Mark Rowland

My lessons firstly involve a dialogue wherein I find out what you want to get out of the subject - not everyone has the same gaps they need to fill in their knowledge. Once we've spoken about that and gotten to know each other, we can start tackling the problem at hand - that could be a book you need to analyse, or an argumentative essay you need to write etc..

We then break down the process and find a grounded way to solve the problem that doesn't involve squeezing you into a one-size-fits-all approach. I'm interested in your opinion on the text, and our job together is to find the best way to express that and communicate your ideas.

Much of our discussion will centre on exploring communication, both written and verbal. Getting your ideas across in a clear and concise manner is essential to any field you want to go into. You want to convince people, you want to express your opinions and you want to learn to take in information. English and text analysis is about all of these skills.

Lastly, we'll go into the mechanics of achieving your goals. That's the nitty-gritty, the details, tools and resources that will make our life far simpler. It could be thesauruses to expand your vocabulary, or methods for laying out your thoughts cleanly. This is where we put the philosophy into action.

I hope by the end of even our first lesson together you feel more confident in your ability to analyse, and feel the confusing shroud around text analysis has been lifted.