English lessons are now being taught our tutor centre in Timperley village in Altrincham every Saturday afternoon.

We have a great group of students from the local area – they are so well behaved and enthusiastic. It is an absolute pleasure to teach them. I wish teaching was always like this because it feels like an enjoyable hobby rather than a demanding job.

In my experience, most Year 7 students don’t know the basics with regard to punctuation and grammar. For example, they think commas are for pauses and a verb is just a “doing word”. It is clear they are not being taught by teachers who are English specialists in primary school.

We make sure our students are not just able to punctuate a sentence correctly, but they can also use a variety of punctuation. This is one of the hallmarks of students who achieve higher grades in their English GCSE examinations.

Our English students are also being taught how to use figurative language in their writing and to identify it in different texts and analyse the effects of it. These skills are essential if a student wants to obtain a grade B or A in their English GCSE examination.

Many students struggle to identify metaphors and examples of personification in texts. This means they won’t be able to explore the effects of it on the reader and as consequence they will not obtain a high mark in the Reading paper. It is imperative that students are taught these skills thoroughly. In the English lessons at the Teacher Cooperative Tutor Centre, students are given model answers and shown exactly what they have to do in order to write an A* answer. The students are carefully guided through the process step by step by the teacher.