ABOUT THE ENGLISH PRACTICE
Experienced teaching.
Thoughtful, personal tuition.
A teacher-led programme built around a coherent curriculum, purposeful practice and personal feedback that students learn to use.
A NOTE FROM THE FOUNDER
My name is Alex.
I’ve been a teacher for 20 years, and I continue to teach and lead a department in a UK secondary school.
I’m a qualified secondary teacher and an experienced English tutor. I hold a degree in English Literature and a master’s in Philosophy, and my work involves both teaching students and supporting fellow teachers.
Across the classroom and individual tuition, I keep returning to the same question: how do we help a student turn an explanation they understand into work they can produce independently?
WHY I CREATED THE ENGLISH PRACTICE
Understanding an idea.
Learning to use it.
A good conversation with a tutor can clarify an idea, uncover a misunderstanding and build confidence. In a one-hour lesson, those exchanges can be very useful.
I wanted to build a service around what helps that understanding become independent skill: the student studying a carefully explained model, completing a purposeful task, receiving precise feedback and learning how to act on it.
That is the work I wanted to make more deliberate. A student might learn how to analyse a particular word, develop an argument or control a paragraph. Their teacher reads what they have actually written, identifies a useful next step and shows them how to improve. The student then revises the work and applies that learning to a fresh task.
The English Practice brings this cycle into a routine that families can fit around their week. Each pack includes around 60 minutes of instruction, modelling and practice. Afterwards, students allow around 15–30 minutes to read their feedback, complete the essential improvement and check the result. Additional activities are optional.
RESEARCH INFORMS THE APPROACH
Feedback students
can put to work.
John Hattie and Helen Timperley’s work on feedback explains the importance of connecting clear goals with a student’s current understanding and productive next steps. Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam’s research on formative assessment emphasises using evidence of learning to shape what happens next.
The Education Endowment Foundation’s feedback guidance makes a practical point that runs through our programme: feedback should build on good initial teaching, and teachers should plan how students will understand and use it.
That is why the explanations and models matter, why the practice has a clear purpose, and why time to act on feedback is built into the service. We look for improvement in what the student can do on their next piece of work.
Read more about the teaching principlesPERSONAL FEEDBACK FROM ALEX
A personal commitment
to useful feedback.
I run The English Practice myself. I design the programme and personally mark each pupil’s submitted work, using it to identify their next learning priority.
That personal attention takes time, so I keep the number of pupils limited. This introductory trial has 30 places shared across Years 7–13, with GCSE Literature and A-level practice confirmed after checking the pupil’s course.
My standard is straightforward: understand the student’s work, identify what will help, explain it clearly and give them an opportunity to put it into practice. Personal attention is central to the service.
For GCSE students, the work reflects their confirmed exam board, qualification and set texts. We build from each student’s starting point towards more precise analysis, convincing arguments and confident, independent writing.
See what that looks like
in a student’s work.
Questions about the programme? Contact Alex.
YOUR FIRST WEEK FREE
Personal feedback.
A clear next step.
A complete guided English lesson and workbook, with personal feedback from Alex and a focused task to put it into practice.
No card details. No automatic payments. No obligation to continue.
One complete lesson, workbook and feedback cycle per new student. Years 7–13. Alex confirms GCSE Literature and A-level course suitability before the free week begins.