18th November 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
At Blue Tutors we do our best to advertise our devotion to good teaching. Lots of tutors say that the thing that first attracted them to us was how highly we value the teaching ability of every tutor we take on. However, many tutors point out that there is another skill, which is not really related to teaching ability, but is also not a more human or emotional skill, and it actually comes from having a good knowledge and experience of the syllabus. The skill is knowing when to emphasise something, so that your student realises its importance.
The skill tends to come from a tutor’s own experience with the subject, remembering that a particular skill or approach was important when the tutor was studying, or from being an experienced tutor, and seeing lots of other students struggle with the same problem.
For example, an A-level Maths tutor will generally be concerned with conveying ideas to students. The nature of the subject means that a deep understanding will make life very easy for a student, whereas if the student is simply remembering a system to answer questions, rather than trying to understand them, then they’ll find the subject much easier as it becomes more complicated. However, there is a subject in A-level maths where, arguably, the understanding becomes slightly less important.
In Decision Mathematics students are generally concerned with finding the best, or optimum solutions to questions. It’s a subject which tends to involve a little guesswork, and looking at a number of possible solutions and finding the best one. It is helpful to understand the theories behind the maths, but organisation and clear writing can really help students.
In these situations, an experienced tutor will stress the importance of organising work properly and making everything clear (for decision maths, big, clearly labelled diagrams and tables can make a massive difference). Inevitably, this will help the student more than spending a long time clarifying the ideas involved, and spending no time discussing a skill which might be vitally important to do well.
So, those tutors who know what to emphasise when working through a syllabus will help students to focus on the important aspects of what they are learning. As long as the tutor is adept at communicating the scale of importance of certain skills, and doesn’t place a huge emphasis on too many things, then it will really help that tutor’s students.