Thinking AloudEnglish Blog

AO5 (critical engagement) has a reputation.  It arrives in lessons and mark schemes like a spectral presence: vague, unsettling, prone to terrifying otherwise confident students into silence.  ‘Different interpretations’, it whispers. ‘Critical debate’ . ‘Alternative readings’.

Question: Compare the ways both writers transform personal pain into public performance. There are few moments more alarming than flipping over an A Level paper and realising the exam board has gone rogue.  That’s exactly how it felt in my imaginary Paper 3 this morning, when the unseen comparative poem turned out to be Sylvia Plath’s ‘Lady Lazarus’, paired without warning with Lily Allen’s ‘Pussy Palace’.

There’s something about a Renaissance man with a God complex that just won’t die.  Whether he’s summoning devils (Doctor Faustus), murdering kings (Macbeth), or designing a theocracy under the guise of morality (The Handmaid’s Tale’s Commander), you can practically hear the self-belief whirring.  The centuries change, the tights become trousers, but the hubris?  Eternal.

TV's The (Celeb) Traitors - a masterclass in the need to plan an essay. With no spoilers! There’s something almost indecently satisfying about pulling off a plan.  The clean click of cause and effect.  The sly grin of inevitability.  It’s why The A-Team and every child of the 70s loved it when a plan came together.  And why The Traitors, especially last night’s celebrity edition, is the most exquisite piece of clockwork on television.

You know the feeling, you’ve paid for the flights.  You’ve wrestled with SPF, exchange rates, suitcase weight limits, and the mysterious disappearance of all chargers.  And somewhere between the airport WHSmith and the sun lounger, your teenager did something unexpected: they started reading a book.

Somewhere between the fourth bramble and the fifth step, my golden retriever puppy decided that she had experienced quite enough of coastal walks, thank you very much.  With the quiet dignity of a small Victorian child in a Dickens novel, she stopped dead in her tracks, sat down and gazed at me with the expression of one forced to walk barefoot to the workhouse. Reader, I carried her.

This isn’t a reading list disguised as revision. It’s a summer-friendly mix of films, podcasts, and context boosters designed to help students feel confident come September and give parents a way into the texts that will dominate the conversation by mock season.

Welcome to the strange twilight zone that is mid-May - the middle of exam season.  You may be starting to feel like you live with a ghost who only emerges for snacks, sighs a lot, and occasionally mutters something about "how many exams are left?".   Days are counted in exam papers.  Life is looking endlessly bleak.  Hurrah, it’s the mid-point moan: the bit where adrenaline has worn off, motivation is flagging, and no one’s quite sure what day it is (without looking at an exa

There’s a reason An Inspector Calls  remains firmly entranced in the GCSE syllabus: it’s deceptively simple. A family gathered in an...

While much of Hong Kong enjoys the serenity of Buddha’s Birthday, lotus lanterns, temple visits, maybe even a rare moment of peace, parents of exam-taking students are more likely lighting incense in the vague hope it will cleanse the air of teenage angst and essay-induced doom.

Rejection: the gut-punch every writer faces.  History is full of books dismissed before becoming literary classics. 

Fear not.  Be it GCSE, IB, or A Level English Language and/or Literature, here are a few survival strategies... chocolate is involved.

In a world where the news reads like a rejected Black Mirror script, it’s no wonder dystopian fiction is having a moment. 

While Western culture often casts snakes in a sinister light (looking at you, Bible), the Chinese interpretation is far more nuanced...

Here’s the secret: with a solid plan, your child will breeze through their English essay faster and with fewer bumps along the way. 

Scrabble. The ultimate arena where vocabulary triumphs and three-letter words go to die.  And a great game to boost your vocabulary!

Is your child staring blankly at their English Lit essay, fear not - The LangLit Studio Literature tuition is here to help.

Exam season - it’s just over for another year.  Thank goodness, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. 

6 key tips - preview before being published on the IB website as part of the Examiner Feedback series.