This term, our English tutors will be covering text response. We at Spectrum Tuition are always working to give our students the best possible chance of achieving success in their studies. Recently, we have been working hard to come up with innovative ways of teaching our students text response.

What Is Text Response?

Text response is the ability to read and respond to a piece of writing in complex and often difficult ways. Text response measures students’ abilities not just to understand a text, but to interpret themes, respond to characters, identify tones and engage imaginatively with that they are reading. Students who are good at text response generally read widely. They also tend to enjoy reading novels, poems, comics and newspapers.

Why Is Text Response Important?

The ability to engage with a piece of writing is a skill that every child needs. Text response is a central component of the VCE English curriculum, but it is also vital to most other subjects. Many students struggle with mathematics and science, not because they can’t add numbers or remember formulas, but due to poor reading comprehension. Good reading and text response skills are often very difficult to teach. But this is a challenge we have set for ourselves!

How Do Our English Tutors Get Students Excited About Text Response?

The first step in helping our students improve their text response skills is to make sure they are excited by what they are reading. Students enjoy what they are reading are far more likely to learn valuable reading, comprehension and interpretation skills. In order to make sure all of our students actively participate in reading, our English tutors have begun an exciting project to develop our own range of short stories. These stories are written by our very own author and tutor, Christopher Edwards. He designed them to engage students of a variety of year levels, whilst developing their text response skills.

Thanks for reading! If you would like to see how our classes can help your child, click here to download a free course book!