Heidi

Hello!

I'm Heidi, a second year English student at Cambridge University. I think that studying English has the potential to be interesting for everyone and I would love to help others realise that. Please get in touch for online tutoring sessions if your child is:

• taking A-Level English
• preparing to take the ELAT/go through the Oxbridge admissions process (I have lots of knowledge about this which is fresh in my mind)
• struggling with revision techniques or essay writing skills in general

Tutoring Experience

I have experience of tutoring at my sixth form in informal settings, especially helping A-Level students to understand how to approach essays and analyse unseen texts. I have also helped GCSE students approach the description/narrative task in English Language, alongside through their key texts and giving them advice on how to transfer their wonderful ideas into high-scoring essays. I have worked with younger students with dyslexia to help them with the process of reading and writing in general, providing them with skills that they could then apply to their GCSE exams. Recently, I have joined the Zero Gravity mentoring programme to provide support to students applying to Oxbridge. This involves writing personal statements, preparing for the ELAT and running mock interviews. Here is some feedback I got from my latest mentee:

"Heidi has been a great tutor! She is really easy to talk to, and gives a lot of help if I am unsure on something. She is also patient with my ideas, and has helped me so much."

Tutoring Approach

Although I aim to create an informal setting in a tutoring session, I feel like you must be challenged and questioned to learn from your mistakes. I would be open to receiving and marking as many practice essays as the tutee is inclined to write, so that I can go into each online session with constructive verbal feedback to go alongside the written feedback already provided. This feedback would provide the backbone of the session, allowing me to see where the tutee is struggling and cater to their individual needs. We would go on to review the mark scheme in detail (looking at the areas where the essays were weakest) and look at the parts of the text explored in their essay to elevate the quality of their analysis. For an ELAT/interview session, practice essays would also be fundamental but I would be happy to create a mock interview environment plus provide feedback on this to help with that aspect of the application process.