Online Literature Tutor Lydia

I'm an experienced classroom teacher of English with over 30 years of teaching in UK secondary schools, including leading independent schools. I have taught GCSE and A level English across AQA, CIE, OCR, WJEC, Edexcel and have examined for most of these exam specifications too. Alongside classroom teaching, I have spent decades tutoring students of all abilities, from those with dyslexia and neurodiverse profiles to high-achieving students aiming for top grades and competitive university places. Since retiring last summer, I have offered online one-to-one tuition across a range of GCSE and A level specifications, helping students raise grades in re-sits and, more generally, enabling many to improve by one or two grades through focused guidance, while high-attaining students benefit from being pushed beyond the curriculum, developing the sophisticated analytical skills needed for grades 8–9 and A/A*.

To ensure progress, I foster student autonomy and confidence by helping them to enrich their knowledge, master effective techniques and manage time skills. Students quickly become more confident because they understand exactly what examiners are looking for and develop practical strategies they can apply independently, allowing them to write with greater precision under exam conditions.

My lessons usually follow a clear structure: I introduce a challenging task, model expert thinking, encourage students to interrogate and analyse both the question and text independently, provide guided practice before using detailed feedback to consolidate learning, giving students a genuine sense of control over their progress. In addition, one-to-one tuition allows me to identify precisely where a student's understanding or exam technique is breaking down, so that each lesson can personally address any obstacles preventing progress.

I have created thousands of resources over the years, giving students immediate access to carefully structured notes, model responses and targeted practice tasks to boost their attainment.

I have been an examiner for AQA, CIE, OCR and WJEC as well as teaching all these boards. For the last year I have been teaching Edexcel, both GCSE and iGCSE. I have particular expertise in the following texts due to having taught them for many years (though also have experience with a wide variety beyond this):

A level for OCR: ‘Hamlet’, ‘Paradise Lost’, ‘A Doll’s House’, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, ‘Heart of Darkness’, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ plus a wide variety of poetry, novels and plays for the non-examined coursework assessments.

GCSE for AQA and Edexcel: ‘Macbeth’, ‘A Christmas Carol’, ‘An Inspector Calls’, ‘A View from the Bridge’, ‘Of Mice and Men’, ‘Animal Farm’, Power and Conflict poetry, a huge variety of poems for the Unseen assessment.

I am a MHFA Champion (Mental Health First Aid Certificate).