Livia Turnock

I like best to lead my lessons through the student, and then adapt them to what I believe will best encourage their learning. A good grade is based on a true understanding of a text, rather than through memory; if you can grow your confidence in analysing a text in of itself, it becomes a skill that is applicable in any context.

To do this best, it is often helpful to have a real grounding in literary terminology, (i.e what to look out for), and then practice on excerpts. Practice, in this case, really does make for perfection. The aim is to make literary analysis a transferable skill.

Rather than a bureaucratic (and, boring) approach to the work, a session would be discussion based. A back and forth conversation between tutor and student, allows space for both learning, affirmation, correction, and collaboration. The idea is that through this, the student will develop a pattern recognition technique, and find commonalities between all analyses.

Following this, writing tasks based on the given text, after being showed examples of “good” work, will allow students to transfer this analysis into written work. Practice timed responses and, later, actual essays, students will learn to organise their thoughts into a well structured, convincing arguments.

A student’s instinct is honed, and applied; literature does not exist in isolation. More over, with understanding and connection being emphasised in lesson, the hope is that the student genuinely enjoys the work - a gratification in doing analysis will ensure an even more genuine and authentic response to exam questions.