Latest news with #English literature
France 24
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- France 24
Stressed UK teens seek influencers' help for exams success
He is among online study influencers gaining popularity among stressed British teenagers in search of exam success. But educators and examiners are concerned some pupils are relying too much on online advice. Malik posts videos on TikTok and YouTube forecasting questions on classic English literature for the UK GCSE school exam taken at 16. Last year "I predicted the entire paper," he says on his popular "Mr Everything English" channel. Malik, who says he is a former assistant head teacher, notes that he is just making an "educated guess", but educators remain concerned. "If you are a 15- or 16- year-old doing your GCSEs and you've got somebody in your phone who's telling you 'this is what the English exam is going to be about'... that is so appealing," said Sarah Brownsword, an assistant professor in education at the University of East Anglia. After British pupils sat their exams in May, some complained that Malik's predictions were wrong. "Never listening to you again bro," one wrote, while others said they were "cooked" (done for) and would have to work in a fast food restaurant. With GCSE results set to be released on August 21, one exam board, AQA, has warned of "increasing reliance on certain online revision channels". "Clearly this is an important source of revision and support for students," it said. But the examiners want "your interpretation of the texts you have studied, not some stranger's views on social media". 'Looking for help' Students are overloaded, school leaders say. "With so much content to cover and revise in every subject it can be completely overwhelming," Sarah Hannafin, head of policy for the school leaders' union NAHT, told AFP. "And so it is unsurprising that young people are looking for anything to help them to cope." Malik, whose prediction video has been viewed on YouTube 290,000 times, did not respond to a request for comment. Brownsword praised TikTok, where she posts grammar videos for student teachers, saying: "You can learn about anything and watch videos about absolutely anything". Teachers have always flagged questions that could come up, she said, but predicting exam questions online is "really tricky". "But I think there's a real difference between doing that and doing it on such a scale, when you've got thousands or tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers online." Other content creators defended such videos, however. "Those kind of videos were never to mislead," said Tilly Taylor, a university student posting TikTok videos with candid revision advice to 100,000 followers. "I make it very clear in my videos that these are predictions," based on past papers and examiners' reports, said Taylor, who appeals to younger viewers with her fashionable eye makeup. Other content creators sell predicted papers "all the time," Taylor said, but "I don't think it's right." Other educational influencers were more in favour. "If you're marketing it as a predicted paper, that's completely fine... you just can't say guaranteed paper," said Ishaan Bhimjiyani, 20, who has over 400,000 TikTok followers. He promoted a site offering an English predicted paper for £1.99 ($2.70) with a "history of 60-70 percent accuracy". 'It took off' Predicted papers allow you to "check whether you're actually prepared for the exam", said Jen, a creator and former teacher who posts as Primrose Kitten and declined to give her surname. Her site charges £4.99 for an English predicted paper and includes a video on phrasing to score top marks. Bhimjiyani, who went to a private school, started posting on TikTok at 16, saying he was "documenting my journey, posting about how I revise". "And then it kind of took off." He founded an educational influencer agency, Tap Lab, that now represents over 100 bloggers in their mid-teens to mid-20s. Influencers earn most from paid promotions -- for recruiters or beauty or technology brands --- which must be labelled as such, he said. Bhimjiyani made £5,000 with his first such video. Taylor said she recently promoted student accommodation. No one explained "how do you actually revise", Taylor said of her school years. So she turned to YouTube for ideas.
