Recent Articles

“There are people who embrace the Oxford comma, and people who don’t, and I’ll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken.” So says Lynne Truss, author of the hugely successful punctuation bible “Eats Shoots & Leaves”, in reference to the surprising strength of opinion surrounding the use of the...

There’s clearly something special about the University of Oxford. Let’s take a look at Oxford in the 20th century. 9 of the 19 Prime Ministers Britain had in the 20th century studied at Oxford; the second most popular higher education option with British Prime Ministers was not Cambridge, but ‘none’. It’s seventh in the world ...

Many of us learn English primarily for work purposes, and yet business English doesn’t often feature in school curricula. You’ll probably have studied English poetry, novels, and perhaps even a play or two (Shakespeare is likely to feature).

You wouldn’t have thought that essays have much in common with creative writing. Creative writing, by definition, involves being ‘creative’: making things up, letting your imagination run wild. Essays are about being factual and objective, communicating ideas and arguments in the clearest way possible and attempting to enhance the reader’s knowledge, rather than their imagination...

When you first start to realise that your child is brighter than their peers – whether it’s hitting developmental milestones early, or reaching for toys and games that you wouldn’t yet expect them to understand – it can feel like you’ve won the lottery of parenthood. But of course, it’s not so straightforward. Raising a ...

At school, you don’t often get the opportunity to choose the format in which you answer a question. You’ll usually be told whether you should be answering a question in the form of an essay, a presentation, or more rarely something more creative like a poster. But that means on the rare occasions when you ...

About the Author Stephanie Allen read Classics and English at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and is currently researching a PhD in Early Modern Academic Drama at the University of Fribourg. Top tips on how to be less like you and more like the brain-boxes whose grades we all envy. 1)  Plan to work right up...

Getting to grips with the best of English-language literature can be hard for those learning English as a foreign language. We’ve provided a list of essential English novels that everyone should read in a previous article, but many of these are likely to prove daunting if you’re not a confident reader of English. George Eliot’s […]

As with any other country, we Brits are subject to our fair share of cultural stereotypes. While, to a greater or lesser degree, there’s an element of truth in some of them, you’ll soon discover that many are comically far from the truth! That’s not to say that we deny responsibility; many of the stereotypes...