because there’s only one student in the room. Hearing a peer say something you didn’t think of, or hearing a peer make the same mistake you’ve been making, is educationally valuable in ways that are hard to engineer in individual sessions.

Discussion Develops Analytical Thinking

English — particularly Literature — is a subject where discussion is genuinely generative. Talking through an interpretation, defending it, being challenged on it, and refining it is how analytical thinking develops. In one-to-one tutoring, the only discussion is between student and tutor — which creates an inherent power imbalance (the tutor knows the answers) that can inhibit genuine exploratory thinking. In a small group, students discuss with each other as well, which develops confidence and articulation differently.

The Social Dynamic Reduces Performance Anxiety

Some students find one-to-one tutoring high-pressure: every question is directed at them, every answer is immediately assessed, there’s nowhere to hide. This can produce a tentative, performance-focused mindset rather than a curious, exploratory one. In a small group, there’s a small social buffer — the student is part of a cohort, not perpetually in the spotlight — which for many students allows more relaxed, more genuine engagement.

More Affordable — So More Consistent

Small group sessions typically cost significantly less per student than one-to-one tuition. This matters because consistency matters enormously in English: a student who attends regular sessions over an extended period will make more progress than one who has intensive sessions sporadically because the cost prohibits regularity. Small group pricing makes regular, sustained tutoring accessible to families for whom weekly one-to-one rates are a stretch.

What to Look For in a Small Group Programme

Not all small groups are equal. The key things: genuinely small (maximum 6 is the threshold above which individual attention becomes difficult to maintain), a teacher who actively manages the group dynamic rather than lecturing at it, and a programme that adapts to the individuals in the group rather than delivering a fixed script to whoever happens to be there.

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Thorogood English runs small groups of maximum 6 students — the size at which every student gets individual attention while still benefiting from the group dynamic. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

Some degree of nervousness before an exam is normal and even helpful — it sharpens attention and increases motivation. But for a significant number of students, anxiety goes beyond useful alertness into something that genuinely interferes with performance. Here’s what helps.

Understand What Anxiety Is Doing

Exam anxiety is a stress response — the body preparing itself for a perceived threat. The problem is that the physical symptoms of stress (racing heart, tight chest, difficulty concentrating, blank-mindedness) are not useful in an exam, where calm and focused thinking is what’s needed. The goal of anxiety management is not to eliminate feeling nervous, but to prevent it from taking over.

Preparation Is the Most Reliable Anxiety Reducer

The most effective long-term strategy for exam anxiety is thorough preparation — not because confident students don’t get nervous, but because a student who has practised under timed conditions multiple times has a felt sense of what the exam is like. The unknown is more anxiety-provoking than the familiar. Timed practice demystifies the exam experience and builds the procedural confidence that allows students to begin writing quickly rather than freezing.

Before the Exam

• Sleep: The night before an exam, sleep matters more than last-minute revision. A tired brain performs worse on every dimension that English exams test — reading comprehension, verbal fluency, recall of texts, quality of written expression.
• Avoid comparing with others: Conversations in the corridor before an exam about who has revised what, who feels confident, who feels terrified, are almost always unhelpful. Encourage your child to avoid them.
• A brief physical routine: Even five minutes of movement before entering the exam room can reduce cortisol and improve focus. A short walk, some slow breathing, shaking out hands — whatever feels natural.

During the Exam

If you go blank: Don’t panic — blank-mindedness in exams is almost always temporary. Put the pen down, take three slow breaths, and re-read the question. The answer is nearly always there; anxiety is blocking access to it. Slow breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system and genuinely helps.

Start with what you know: If one question feels harder than another, do the easier one first. Getting words on paper reduces anxiety — the blank page is the most stressful part of any English exam.

Don’t watch other people writing: Someone who appears to be writing confidently and quickly may be writing badly. Focus on your own paper.

For Parents

The most anxiety-inducing thing a parent can do is communicate — even inadvertently — that a great deal rides on this exam. Children are very sensitive to parental anxiety, and parents who are visibly worried about results communicate that worry to their children even when they don’t intend to. Calm confidence, expressed without minimising the importance of the exam, is more helpful than either excessive pressure or dismissive reassurance.

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Thorogood English’s small group sessions include regular timed practice — because familiarity with the exam format is the most reliable way to reduce the anxiety that comes from the unknown. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

Finding a good English tutor takes more thought than it might seem. Unlike maths, where a tutor either knows how to solve a problem or doesn’t, English teaching involves a complex blend of subject knowledge, communication skill, pedagogical judgment, and the ability to read individual students. Here are seven things that separate excellent English tutors from average ones.

1. They Give Specific Feedback

Vague feedback (“this is good, but try to develop your ideas more”) is almost useless. A good English tutor gives feedback that is precise, actionable, and explained: “This sentence is doing two things at once — the analysis of the imagery and the point about character development are separate ideas and both deserve their own sentence. Here’s how you could separate them…” That’s feedback a student can act on.

2. They Understand the Exam They’re Preparing Students For

IGCSE, GCSE, A-Level, 11+ — these are different qualifications with different assessment criteria, mark schemes, and question types. A tutor who has read the mark scheme, knows the assessment objectives, and understands what specifically earns marks will prepare students far more effectively than one who teaches “English” generically.

3. They Ask More Than They Tell

The best tutors spend more time asking questions than giving answers. “What do you think this word suggests?” “Why might the writer have chosen this structure?” “What’s the difference between what the character says and what they mean?” A student who is prompted to think and articulate will develop skills; a student who is talked at will develop dependence.

