Case Study: Struggling to hit target grades

Emma’s mum contacted me in June 2025. Emma was working hard but her English results didn’t reflect her efforts. In her end of Year 10 exams, she was on the borderline of a grade 3 and 4 in Language and a grade 4 for Literature. The school had set her a target grade of 6 in both Language and Literature which seemed quite unattainable to her at that time.

Tuition Action

I started tutoring Emma weekly in June 2025 when she was coming to the end of Year 10. We started by looking at Emma’s work to date and her exam papers to see where her strengths and weaknesses were. It was immediately apparent that Emma was trying hard and doing everything that she thought she needed to do but that she was not exploring the set texts in enough detail to hit the higher marks.

We started working on Emma’s analytical skills. She could make great comments on literary devices and language choices but, at that point, was just picking out one thing to say about a quotation rather than zooming in one several aspects of it and drawing out layers of meaning. I introduced Emma to a method I call ‘exploding a quotation’ where you write the quotation in the middle of a page and add as many annotations as you can to it so that it looks like an exploded firework. We practised this analysis approach by looking at the Literature texts which also helped to consolidate Emma’s understanding of the texts.

Another area I could see that Emma needed help with was writing about context. Like many students, Emma’s tendency was to ‘bolt on’ comments about historical context to her paragraphs. We spent time talking about what the writer’s intentions might have been as this can help students write more meaningful comments about context. Again, Emma was great at doing this – she just didn’t know that she needed to. This also helped Emma to make more meaningful comparisons in the poetry section as she could compare what the poets’ messages were.

Together, we looked at many past Language papers, and I gave Emma clear structures to apply to each question which gave her a lot more confidence – knowing how the answer needs to be structured can take away those ‘brain-freeze’ moments in the exam. This also helped Emma with timing her answers as she knew when she had written enough.

Once Emma had mastered these exam structures and approaches, it was clear that her enthusiasm for the subject increased dramatically. She constantly did more work in her own time and gave me questions and papers to mark each week. The importance of this cannot be understated – without lots of practice (and feedback on that work) your chances of improvement and success are low.

Outcome

What became apparent as we continued to work together was that Emma was a talented story writer. I can’t take much credit for her creativity and ability to grab a reader’s attention, but I do think that it was only when she had become more confident in her own ability that she felt able to show me her stories.

Emma’s determination and effort continued to increase throughout the year that I worked with her and, by the time the exams came round, she was confident of what she needed to do in each exam; her knowledge and understanding of the set texts; and, more importantly, her ability to do well.

Emma’s final grade in both subjects was a 6 – a phenomenal achievement for a student who was on the borderline of passing a year ago. As I write this, Emma is waiting for a remark for the Language exam as she was only one mark away from a Grade 7.

Emma illustrates perfectly that tuition is most successful when a student doesn’t just see the tuition as just an hour with me a week. Throughout the year of tuition, Emma spent several hours a week practising what I was teaching her and completing exam papers so that I was able to tell her exactly where she was improving and what else she could do.  As a tutor, I can help a student develop skills, use answer structures and apply knowledge but this will only translate to exam success if they keep practising these things themselves.