Hi all!

Weekend! Woo! I hope you're all going to enjoy it!

In order to make Shani's Tutoring more useful to you (and also to get conversation going more), I thought I would start creating some AO1 discussion statements!

This is based on my paid course over on the Learning Hub, where I set students weekly essay prompts that they write a response to. I then mark those essays, give you a grade and give detailed feedback on how to get closer to the A*.

But I thought I would give you a flavour of that course here!

How it works

Each week, I'll post a statement that relates to most A-level texts in some way. It will usually be something that people disagree on the answer to, so that you can start thinking!

Then, you can comment with your own thoughts on whether or not you think the answer is true of the texts you study and why.

You can either do a single text or a comparison text.

It would be great if you can give some examples, too! Paraphrase the text, if you have to! That will be excellent revision for you all!

I recommend you look at other people's comments, too. Reply to them if you disagree (but do so respectfully) so that we can make this as discussion-based as possible! It will help your essays massively.

If you're joining in, please make sure you let us know what texts you're talking about, and maybe also what exam board!

I'll post an example on this week's one, but I hope you'll join in with your own!

Why this is helpful

The more you engage with statements like this, the more your AO1 will improve. That's because:

• The statements are good examples of AO1, so your answers will create A* topic sentences for essays if you do them well!
• You'll have clearer, more niche interpretations of the text.
• You'll be forced to think about your texts in different ways.
• You're revising without even realising. The more you engage with your texts and think about examples from them, the easier it will be for you to remember important quotes and events in the exam.
• It's a safe space for you to make mistakes, agree or disagree, or even try to defend an argument that you don't usually agree with! I love it when students try their own thing, so you don't have to have a perfect argument!
• Since I'm not expecting essays here, so you can work through your ideas in your own words before you try to 'translate' them into academic English.
• You'll have access to me (a teacher) who will be there at every step of the way to help you. I'll provide useful vocab if it comes up to add to your repertoire.
• I'm trying to make these statements based on questions that could actually come up in your exams. So it should provide you with great preparation.

What I'll do

I'll be around, looking at people's responses and asking questions to get them thinking more deeply about the texts they study. I might not reply to every one, but I will try my best!

Since this is supposed to be more of a discussion community, I won't mark your essays (you'll still need to join the subscription for that), but I will be able to give you tips on what you could do if you turned it into an essay.

If this sounds good to you, please do give this post a like! I'll be posting the first one today. I'll provide my own example of this today and we can see how it goes from there.

(P.s. still working on the essay resources! They're just getting more and more in depth, so they're taking longer. I'll post updates if you're interested)!