4. They Read — and Love — Literature

A tutor who reads widely and genuinely loves language brings something to English teaching that no amount of technique can replicate. Students notice when a teacher is authentically excited by a poem or novel, and that enthusiasm is contagious. Passion for the subject is not sufficient for good teaching, but its absence is a genuine limitation.

5. They Adapt to the Individual Student

No two students have the same weaknesses. A good tutor diagnoses what a specific student needs rather than delivering a fixed programme to every student regardless of where they are. In a small group, this means being attentive to each student’s individual development even while working collectively.

6. They Are Qualified to Teach

A degree in English is valuable but not sufficient. Teaching — especially at IGCSE and A-Level — requires pedagogical knowledge alongside subject knowledge. A tutor who has trained as a teacher, worked in schools, and been assessed on their teaching practice brings a level of professional preparation that is worth looking for.

7. They Communicate Clearly with Parents

A good tutor keeps parents informed — not just “the session went well” but what was covered, what the student found difficult, what progress has been made, and what to practise before next time. This keeps the whole team (tutor, parent, student) aligned and makes the tutoring far more effective.

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Jacqueline at Thorogood English is a qualified teacher with examiner experience — she knows the mark scheme, teaches to each student’s individual needs, and communicates clearly with families throughout. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

Writing reluctance is more common than most parents expect. Plenty of capable, intelligent children resist writing — and the resistance isn’t laziness or a lack of ability. It usually has a specific cause, and once you understand what’s behind it, you can address it much more effectively than by simply insisting they write more.

What’s Usually Behind Writing Reluctance

The gap between thinking and producing: Many children have rich, complex thoughts but find the physical or cognitive act of getting them onto the page exhausting. The gap between what they want to say and what comes out feels humiliating. This is especially common in children who are verbally articulate — they know how good their ideas are, and the written version feels like a disappointment.

Fear of getting it wrong: Children who’ve received a lot of corrections on their writing can develop an association between writing and criticism. The safest strategy, from their perspective, is to write as little as possible — fewer words means fewer mistakes.

Perfectionism: Related to the above — some children can’t write because they can’t bear to write badly. They’ll sit in front of a blank page for twenty minutes because no first sentence feels good enough. These children aren’t lazy; they’re paralysed.

Physical difficulty: For some children, especially those with dysgraphia or motor difficulties, the physical act of writing is genuinely effortful. This can be hard for parents and teachers to identify because the child appears reluctant when they’re actually exhausted.

What Helps

Separate drafting from editing: Many children confuse the first draft with the final version and apply editing standards to drafting. Help them understand that a first draft is supposed to be imperfect — the goal is to get ideas down, not to write perfectly. Some children find it helpful to write their first draft in pencil specifically so it “doesn’t count yet”.

Talk before writing: Ask them to tell you what they want to write before they write it. The act of saying it aloud often unlocks the written version — they’ve already worked out what they want to say. Then the writing is just recording rather than thinking and writing simultaneously.

Reduce the length expectation: Start with one excellent sentence. Then two. Small successes build confidence. A child who’s been asked to write a paragraph and has written three words has failed; a child who’s been asked to write one sentence and has written three has succeeded.

Write for real purposes: Writing a shopping list, a birthday card message, a text to a grandparent — writing that has a real audience and purpose feels different from writing done purely for assessment. Real-world writing reduces self-consciousness.

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Thorogood English works with students at all confidence levels — including those who’ve struggled with writing and need to rebuild their relationship with it from the ground up. Join the waiting list for January 2027.

If your child has never had online tutoring before, “a Zoom lesson” might sound vague. What actually happens? What does the tutor do? What is the child doing? This is a straightforward guide to what a well-run online tutoring session looks like in practice.

Before the Session

In most cases, the tutor will have set some work between sessions — a practice paragraph, a reading comprehension question, a short essay plan, or some vocabulary to review. Your child brings this work to the session, either by sharing their screen or by having uploaded it in advance. Good tutors look at this work before the session begins so they know what to focus on.

At the Start of the Session

A good tutor begins with a brief check-in: what did you find easy, what was confusing, anything from school this week that’s relevant? This takes 3–5 minutes and sets the agenda for the session. It’s not wasted time — it tells the tutor what to prioritise and ensures the session responds to the student’s actual needs rather than a fixed plan.

During the Session

The tutor and student work through material together — usually through a combination of:

• Looking at the student’s recent work: The tutor shares their screen to annotate it, or the student shares their own screen. Feedback is specific and explained, not just “try to develop this more.”
• Direct teaching: Explaining a concept, demonstrating a technique, showing how something should be done — then asking the student to try it
• Practice in session: Writing a sentence, a paragraph, or a plan together; the tutor guiding, the student drafting
• Questioning: A good tutor asks more questions than they answer, pushing the student to articulate their thinking rather than simply receive information

In a small group session, there’s also the dynamic of peers — hearing how someone else phrases an idea, discussing different interpretations of a poem, or working through a comprehension question together before the tutor reveals the model answer.

Shared Documents and Shared Screens

Online tutoring often uses shared documents (Google Docs is common) so that both tutor and student can see and edit the same text simultaneously. The tutor can leave comments, highlight specific words, correct errors in context, and add model sentences alongside the student’s work. This is often more interactive than in-person tutoring, where two people are looking at one piece of paper.

At the End of the Session

A good tutor closes with a clear summary: what did we work on today, what are you taking away, and what do you need to practise before next time? The next session’s focus should be clear to the student (and to you, if you like to be kept in the loop — most tutors are happy to send a brief message after each session).

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Every Thorogood English session includes feedback on recent work, direct teaching, in-session practice, and a clear plan for what comes next. Join the waiting list to reserve a place from January 2027, or try a free trial session to see it in action.