Cambridge PhD, Examiner & Qualified Teacher | 11+/ 13+/scholarship applications / GCSE / IGCSE / A-Level English Lit | Oxbridge Admissions English literature

Find out more about Dr Ildiko

• 1) When did you develop an interest in your chosen field and in private tutoring?

  I first developed a deeper interest in literature when I studied for one year as an independent learner in secondary school. I attended two schools simultaneously: a music secondary alongside a selective and academically advanced grammar school. As you can imagine, my workload was very high, so for one year, to concentrate more intensively on music, I opted out of my regular day-to-day school to study independently. This came with a caveat: I had to take an end-of-year exam in all academic subjects that year. So I taught myself independently from books at the age of 17. Interestingly, I never had a private tutor (I was my own tutor!) and received the highest grades in all subjects at the end of the year! During that year I spent a lot of time researching and close reading our set literary texts, and I discovered different ways of interpreting literature that teachers did not have time to cover in depth in regular classes. When I went back to school for my final year, I instantly joined the after-school advanced literature club, where we read a lot of contemporary and postmodern texts. My interest in private tutoring was first sparked when I was already a university lecturer. Teaching English literature at the University of Cambridge, where tutorials take place in small groups or 1:1, was my first step towards developing an interest in private tutoring. I found that getting to know each student's strengths and individual interests and writing styles can make teaching incredibly effective and accelerate progress rapidly. It allows you to give very specific and targeted feedback to each student and keep track of how they improve based on that feedback. So overall, my early exposure to independent learning, and a close and deep attention to literature, had a lot to do with setting me on this path.

• 2) Tell us more about the subject you teach, the topics you like to discuss with students (and possibly those you like a little less).

  I teach English language and English literature to secondary school and university level students. I have taught a huge age range, from age 10 (UK year 6) to Master's, PhD and adult learners. English is an amazingly rich subject that crosses into many other disciplines. The skills it teaches you (communication, comprehension, analysis, synthetising information, inference, contextual knowledge) form the foundation of what you need in most professional roles. I have published widely on the subject I teach, including an academic book on literature and emotion in the eighteenth century. More recently, I have been researching and publishing on war and literature, especially Romantic period literature written during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. So obviously, I have a particular soft spot for literature from earlier time periods, and this comes as a bonus when I get tutorial students who struggle with the comprehension of such texts and I can help them. But overall, I have taught across the entire spectrum of English literature in all periods. When it comes to tutoring, however, I really focus on the student's needs, interests and expectations. It is the learner's goals that will determine the direction of my tutorials. It is particularly rewarding when my students discover new meanings and interpretations of the literature that we discuss in my lessons!

• 3) Did you have any role models; a teacher that inspired you?

  Yes, absolutely. My passion for my subject really flourished at university, where I had some brilliant lecturers who introduced us to a whole range of literature texts, literary theory and varied approaches to literature, which opened my mind to a whole new world of interesting ideas. Their dedication to the subject was inspirational and made me realise that being an expert and publishing in your subject gives such a boost to your subject knowledge that it helps make you a better teacher too.
  
  During my PhD years at Cambridge, I was fortunate to have world-renowned scholars as my dissertation advisors. My main PhD supervisor was a huge name in the field; her knowledge and dedication forever remains an ideal that I carry with me. They were all an absolute inspiration and an honour to work with. And I'm always trying to live up to the high standards that they represented in my education.

• 4) What do you think are the qualities required to be a good tutor?

  First and foremost, a good tutor needs to have excellent subject knowledge; after all, you can't teach what you don't know well! Secondly, knowing pedagogy (that is, the methods of how you teach) is also an essential quality of an excellent tutor. So, in a nutshell, a good tutor has to know the subject that they teach and they have to know how to teach it! In addition to these two essential requirements, there are many others. A tutor needs to work with a student towards agreed on and achievable goals and ensure that progress is happening. Having high expectations towards your students and challenging them at the right level is very important for progress to take place. A tutor also needs to check regularly for understanding and assess the student to make sure that they know and remember what has been taught before they can move on. Providing prompt and meaningful feedback is an important part of this process. Regular and open communication with the student and adapting the material to the student's level are also crucial for successful tutoring to take place. A tutor needs to be a good listener, as we often need to get to the bottom of what the student actually struggles with - which might not always be oblivious to them. But ultimately, I am happiest when my students achieve the goal that they needed tutoring for!

• 5) Provide a valuable anecdote related to your subject or your days at school.

  I had a fantastic English teacher at primary school. When I was 9 years old, some students in my class asked her to teach swear words in English. Her response was: "But I can't! Because English people are too polite to use swear words, so these words don't exist in the English language. The worst thing people say is, "Oh my goodness!" She was a genius.

• 6) What were the difficulties or challenges you faced or still facing in your subject?

  I think the biggest challenge we face these days is related to the advancement of new technologies and alternative forms of communication that suppress traditional book reading. Fewer children read for pleasure outside of the immediate curriculum, which leads to less exposure to higher tier vocabulary and earlier periods' literary and language styles. This, in turn, makes reading comprehension more difficult for a lot of students by the time they reach secondary school. I can see this especially in students often struggling with unseen poetry or 19th-century and even some 20th century texts. I do believe that technological advancement overall is a good thing, however, our exams still require students to read in earlier language styles, which becomes less and less intuitive for them to acquire as they grow up.

• 7) Do you have a particular passion? Is it teaching in general or an element of the subject or something completely different?

  Teaching, researching and writing about literature! I started doing research in my first year at university, when I came across the eighteenth-century writer Laurence Sterne. His novel, Tristram Shandy, was striking, as it used many techniques that postmodern writers used later, in the 20th century. There and then, I decided that I would want to work towards an essay on Sterne for our national student essay competition. On my first attempt, I won the third prize, and two years later, with an essay on Jane Eyre, I came first nationally and had my essay published in an academic journal. Since then, I have had a long and successful career in research, writing and teaching!

• 8) What makes you a Superprof (besides answering this interview questions :-P) ?

  What makes me a Superprof is that I go above and beyond for my students. If they're struggling, I'm there for them. If they are stuck, I don't rest until I have tried everything to get them unstuck. If they don't know where to start or encounter a setback, I try to be resourceful and offer them various alternative ways to tackle the issue. I think with them, plan with them, if necessary. I show them a model of how to write well. I offer to be there between sessions, if they need me, so I always encourage them to reach out. And I'm happiest when they no longer need me in the end, because they have acquired the necessary metacognitive skills to become independent learners and achieved their goals!