Camille

Academic History

Jesus College, University of Oxford 2023-2024 – MSt in English (1550-1700) – Distinction

Peterhouse, University of Cambridge 2019-2022 – BA Hons, English – Double First Class Honours (ranked 9th out of 185 students)

Sevenoaks School 2012-2019 – International Baccalaureate: 45 points (achieved by 0.41% of candidates worldwide) – Higher Level: English Literature, History, Biology

(I)GCSE: 12 A*s

Recent tuition

ISEB Pre-test

I tutored a student in preparation of the ISEB pre-test exam. He attends the Westminster Cathedral Choir School, and was in need of some last-minute intensive preparation in the weeks leading up to the exam. I visited his home several times a week as the exam approached, and we established a fantastic rapport which made the lessons really enjoyable for us both, particularly considering the laborious nature of the exam. My approach was initially a diagnostic one, identifying his weaknesses and gaps in his knowledge. After holding several lessons to eliminate those primary errors, we shifted our attention to focus on fine-tuning small mistakes and working on exam technique. I created my own sample papers that specifically targeted any traps that he tended to fall into, and that also repeatedly tested him on common ISEB questions. This student is targeting Radley College, and will hear about the outcome of the first round of the admissions process in December.

ISEB Pre-test

I tutored a student (who attends Westminster Chapel Choir School) a couple times a week in the months leading up to his ISEB pre-test exam. As is often the case for this exam-focused, last-minute revision, I firstly held sessions that helped identify common mistakes that he was making. This approach tends to reveal unexpected gaps in knowledge: for example, he confidently told me that we did not need to go over the different types of clauses – he had extensively studied these in school – yet it only took a few questions for me to uncover that he had entirely confused subordinate and relative clauses, and that this was somehow flying under the radar at school. A particular benefit of the lessons regarded the shuffled sentences component of the exam, which he was really uncertain about. In our post-exam discussion, his mother reported that “he said that there were some jumbled sentences that he knew how to do because of your help so thank you!”  This student is targeting Eton and St Paul’s, and will find out about the outcome of the exam in December.

UKiset exam

I am currently tutoring a student who studies in Hong Kong in the four months leading up to her UKiset exam. We meet virtually for two hour lessons every week, and I cover every aspect of the exam with her. Each lesson works steadily towards covering every type of question that could appear in the exam, and I have quickly observed that she is extremely confident with questions relating to mathematics or non-verbal reasoning, but is lacking skills and confidence when it comes to verbal reasoning and the essay-writing component. We therefore are spending several lessons developing her writing skills, and I am encouraging her to extend her sentences and to write with more clarity by providing her with my own sample answers, which I have written to best suit the UKiset exam format. This student is targeting St Peter’s School and the Queen Margaret’s School.

Year 9 GCSE English

I tutored twin Year 9 students at Latymer Upper School on a weekly basis over the course of a year to help them develop essential written and verbal communication skills that have not manifested due to their reluctance to read or engage in English lessons. I tutored each student individually for an hour a week, and initially began by tailoring my approach to focus on creating interest and maintaining their attentiveness in lessons. Their mother was concerned that they were easily distracted in school classes: a product, no doubt, of both the online schooling periods of the pandemic and the short attention spans curated by prolonged phone usage. I therefore created fun and stimulating lessons that took as their starting point the girls’ interests: namely, fashion, instagram, and art. I led a lesson in our first week, for example, on social media, influencer culture, and how it relates to the history of the book; following the great success of this lesson, I held classes on the emergence of poetry in the world of fashion, and the prominence of poetry in street graffiti and art. Both girls are now confidently and happily reading books by themselves in their spare time.

IB English Literature SL

I tutored a student at an international IB school in Italy who had made no progress with his IOC, despite the commentary being due in two weeks’ time. We had some emergency last-minute sessions to help him develop the necessary material, and this resulted in a stand-out piece of writing that drew from all of his strengths: he had been working at the level of a 4, and received a 6 for his IOC (the highest ranking component of his English results).

IB HL English Language & Literature

I tutored a student at an international IB school in Saudi Arabia once a week over several months to provide essential out-of-school English support, as well as university admissions support as he was in the important stages of the application process. He was writing his HL English coursework essay on ‘Born A Crime’ by Trevor Noah, and had no real sense of how to approach the essay or where to begin. I read Noah’s book in advance of our sessions, and subsequently laid out a lesson plan that guided him from the initial brainstorming stage all the way to the finished essay. The student ended up writing a highly nuanced and accomplished essay on the use of dark comedy in Noah’s narrative technique, and can now confidently turn his attention to the other elements of the IB course. He additionally requested extra sessions to help him finalise his personal statement, and I helped him tailor the essay to the specific universities that he will be applying to, in order to best convince the admissions officers of his desire to study at their respective institutions.

IB English Extended Essay

I tutored a student at an international IB school in Ecuador during her winter school term: a period by which students are expected to have at least begun their Extended Essays (a similar project to the EPQ). She was struggling to even begin her EE, and had been told conflicting advice from her teachers. She was keen to write about Golding’s ‘The Lord of the Flies’, so I read the novel in preparation for our sessions and held creative brainstorming lessons to find an interesting lead for her to pursue. She has now written her entire EE – an essay about Golding’s use and reworking of the biblical story of the Fall of Man – in time for the submission date.

English extension classes

I have been tutoring this student over the past few months on a weekly basis to supplement her knowledge of classical literary texts. Our current project revolves around Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’: she read this text in class (she studies at an international school in Hong Kong) but did not grasp the underlying meaning of most of the book, and was struggling to articulate her views. I have been leading creative lessons that cover the book chronologically to give her a more thorough understanding of the book, and also to simultaneously discuss its wider themes and contexts. A recent lesson involved a study of various book covers of P&P over time, which in turn led to a really productive discussion about art and aesthetics in the book, and the cultural context of garden landscaping, nature paintings, and architecture in the period.

Hobbies

My background is a musical one: I’ve been playing the piano and violin since I was a small child, and participate in chamber groups and orchestras in my spare time as much as I can. I find music to be one of the most powerful ways to connect with people, and I therefore am a regular at the Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House, and Southbank Centre: I recently moved to London, and am set on taking advantage of its fantastic concerts as much as possible! I’ve also worked as a freelance editor over the past three years, and am currently editing a collection of short stories for publication in 2023. I greatly enjoy working with authors and brainstorming plot lines, and in fact have begun to really appreciate fusing this creative approach with a more analytical one in my lessons.

Testimonials