AO1 Builder for A-level and IB English
Prepare for your English exams with thought-provoking essay questions and feedback from a trained, qualified English tutor with a track record of As and A*s.
About the course
This course is designed to give you as much essay-writing practice as possible. You will receive bespoke feedback from a qualified, experienced teacher of English Literature and English Language and Literature who has received training from OCR, AQA, Edexcel and WJEC on the English essay marking process.
Each week, you will receive 10 essay questions designed to get you thinking about your texts. You can answer as many of them as you like in whatever way suits you that week: from a simple essay plan to a fully-formed practice essay! As long as you’re submitting your own work (not AI or someone else’s writing) and answering at least one question a week, you’re fine.
Then, I provide feedback to help you understand how to improve, as well as a working-at grade between, so you know what your answer would have scored in a real exam.
The grades are a little bit more split than you’d expect in your actual exam. Each letter grade can have a number between 1 and 3 attached to it, like A3. Those are designed to help you know how secure you are in your current grade and how close you are to getting to the next grade. So an A1 means you’re close to hitting an A*, while A3 tells you that you just made that grade.
Over your time on the course, you’ll collect those grades and see how they improve with your effort and added understanding.
You also get to see other people’s answers, as well as the feedback I provided them, and submit your own questions, feedback and challenges to create an interesting dialogue about the texts you’re studying. I highly recommend that my students do this! It helps them to solidify their own arguments and see perspectives they never considered before!
The more time you spend on this course, the better prepared you will be for the exam. Most of the questions have never been done by the exam board before, so they could actually come up in the exam! They also just help you to develop your thesis statements and keep improving.
Objectives
Revise your texts effectively and efficiently
- Writing regular essays and plans about your texts is a practical, science-backed way to revise for the exams.
- Knowing a piece of information is not the same as using it. The more you practice using your knowledge to form arguments, the better your essays will be.
- The theme-based structure of the course will force you to revise strategically, not just by re-reading the text. You’ll start to notice themes in the text that you never considered before!
Come up with interesting, nuanced arguments
- If you choose to respond to a statement-based essay task, you will be forced to take a stance on a debate. That will improve your thesis statements for the exam.
- Push yourself out of your comfort zone by planning essays for themes you never realised came up in your texts. This will make your understanding of literature more nuanced.
- Each essay question and statement comes with subsidiary questions designed to prevent gut-reaction essay planning and make you think about the subtleties of the topic.
Receive useful feedback
- Every essay or plan that you submit will be read and receive feedback from an experienced, qualified and trained English teacher with a track record of success.
- The marking system won’t just tell you what grade you’re working at right now. It will help you understand how close you are to advancing to the next grade.
- You’re in a community with other students, all of whom will be able to see, comment on and start discussions about your essays. So, you’ll receive feedback from one another, too!
Complete flexibility
- For one low price, submit as many essays and essay plans as you want. You can write something for all 10 of the weekly tasks. You can even write multiple essays for the same task!
- It’s up to you whether you’d like to submit an essay plan, an extract or the full thing. The only rule is that you have to submit something. So, you can arrange to do more writing in your quieter weeks and give me a smaller plan when your workload is heavy.
- The Learning Hub is easily accessible to everyone! As long as you have a device that’s connected to the internet, you can work from anywhere and at any time. Our theme has plenty of accessibility features, and you can use the mobile app for when you’re on the go.
Course content
This is a year-long course. Each week has a specific theme attached to it, and we provide ten essay prompts based on that theme.
The prompts are divided into two categories: five questions and five statements. All of them provide students with an excellent opportunity to expand their understanding of their texts and create complex, nuanced essays for revision purposes.
Every theme has been specifically picked so that you’ll find something to say, no matter which texts you are studying. We have taken into account every possible text from all the major exam boards and ensured that they all have at least two applicable questions.
Themes include ‘Identity’, ‘Conflict’, ‘Power’, ‘Gender’, ‘Loss’ and ‘Reliability’, and encourage students to think outside the box. Their text might not have anything obvious related to the theme of ‘Nature’, for example, but some prompts might encourage students to consider human nature or even the Body Natural of the monarch.
A new theme opens up each week, and students are immediately asked to respond to one of the 10 prompts. You can choose to respond however you like. As long as you are answering at least one prompt, you have complete control over how you do it! That means that you can use one text or compare multiple. You can write a plan, an essay extract or a whole essay. Plus, you’re not limited to responding once, either! You can answer multiple prompts, or even answer the same prompt multiple times!
Once the thirty-minute editing period has ended for your first answer, you will then have access to the answers of other students. This means you can further your own knowledge of the topic and learn new ideas from your peers while waiting for feedback.
The feedback is detailed and utilises the language of the A-level assessment objectives. Don’t worry if you don’t know what they are already! We provide a detailed guide to them at the beginning of the course that you can refer to at any time.
This course is entirely flexible. We encourage have plenty of other tips on how to get the most value out of the course, and you are welcome to cancel your subscription at any time. Through our dedicated Learning Hub, you can also contact your teacher during the week if you’d like some extra guidance, have a question, or would like some clarification on a piece of feedback they gave you.
This AO1 Builder is built with students in mind, and is packed with interesting, thought-provoking ideas to help you build up towards that A*.
Instructor
Shani Cipro
Shani is a qualified teacher of English and History. She has an MA in History from the University of Glasgow, and is currently working towards a second MA in Literary Linguistics (aka English Language and Literature) at Nottingham University. Shani works at a sixth-form college in London, teaching English, Storytelling, EPQ and occasionally Film Development.
Evidence-Based Learning
Requirements
To take this course, you need to have a stable internet connection and a device that you can connect to the internet.
Who is it for
A-level students of English Literature or English Language and Literature
IB students of English Literature or English Language and Literature
Students preparing to study a degree in English
£30 / month
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