Dr Marcella McCarthy, English resources author

Marcella grew up in London, but moved to Oxford to study. She gained a first class BA (Hons) degree with Oxford University, which she followed with a D.Phil in Late Medieval English.

In the following ten years Marcella lectured at both Oxford University and London University, specialising in Medieval and Renaissance Language and Literature, and the History of the English Language.

"It's a quick and hassle-free way to share resources. The production standards are good, and they have a wider reach than I can achieve alone."

"I started to do some freelance work for the Oxford English Dictionary, and after a year or so was offered a staff post on the new Oxford English Dictionary 3rd Edition project, as assistant editor specialising in etymology, getting the whole dictionary online."

Dr McCarthy did however miss student contact, and as her children were going through the school system she found herself more and more interested in school outreach work, and conferences designed to attract state school students to Oxford.

"I've always liked sharing resources with others - this way I reach more people, and actually get paid for it as well."

Marcella therefore retrained as a secondary school teacher whilst doing some freelance work for Oxford colleges.

"Having held a range of responsibility posts in school, I'm now an Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) for Oxfordshire, in English (specialising in KS5) and also an AST in Gifted and Talented Education, and a regular speaker at conferences for both specialities. I have also been asked to consult for the county about the new GCSE specification, so am currently helping to prepare schools and departments for the demands of controlled assessment by targeted outreach. My background in Linguistics means that I am especially interested in working on the spoken language module, and I am running some conferences on this next year to help teachers prepare for this new element of the course. I am a Lead Practitioner for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, and spoke at their Humanities conference this year, and I'm also a Lead Practitioner for SEAL, which I piloted in my current school."

"I have always produced large numbers of resources, and when my school decided to drop the Language and Literature specification, I thought that it would be useful to share the resources I produced with a wider audience. Once I started getting feedback about the usefulness of the resources, I offered more, as it’s a way of readily reaching a wider audience."

Dr McCarthy hopes to start work on materials for Robert Browning A Level AQA B Literature shortly.

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