Some students hate studying English. At least, they start off that way. They might have had bad teaching at school, they might think of themselves as more scientifically or mathematically minded, and sometimes they view answering questions about a text as inventing things to say.
The barrier is pretty clear for these students. They don’t find it interesting, they’re sceptical of its seriousness, and they’re convinced it’s not for them. It’s a very off-putting trilogy.
Each of these can be addressed in turn.
At the TutorBank, we embrace a bespoke methodology that is engaging and inspiring, so if you’ve been studying serious historical texts in school, an extract about a Martian invasion might be pretty fun. Or if you’ve been looking at lots and lots of Shakespeare, some short and snappy Carol Ann Duffy might be a nice change.
That’s a barrier we break down in the first few sessions – learning should be fun. English can be interesting.
Of course, it can – there are whole universes hidden in a few paragraphs of a passage, entire human psychologies in a short poem.
A lot of students haven’t had a lesson tailored specifically for them. It’s actually very easy for a tutor to ask a student about their interests, and then pull up a passage that relates to it.
It’s much easier for a tutor to tailor a lesson to a student’s interests, and have genuinely engaged conversations with them about it, than it is for a teacher.
The second barrier takes longer to cross. If STEM specialists are often convinced English is just making things up, spotting language devices or pretending an author has intended to make some spurious point.
For systematic and analytic thinkers, this can be overcome by providing a framework. In analysing poetry, this might be looking at structure, form, and language, talking about choices and intent and talking about so with serious understanding. With other passages, it might be looking at narrative structure and jeopardy. It varies. But it’s vital not to convince a student but to show them that English isn’t just making things up – it’s as rigorous and can be approached as systematically as Maths.
The last barrier for students is that they’ve been told they’re not creative. Or that English isn’t for them.
This can be something they’ve carried with them through years of education.
It’s not enough simply to tell a student that everyone’s creative, or that their ideas are great (though everyone is, and the ideas usually are). You have to support them through a number of lessons to rebuild their confidence, with guidance and support, so that STEM specialists learn to love English – or at least, to enjoy it with confidence.