25th January 2019 9:00
By Blue Tutors
An interesting phenomenon of tutoring is how quickly students react to it, or rather the differing speeds of students’ reactions. Some parents give feedback to say that their son or daughter’s outlook changed so much after the first lesson. Others say that they were unsure at first, but slowly began to see the benefits and now think the tutoring is invaluable. The hidden reasons behind the speed of reaction can really help tutors and students understand what to expect from the lessons.
When someone initially requests a tutor they sometimes say something like “my son/daughter is just really struggling with history, we don’t know what to do.” The tutor arrives for the first lesson and quickly realises that the knowledge and understanding of the topic is not the problem at all, but actually the student cannot communicate their understanding in an essay. Essay technique is something which is rarely taught to students, particularly in classes of 25+, and it’s such a common cause of under-performance in exams. If this is the case, a good tutor will normally be able to solve the problem within a few lessons. The difference seems miraculous.
Not realising where a student’s difficulties lie is obviously not the student’s or parents’ fault; if we all knew how to be better at something we wouldn’t need a tutor. It’s just a shame sometimes that someone has waited so long, and possibly become demoralised, before asking for help.
Of course, the converse is also sometimes true; parents tell us that their son/daughter is very good at a subject and just needs a little guidance. This might be after the jump from GCSE to A Level, and the student hasn’t confessed that they are struggling because they did well at GCSE and haven’t been struggling so much before. They can feel embarrassed, which is really unfair because that jump in difficultly affects so many people.
When the issue is a lack of understanding, it usually takes longer for tuition to show its worth. Tutors need to cement the basics of the subject upon which the student can build and this will take a number of lessons and hard work from the student. However, whatever the reason a student isn’t doing as well as they could, in our experience, a good tutor and a motivated student always leads to positive results.