Our Courses
We offer substantive, practical, engaging courses that take the mystery out of producing great English writing. You can read about some of these courses below.
For more information about our offerings, or to request a future session of the courses below, please email info@collegestreetwriters.com — we would love to work with you!
Course offerings for 2023 soon to come.
How to Read an Image:
Writing Outstanding Analysis of Image and Text
4–8 July 2022. Afternoons, 1:00–4:00pm.
A-Levels, IB, HKDSE and other senior curricula all require analysis of visual and written texts as a major component of their English assessments. In these exams, students must swiftly analyse and explain the technical elements and purpose of a range of text types. How do images work? How does rhetoric function in ads and articles? Students who can tackle any unseen text with confidence have a huge advantage. This camp takes the mystery out of writing sophisticated close analysis: over one week, we will build a high-level essay together and develop writing skills that will impress the toughest examiner.
In this fast-paced and fun (we promise!) writing camp, we will visit the University Museum and Gallery exhibition “Adrift in Time: Photography by Chun Wai” as we learn to understand and analyse photographs, advertisements from Gucci to KFC, and many other print and online texts. Students will leave with new confidence in their own analysis and expression abilities, ready to face the challenges of their assessments in A-Levels and IB.
Shakespeare!
Writing Outstanding Literary Analysis
11–15 July 2022. Mornings, 9:30–12:30pm.
Shakespeare can be the most anxiety-inducing part of the English curriculum.
This course brings Othello, The Tempest and Shakespeare’s sonnets down to earth! Students will learn to recognise, describe and analyse the themes, ideas, style and language of Shakespeare’s works. Shakespeare is a prescribed author across the English curricula, whether students are sitting OIB, A-levels or IB. Othello will be an option for AS and A-level English exams and IB exams in the coming years.
By watching, reading and talking about classic scenes together, we will master Shakespeare’s subtle use of language, and all the technical details of his lines. Over the course of a week, we will build an essay together that applies serious critical ideas to Shakespeare’s works, with our focus firmly on practical skills (and a few tricks) that make serious analysis and sophisticated writing feel easy.
Hacking the IB Exam:
English A: Language and Literature – HL – Paper 1
8-10 May 2022.
Run on the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before the upcoming English A exam, these afternoon study sessions (3:00-4:20pm) will let you practice writing an excellent Paper 1—and help you with the final practical tips and tricks for when you sit down to write the exam by yourself. Our sessions focus on the practical skills (and exam-writing hacks) that make producing serious analysis and sophisticated writing on this Paper feel easy.
Daily Shorts: A Creative Writing Camp.
11-15 April 2022.
This writing camp challenges students to produce a short piece of creative prose every day for five days. This camp is ideal for writing beginners and for those who want to hone their sense of style as critical readers of fiction and nonfiction. The camp will introduce techniques of great writers of the past—from Jane Austen to Jack Kerouac— and help young writers find their own voice.
Fantasy and Philosophy:
Writing an Outstanding Analysis Essay.
April 2022. Online only.
What is fantasy? And what does it reveal about our reality? This essay writing camp answers these questions with a little help from Plato’s Republic (and Shakespeare, the poetry of Tennyson, Victorian painting, and Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). Students will learn to apply complex theoretical and philosophical ideas to major canonical poems, plays, films and works of art – and along the way, will develop the skills needed to produce outstanding A-Level, IB, and college-level essays and exam papers.