College English Tutoring

English I

English I goes by many names, and it is required at most colleges across every major. Instead of viewing this class as another requirement to get through, see it as an opportunity to enhance a highly transferable skill. Your ability to gain knowledge through reading and express thoughts through writing will help you shine in any future career. 

English I is usually a writing-focused class. You may be asked to write for a variety of tasks, but these two are the most common by far: 

Narrative: a narrative essay is a personal story, often in the form of a vignette. This type of essay, contrary to popular belief, is not scored on your ability to entertain the reader. Instead, your professor wants to see you experiment with narrative techniques that show your understanding of the genre. Great storytelling can make any story interesting. Here are some narrative techniques to enhance your writing: 

• Dialogue: make your character(s) speak aloud. You can make dialogue unique by individualizing your dialogue tags, like “she sighed” or “he exclaimed.” Allowing your characters to speak also helps the audience picture them more easily. Each of us has a unique way of speaking, and so should your characters. 

• Sensory language: use words that appeal to the five senses of sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. You could say “she sipped the milkshake,” or you could say, “the icy vanilla chilled the roof of her mouth, making her new filling sing in pain.” Sensory language is a good thing to look for as you revise your story, as many writers don’t think to include it on the first go-around. Search for any area where you can describe an experience instead of just saying it. 

• Point of view: one of the most important choices an author makes is who tells their story. In a narrative, you need to decide whether you will have a first-person or third-person narrator. A first-person narrator is a character in the story who tells the tale from their perspective, which can add the sense of an “inside look” for readers. A third-person narrator is usually unnamed and separate from the tale, sharing the details from outside the main narrative. A third-person narrator can be limited, meaning they focus on one setting or character to narrate, or they can be omniscient, meaning they are all-seeing and can narrate any part of the story as you see fit. 

Critical/literary analysis: it would be highly unusual for you to make it through English I without being asked to analyze some form of text. With the rise of media literacy standards in colleges and universities, many professors may even challenge you to analyze a film or television show instead of a traditional novel. One of the most major mistakes we correct as we help you revise your analysis essay is that, unless the professor has specifically requested it, you should never include your point of view (ex. “I think”/”I would say that”). You are expected to analyze this text as a thoughtful, objective observer; for that reason, your essay sounds unsure, unprofessional, and overly informal when you use “I” in analytical writing. The other requirement for a great analysis essay is to understand the text on a deep level. How could you analyze something that you can’t explain? Make sure to attend your lectures on the required text, and expect to read/watch the text at least three times to understand it fully. You need to become an expert on the text to show off that knowledge in your essay. If literature is your weak spot, our tutors recommend checking out this amazing book, Thomas C. Foster’s revised edition of How to Read Literature Like a College Professor. In his book, Foster explains “the language of reading” in a way that makes complicated stories feel accessible. He was a professor for many years before writing this book, so he knows what students need. This book will help you identify patterns in symbols and meanings that may feel hidden in complex texts. 

English II

Most colleges and universities will offer you options to fulfill your English II requirement, and you should take this opportunity and run with it. Choose a class that sounds compelling to you, especially when you know that, no matter what, you’ll have to read a million texts for the course. If you have to read that much, you may as well find it interesting. On the other hand, since you’re selecting a more focused course than you did for English I, you are also expected to engage with that topic at a higher level. English II courses often include options like Shakespeare, African-American Literature, LGTBQ+ Literature, and more. These courses will take you on a more targeted journey through one area of literature’s history, style, and modern equivalent. 

Speaking of--English II often feels more like a history course than a literature one. Many English professors stress the importance of context; to read Audre Lorde out of context is to willfully ignore and misunderstand her meanings. Thus, you’ll be memorizing as much biographical information as literary plot points. Here are some tactics to help balance those subjects together in whatever English II course you’ve chosen: 

• Timelines: if you’re a visual learner, you may already know the power of timelines. Especially in English II, you are trying to understand a progression of changes in an artistic medium, specifically how those changes are influenced by historical events. Make yourself a big timeline where you can chronologically organize authors’ births and deaths, novels’ publication dates, and influential historical events like wars and pandemics. It’s easier to see how everything is connected when you can see it all at once. 

• Journaling: one easy way to get your brain to “download” information from complex texts is to pause every chapter and journal all your thoughts down. Respond to everything--author perspectives, writing styles, historical influences, etc. Even if the journal is messy and random, it helps. Your brain loves to process information by shaping it into something new, so putting that new knowledge into your own thoughts and words is an extremely powerful tool. Writing it by hand is better than typing, as your brain works doubly hard while you form the letters yourself. 

• Become the Teacher: find a willing subject, and teach them everything you’re learning. This study tactic follows similar ideas to those behind journaling, where your brain does best when it’s forced to reorganize information. By making a Slides, Canva, or Powerpoint presentation to show and explain to someone else, you are engaging with the course information on a deeper level than you normally would. This practice will help you identify what is important from the material versus what’s not. It will also help you identify patterns and streamline your explanations as you try to tailor the presentation for your audience. You can take this opportunity to create graphic representations of the material too, like the aforementioned timeline or a Venn diagram. You could even make your “student” a quiz to take after they view your presentation. By imagining yourself behind the podium, you’ll feel at one with the course material.