GCSE English

Read between the lines.
Words are alive.

Our GCSE English course reads like a writer. Through F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories and The Great Gatsby, students learn to notice what a writer chose and ask why: how a single word carries a character's longing, how a setting becomes a mood, how a story's shape builds to its ending. Then three weeks are given to the essay itself, taking the familiar PEARL structure and growing it into a mature method for writing arguments that examiners, and readers, remember.

Questions worth wondering about

Curiosity first.
Understanding follows.

Ten weeks. Taught close-reading lessons, the full story texts, workshops and journals, worksheets with answers, numbered tests and a complete essay method.

Why does a green light at the end of a dock break your heart?

Because it stops being a light. By the end of Week 7 you will see how Fitzgerald turns one small object into a whole lifetime of wanting.

Can a haircut be a revenge story?

In Bernice Bobs Her Hair it is. Who is really in control of that story, and how does Fitzgerald make us change our minds?

What if PEARL is only the beginning?

Point, evidence, analysis, reader, link: most students fill in the boxes. We teach what each letter can become, so an essay argues instead of lists.

The courses

10 weeks · £198 for two months

GCSE English: Reading Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald's short stories and The Great Gatsby, close reading, creative writing and the Genia essay method.

Reading well means noticing what a writer chose and asking why. Writing well means building an argument a reader cannot ignore. Seven weeks with Fitzgerald teach the first; three weeks of essay craft teach the second.

Week 1: Reading like a writer
Week 2: Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age
Week 3: Winter Dreams: desire and disillusion
Week 4: Openings, exposition and setting
Week 5: Bernice Bobs Her Hair: conflict and character
Week 6: Babylon Revisited: the weight of the past
Week 7: The Great Gatsby: the dream and the past
Week 8: Writing essays I: from question to argument
Week 9: Writing essays II: the analytical paragraph
Week 10: Writing essays III: the complete essay