Becoming a better writer happens through conversation, far more than through a checklist of mistakes on a feedback sheet. With online Year 10 English tutoring, they do the work live on a shared screen instead of watching someone else do it.
In Year 10, the fastest way to lift an essay is to get two kinds of sentence right: the thesis statement, and the topic sentence of each paragraph. Students learn what excellent looks like through explicit practice and feedback, so that’s how our sessions are built.
Why these two sentences need explicit practice
A thesis statement is the essay’s whole argument in one or two sentences, and each topic sentence argues one part of it. If those sentences stay inside the text, describing what characters feel or what happens to them, the rest of the essay follows them there.
Most students can’t see that from a model answer alone. They need to draft, get specific feedback, and redraft, until they can feel the difference between a sentence that describes and one that argues.
How a feedback round works in the shared doc
Sessions run on Google Meet, and for English the main tool is a shared Google Doc. Your child writes, then they and the tutor review it together, talking through the turns of phrase that work well and the things that could be stronger.
For a thesis statement, a round looks like this, using an invented Year 10 novel, The Quiet City, about a teenager growing up in a city where everyone is watched:
| Draft | Your child writes | The tutor asks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Quiet City is about a girl who lives in a city where everyone is watched. | “That’s what happens. What is the author arguing?” |
| 2 | In The Quiet City, the author shows that surveillance is bad. | “Bad how, and for whom? What exactly does it destroy?” |
| 3 | In The Quiet City, the author uses Ada’s growing isolation to warn that a society built on constant watching destroys the trust it claims to protect. | “Now that’s an argument. Which three paragraphs prove it?” |
The tutor asks; your child rewrites. Every draft stays in the doc’s version history, so the argument can be seen sharpening.
A thesis bank, built across the year
One page of the shared doc can hold a strong thesis for each major idea in a text, ready to adapt for any question.
| Idea in the text | Thesis statement | Best three quotes |
|---|---|---|
| Surveillance and trust | The author warns that a society built on constant watching destroys the trust it claims to protect. | |
| Courage |
How we check it’s landing
The test is whether your child can do it without the tutor’s questions. When their first draft of a thesis already argues something about the author’s purpose, the practice has worked.
Signs it’s working
- Their first-draft thesis statements make an argument rather than a description.
- Every topic sentence argues one part of the thesis.
- They ask themselves “what is the author arguing?” before they write.
- Teacher feedback starts mentioning the strength of their argument.