One-on-one English tutoring with me, Nico. This is home turf: my degree is in English. From middle school book reports to AP Literature, the graded skill is the same — turning what you read into a coherent argument on paper. Summarizing is easy. Analysis is a craft, and it's teachable.
The books change; the skills grow.
Reading stamina, paragraphs that hold together, and the first real essays.
the five-paragraph crutch forms hereHarder texts and the expectation that themes get argued, not just spotted.
analysis replaces summaryThe essay bar jumps — voice, structure and evidence all graded at once.
Rhetoric: how arguments work, and how to build one under a timer.
close reading gets realFiction, poetry and drama at college depth — the summit of the track.
Higher level analysis and argumentation for college students.
The top three issues I've seen in essays over my 13 years of tutoring: weak or no argument, off-topic evidence, or a first draft handed in as a final. We fix all three, and more.
An essay is an argument. We build the claim first, so every sentence written after makes sense.
Lead in, quote/paraphrase, analyze — in that order, every time. Floating quotes stop making it to the final draft.
First drafts are raw material. Students learn to mark up their own pages the way I mark mine — and the grades follow the habit.
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Essay skills feed everything — including the college essay and the writing half of history. Same tutor across all of it.
AP Language is rhetoric — how nonfiction arguments are built and how to build your own. AP Literature is fiction, poetry and drama read closely and argued about in essays.
They reward different muscles, and plenty of students take both. Either way, the skill is the same one schools grade all year: turning a reading into a defensible written argument.
Because the graded skill isn't reading; it's analysis. Summary retells what happened — analysis argues why it matters, with evidence.
That jump from summary to argument is exactly what we train: thesis first, evidence chosen deliberately, and the "so what?" answered in every paragraph.
Often, yes — most reading hatred is really frustration at reading slowly or getting lost, and both improve with technique.
I won't promise a bookworm. I will promise a student who can get through the assigned reading efficiently and go into every essay with something to say.
One-on-one at your home, anywhere from Studio City to Santa Monica — or online. Evening slots run until 9 PM.
Sessions track the class: the current book, the next essay, the writing habits that carry into every future class. You get a written note from me after every session.