One-to-One Online English Tutoring for UK Students
Our online English tutoring focuses on technique — how to analyse an unseen text, structure an argument and use evidence. Knowing the book isn't enough; we teach your child how to turn understanding into marks.
What We Cover in English
From reading comprehension to A-Level literary criticism — matched to your child's level and exam board. See our full range of tutoring subjects for the complete picture.
Reading & Comprehension
Understanding unseen fiction and non-fiction: finding meaning, inference and the writer's intent — the foundation of every English paper.
Writing Skills
Creative and transactional writing: planning, vocabulary, sentence control and the accuracy marks (spelling, punctuation, grammar) that many students give away.
Literature & Set Texts
Poetry, Shakespeare and modern texts, examined closed book. The set-text work has a page of its own — see English Literature tutoring below.
Essay & Exam Technique
Question breakdown, essay structure, timing and self-checking — the technique layer that converts knowledge into grades under exam pressure.
GCSE English Language and English Literature — Two Different Exams
Almost every GCSE student sits two separate English GCSEs, and they reward different skills. English Language tests how your child reads unseen texts and writes their own; English Literature tests analysis of studied texts — the poetry anthology, Shakespeare and the modern novel or play. Many students are strong in one and lose marks in the other, so we assess both in the free demo and focus lessons where the marks are. Whether it's AQA, Edexcel or OCR, your child's tutor teaches to their exact set texts and paper format.
Two things about that split are worth knowing early, because neither is obvious from a school report. Literature is examined closed book — students cannot take their texts in, so every quotation has to be carried from memory. That is a whole skill sitting on top of the analysis, and our English Literature tutoring page covers the set texts, the assessment objectives and how to revise for a closed-book paper. And English is not tiered the way Maths and the sciences are: every student sits the same papers and the whole 9–1 range stays open, so nothing is capped in advance. The two also sit a long way apart nationally: 60.2% of English Language entries reached grade 4 in 2025 against 74.2% in English Literature, which puts Language third from bottom in our ranking of the hardest GCSE subjects.
English Tutoring for Every School Level
See How Online English Tutoring Works
One free demo class with an experienced English tutor — including a short assessment of your child's reading and writing level.
English Exam Boards We Teach To
English differs from the sciences in one important way: the board sets the paper, but the school chooses the texts. Two students on the same specification can be studying entirely different novels and plays. So the first question at the demo is never just which board — it is which texts, and how they are being taught.
AQA
The most widely taught English specification in England, and the one most school schemes of work are built around. Its Language papers lean hard on unseen fiction and non-fiction from set periods, so a student who has only practised on their own set texts meets the paper cold.
Edexcel (Pearson)
Common in independent schools and for International GCSE. It differs from AQA most in how the unseen material is set and weighted, so a student drilled on one board's question style can open a paper from the other and lose time simply working out what is being asked of them.
OCR
Set texts differ by school rather than by board, which makes English unusual: knowing the board is not enough on its own. The first thing a tutor establishes is which texts your child is actually studying and in what order the school is teaching them.
Bring a set text or a marked essay to the free demo class. An essay with a teacher's comments on it tells us more in two minutes than any assessment would, because it shows which marks the school is already trying to get your child to chase. One administrative detail worth knowing: the spoken language endorsement is assessed by the school and reported separately as Pass, Merit or Distinction. It appears on the certificate and does not count towards the 9–1 grade.
A-Level English Is Three Different Subjects
Schools offer English Literature, English Language, and a combined Language and Literature A-Level, and they are not variations on a theme. Literature is close reading and critical argument. Language is closer to linguistics — how English works, how it changes, how it differs by region and situation. Students who pick on the strength of a GCSE English grade sometimes find they have chosen the one they will enjoy least.
All three carry a coursework component. That is a genuine change from GCSE, where the written papers carry everything. Coursework is marked by the school against the board's criteria, and it rewards planning and redrafting far more than last-minute effort — which makes it one of the easiest places for a well-organised student to gain ground.
The step up is in independence. GCSE teaches a text and tells a student what to notice. A-Level expects a reading of their own, defended against critics who disagree. Students who were rewarded at GCSE for reproducing the teacher's interpretation often find their marks stall in Year 12 for reasons nobody has explained to them. That is the gap our A-Level lessons open with.
Where English Marks Are Actually Lost
English is the subject where the gap between understanding something and being credited for it is widest. A student can know a novel thoroughly and still write an answer the mark scheme cannot reward. Every habit below is a way of losing marks you have already earned, which is why they are usually the quickest thing to change — and why exam preparation often moves an English grade faster than more reading does.
Retelling the plot
The most expensive habit in GCSE English. Marks are awarded for analysing how a writer builds an effect, not for proving you read the book. A confident plot summary can score close to nothing on a question worth thirty marks.
Quotations that do not earn anything
A long quotation dropped in and left to speak for itself. Short, precise, embedded quotations that get taken apart word by word score far higher than paragraphs of copied text.
Ignoring the assessment objectives
Every English question splits its marks across named objectives — analysis of language, structure, context, technical accuracy — in a fixed ratio. Students who write well but only serve one of them cap themselves without knowing why.
Comparison questions answered twice
Half the answer about one text, half about the other, and no comparison. The marks are entirely in the connective sentences that most students leave out.
Unseen extracts and poetry
The part that cannot be revised in advance, which is exactly why it is the part most often skipped. It is a method, and a method can be practised until an unfamiliar text stops being frightening.
Running out of time
English papers are long, and the last question is often the highest-tariff one on the paper. Spending an extra ten minutes perfecting question two routinely costs more marks than it gains.
English Tutoring FAQs
Answers to questions parents ask before booking a free English demo class.