Joe Livingstone
Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of York.
Master’s degree in philosophy from King’s College London.
Examiner for OCR Religious Studies.
Over 10 years tutoring experience.
52 five-star reviews over many third-party tutoring sites.
Creator of this site, the most popular online philosophy and religious studies revision resource!
My working life is divided between tutoring and developing my website content. I don’t take on that many students, leaving me with a lot of mental space and energy for them.
My approach, simply put, is to figure out what students need to improve on and out how best to achieve that. I’ve helped thousands of students and am very attuned to the fact that, although I’ve noticed significant trends, everyone has their own unique needs.
I take on a lot of responsibility for my students’ improvement. I don’t see tutoring as just a supplement to school. Tutoring has much more potential than that. It allows for a level of intervention that teachers just don’t have time for. Such as:
- Providing proper, full feedback about exactly what general improvements students need to make to their essays.
- One-on one ongoing discussions to make sure they understand and are mindful about what and how to improve.
- Consistently reminding and keeping students progressing regarding those improvements.
- Helping with revision efficiency and methods.
My A levels have a lot of content which just has to be memorised. However that’s only half the battle. It’s possible to know everything in the text book and still be stuck at C/ B if essay structure is bad. Equally important to memorisation are certain skills which have to be developed to properly deploy and mould memorised content.
My lessons typically involve one or more of the following:
- Teaching content (especially for the hard topics)
- Teaching skills like question interpretation, relevant content selection, how to write links to the question. I make sure students understand the general themes and patterns of the skill. I model it myself and then encourage students to try it.
- Going through essays, checking whether students have improved on the key areas/techniques they in particular need to work on.
I have my own method for teaching my A levels. I love philosophy, but I also love figuring out how to efficiently organise the A level content in a way which enables structured revision and prepares students for the exam. This method is also the focus of the revision notes on my website.
Essentially, topics shouldn’t be learned as just content. Students should also be thinking about and taught how they could use the material in essay questions. What’s special about my approach, and what I think has made my website so successful, is that I fuse passion for the subjects with passion for a systematic focus on moulding the content and revision methods towards exactly what the examiners want to see in the exam.
Once I’m finished teaching a topic to student, they will have a clear understanding of how it divides into parts/paragraphs. They will see how to arrange them in an essay to suit all potential exam questions. They will see how to revise the topic. This takes effort and dedication, but it works and it’s empowering.
I have a very flexible and relaxed timetable. I don’t charge for cancelling or even missing lessons unless it becomes a repeat issue, and you can arrange as many or as few lessons with me as you like. This approach feels more positive and relaxed to me.
Although I’m very focused on my student’s grades and improvement, I am also friendly, relaxed, have infinite patience and I am even moderately entertaining!
Private tutoring details & contact information
£90/hour for online private tutoring. For lessons I use Zoom and take payment by bank transfer. I ask that you pay me before the lesson.
joelivingstonetutor@outlook.com