English Literature A-Level Students from all the Hounslow schools met up in the Green School for Girls where we met a Royal Holloway lecturer.

The focus of this talk was 'metaferocity', where ideas such as the influence of metaphors and how they shape literature and daily speech were presented. This was delivered in both an engaging and comprehensive way, and gave me much to think about when it comes to writing. For instance, the concept of 'dead metaphors' were covered, meaning metaphors that are so commonly used, we tend to forget what they are - 'time is money' for instance. The lecture was also interactive, giving us the opportunity to answer questions and ask our own.

We were then split into groups to participate in five workshops. I started off with 'reconstructing poetry', where we explored the influence of hymns on poetry and attempted to create our own. Next was 'the plays the thing', which covered the beginning of plays and theatre, and its influence on society. After a short break was the session on 'what's the big idea' which covered structure, and then a lecture on 'movements in time' which talked about changing society and the influence it had on literature (my personal favorite). finally 'critical mass' looked at the different literary lenses we could adopt when looking at literature, such as Marxism and feminism.

On a whole, I found this to be a valuable experience, as each 'mini-lesson' covered ideas and concepts which were vastly different and new to how we learned at GCSE. I found equally interesting, the opportunity to speak and interact with the other students taking English literature at A-level, and comparing ideas on texts that we've studied, and the different ways they've been taught to interpret concepts and novels. This trip provided useful insights and was a lovely way to meet new people.

Hajar Rahimi [Year 12]