Tips for Effective Tutoring
by Scott Butters
For several hours a week, we, the tutors of Claremont Tutors, sit in mildly uncomfortable seats and watch other people write things. For what seems sometimes to be an eternity and is rarely enough time, we live in the mind of another, following their every thought and seeing every scratch mark made by their pencil. Thanks to these few hours a week, we are probably learning how these students think better than any other person has ever known before. If we're going to get so into these students minds, we might as well know what we're doing there, right? Well, I have below outlined a few key strategies to employ in your siege against the confusion which lives within each and every student you teach. If ever you've had trouble teaching something to your student, read on. It's short, and probably helpful. I promise.
Check your student's understanding!
The primary reason that one-on-one tutoring is more effective than classroom teaching is that this greater level of intimacy allows the tutor to receive more feedback from the student. Take advantage of this ability by asking your student questions. Though the explanations you give may sound perfectly clear to you, they often go over the heads of your students. Any time you are attempting to clarify a concept to your students, be sure to ask your student if they understand what you've told them. If they don't understand, do your best to come up with alternative methods of explaining the concept, possibly through an example or a comparison. Students have been trained to nod their heads and smile when teachers ask if they understand, regardless of the truth, so be sure that they are being honest with you!
Vocabulary
One of the biggest problems with classroom learning is the ease with which a student can be distracted by the nearest shiny object, and then when his mind wanders back to the class, the teacher may as well be speaking a foreign language. Unfortunately, the result of this is often that a geometry student might go through the rest of the semester without knowing what “supplementary” means. In order to make your students comfortable with the vocabulary of their classes, it is important for you to use accurate and appropriate terminology during your sessions, but it is critical that you verify your student knows what these words mean! If you are teaching a chemistry student how to identify a precipitate, and all the student is thinking about is the water cycle, then there's a problem!
Let the student be the teacher
As you've surely found by now, one of the best ways to learn a subject is actually to teach it! If your student has even the slightest level of understanding of a concept, a good exercise to go through is to have the student teach it to you! Though the student may not get all of the details perfectly right, this process makes the student focus more closely not just on how a problem is solved, but also on why it is done and why it works. Building on this level of comprehension is excellent for the retention of information, and it gives the student a stronger sense of mastery over the material. After the student has finished teaching you, be sure to correct him on the points where he may have messed up, but feel free also to let the student know what was explained well, or perhaps tell him of some examples that could be used to teach it.
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
~William Arthur Ward
Give the subject some credibility!
An all too common complaint out of high school students goes to the tune of, “But I'm never going to have to use this in my life!” When possible, prove that student wrong. A great way to inspire interest in your students is to describe to them real world applications of the techniques they are learning. Though these asides may take away from the time you might normally spend talking about verb conjugations or tRNA, it will have long term effects which outweigh the loss of a few minutes of your session time. Finishing Johnny's homework assignment is great, but it is important to find a balance between focusing on short and long term education. If you give credit to the material you're working on, so will your student. If you admit that it's useless to know how to find the zeros of a cubic function, your student will think so too.
Awkward silences are okay
It's pretty often that your student looks down at his paper, shakes his head, and gives up. Since it's your job to help him, and you just so happen to be an expert at applying the FOIL method, it's all too easy to jump right in and tell your student how to do the problem. Unfortunately, what this often teaches a student is how to pattern match and copy a specific procedure, not how to understand a concept. If your student is confused, feel free to leave him stranded in the awkward silence, and encourage him to figure it out on his own. Though this may not always work, having that extra minute or two to have a staring contest with a particularly brutal problem often results in the little lightbulb over Johnny's head that I know you dream of. The act of figuring a problem out in one's own head gives a student a much deeper understanding of the concept than just having someone else explain it to you.
By now, you may have noticed that there is no one piece of all-encompassing advice that makes the difference between a good tutor and a great tutor. Instead, I chose to split this essay into several pieces because, as I see it, being a great tutor is not a matter of mastering a general skill, but of mastering many simple, related skills. If you put conscious effort into applying all of these techniques during your sessions, then you will be well on your way to being the best tutor that you can be!