Telegraph
10-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Coleridge cured broken heart with opium binge
It must be one of the most eloquent 'sorry for not getting back to you sooner' letters in English literature. A letter written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to a friend apologising for a long silence is being offered for sale later this year. The previously unpublished letter from the poet to his friend George Dyer is full of excuses for his lack of contact – including a broken heart and hints at his heavy drug consumption. In it, Coleridge, then 22, blames his 'indolence' on his 'vice', which has been interpreted by scholars as his use of laudanum – a tincture of opium and alcohol that produces a euphoric effect. Coleridge, who had recently left Cambridge, attributes this to the 'bitter disappointment' of the catastrophic conclusion of his infatuation with Mary Evans, a friend's elder sister whom he had loved 'almost to madness' for five years. Shortly after he finally declared his affection for Mary in November 1794, Coleridge received news of her engagement to another suitor, leaving him bereft. In the letter, written in January 1795, Coleridge tells Dyer apologetically: 'I have this moment seen your Letter. I feel myself under particular difficulties in the necessary attempt to answer it. 'They, who have known me from childhood, easily excuse my wanderings for they have been habituated to them – you expected to find consistency, and deem yourself disappointed... 'The Vice, which has spread its poison through my whole mind, is Indolence – a vice not natural to me, but brought on by bitter disappointment – My delirious Imagination had early concentrated all hopes of Happiness in one point – an unattainable point! 'This circumstance has produced a Dreaminess of mind, which too often makes me forgetful of others' feelings, while I am absorbed in the contemplation of my own mismanaged Sensibilities...' At the time of the letter, Coleridge was lodging at the Angel Inn, beset by depression both about Mary and the failure of his plans for a 'Pantisocracy', a Utopian settlement of 12 men and women in the American colonies. In her 1974 biography of the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Bondage of Opium, Molly Lefebure writes: 'His plans were in a state of fluidity verging on the non-existent... [He] allowed himself to be wafted on the tide and the tide carried him, temporarily back to the Angel Inn. Here he wrote verses and once more sank into dejection and, in every probability, opium.' Scholars suggest the letter now being offered for sale may have been prompted by Dyer, a fellow poet, chiding Coleridge for not replying to his letters sooner. Donovan Rees, an expert in English literature for Bernard Quaritch Rare Books and Manuscripts, which is selling the letter, said: 'The letter was written at a crucial time in Coleridge's life. He has just left university without a degree, and although he has been writing remarkably accomplished verse since he was at school, he only has a couple of publications to his name – enough that he would be a minor footnote in the history of the Romantics had he ceased writing at this point, which was a real possibility. 'He is really just on the cusp of becoming the major poet who is now part of Romantic canon, but he is a young man of great sensitivity to criticism and indeed to other emotional setbacks like the end of his (largely imaginary) passion for Mary Evans – both of which led him to drug abuse (laudanum) and to bouts of depression and 'indolence'.' On a more positive note, Coleridge thanks Dyer for 'a very flattering Review of a very indifferent Composition of mine', referring to his three-act play The Fall of Robespierre, which Coleridge and his great friend Robert Southey wrote in August 1794, in part to raise funds for the Pantisocracy. Dyer had attempted to find a publisher for the play in London and helped distribute copies when it was eventually published in Cambridge. He also published a positive review of the play in the Analytical Review. Coleridge continues: 'I have pledged myself to the Public for another work of more Consequence – I must therefore finish it – and after this bid farewell for ever to the stress, with which, I repent, that I ever formed an acquaintance – I mean to retire into obscure Inactivity, where my feelings may stagnate into Peace.' Far from stagnating, Coleridge threw himself back into literary activity when Southey arrived in London - leading eventually to his first meeting with Wordsworth in September 1795 and the birth of what would come to be known as the Romantic school of poetry. 'Written at a really important juncture' Mr Rees added: 'This particular bout of indolence could in other circumstances have been terminal – imagine that Dyer had not continued to encourage him and that Southey had not come to London to pull him out of his funk. He would never have met Wordsworth, we would have no Lyrical Ballads and therefore no Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and probably no Kubla Khan, with its opium-laced 'stately pleasure dome'… 'But Coleridge is also one of the great critical minds of his generation – and he is keenly aware of his own mental state. It is fascinating for me to see him here diagnosing his own 'mismanaged Sensibilities', 'delirious Imagination', and 'Dreaminess of mind', phrases that could not be more characteristic of Coleridge. It really is a wonderful letter, full of rich content, and written at a really important juncture.' The letter, which is priced at £10,000 plus VAT, was discovered in the collection of Richard Monckton Milnes, the first Baron Houghton, a Victorian poet and patron of literature who died in 1885. The collection was bought by Roy Davids at a sale by Christie's in June 1995.
