Dreaming Spires Revision

All Dreaming Spires Revision courses have two parts to them.   One part is available 24/7. This includes forums (like email), presentation files which I upload after class, and resource materials which are helpful to have for revision.                The other part of the course is the live portion, when I give talks via my computer, using slides for illustrative purposes, all the while having students type their text-based chat in an additional window on screen.  Once the ten days’ live class portion of the course finishes, your child should set aside time to sit the two papers as though they were the real exams, and then send them to me.  I will mark them and return them. Should your child wish to have any additional tuition beyond the revision course itself, I also offer one-on-one tuition on-line via this same delivery system, or by Skype.  You can make enquiries about schedules and costs for this at any time during or after the revision course in April.

Tutor and Students Come Together at Canterbury People sometimes say they prefer face-to-face tutorials because on-line classes can be so impersonal, but I’ve found it to be a different story when I’ve been teaching on-line tutorials for Dreaming Spires. For one thing, we are able to chat throughout the weeks of the course, both during the hourly class time, and also through the forums as and when we like. This translates into considerably more chat-time than in a weekly face-to-face meeting. I think the relationship on-line is more informal, too.  You can, for example, use the forums to have chats about your life or your other courses and not be worried you’re wasting someone’s time — they only respond if they choose to, and when it's a suitable time for them. Best of all, I had an opportunity this past summer to meet with one of my students and his family, even though he was from India. He had come over to visit family and take his exams, and we were able to rendezvous

It’s a fact of life: examiners for your precious and important work are expected to mark about 350 papers over the course of about a month. The exam boards estimate that this will take about 87 hours (4 papers per hour); however, examiners are paid by the paper, so it’s in their best interest to mark faster. Five-Minute Treatment Think about it: the exam that you sweated over, stressed about, and prepared for is passing through an examiner’s hands in 15 minutes.  For the reading paper, that’s 3 questions’ worth of work, giving the examiner a total of 5 minutes’ concentrated effort per answer. But wait: that’s not all! Starting this year, the English language papers are going to be marked in on-line form, rather than in paper form. Personally, I dread to think of this, because studies have shown that people are able to read much less carefully when something is on-line than when it’s in paper form (see the book called  The Shallows  by Nicholas Carr about this). How you

When I was marking papers for an exam board last year, I kept thinking to myself that so many mistakes were being made that weren’t necessary. I started making notes in my head about how I would teach my own child to tackle the iGCSE English paper if she were going to take it this year. These notes have now turned into a ten-session revision course for CIE iGCSE English exams. I have called in Dreaming Spires Revision because I live near Oxford, and who wouldn’t want to dream of getting a university place at such a good university?!! Dreaming Spires Revision courses are delivered on-line so that anyone, anywhere can take advantage of my experience. This keeps costs low for the student, and it’s also convenient. There are, of course, other companies and schools who do revision classes, but I think I have unique offerings for you that are unavailable elsewhere. For example, I’m not a mega-crammer for hundreds of students; I take only 20 at a time. I’m not plonking you down