8th April 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
It’s unusual to find a tutor who teaches both English and Maths at higher levels. Quite common at lower levels (many students need a tutor who can teach both for their 11 Plus or Common Entrance exams), but what is it that makes a tutor suited to tutoring either Maths or English? Are there are skills which allow a tutor to teach one or the other more effectively?
Obviously the Blue Tutors teaching guidelines try to be blind of the subject being taught, but they don’t cover the more subjective aspects of a tutor’s lessons (the tutor’s personality, sense of humour etc.), and it’s here where we might discover which attributes are better for which subjects.
Something which all tutors want to develop is a student’s confidence in a subject, and there are obviously many ways to do this. However, we all know that some people make it far easier to encourage confidence than others. These tutors, in particular, are good at tutoring English, or any discursive subject, because students tend to feel happier to give their own opinions; the students don’t feel required to agree with what their tutor or a textbook says, and feel confident to offer their own opinion.
Obviously, with maths, tutors still want to encourage confidence, but a key quality for a maths tutor is to help a student to feel organised. By that we mean understanding what a lesson has covered so far, and what a lesson is going to cover, and also trusting that their tutor is ‘in control’ of the lesson. Again, the Blue Tutors teaching guidelines partly cover this, but some tutors simply appear to be in more control than others. This can be due to seemingly unimportant reasons such as how a tutor is dressed, or how frequently they adjust themselves. These things can genuinely change a student’s mindset in a lesson.