Tutoring Senior English

bsjezz

Hi guys,

I've picked up a student to tutor while I wait for permanent work as an English teacher. I'm fully qualified so I'm fine with the curriculum etc, but I've never tutored so I'm not sure what the student will expect. Mostly I'm wondering how to fill an hour-odd of one-on-one time; should I be utilizing exercises etc, or just going over essay writing and giving lots of specific feedback? If anyone has experience tutoring students going through their final years of high-school (this is a student at a very prestigious private school, so the stakes are high) I'd be very appreciative!

Lawndart

Well, I don't have experience tutoring high-school age kids, but from my experience tutoring younger kids, I'd suggest you start with helping your student with their English homework, and other assignments that deal with writing or reading.

This should allow you to gauge where your student is at in terms of skills and work habits, without running the risk of that student balking at having to do more work on top of their already hefty load of schoolwork. Once you figure out where the student needs the most help, you can aim for those areas as well as general study skills and writing papers your student will need in college.

kime

Also don't be afraid to ask them what they want to do. Especially if they themselves are seeking a tutor (and it's not something being forced on them), they may have specific goals they are expecting to meet with you.

Just take what they say with a grain of salt, of course, just in case they don't want to improve and are just trying to slack off.

metaghost

Having worked as tutor for three years at the high school level and currently working on my Master's to teach high school English, my suggestion would be that you have a conversation with the student and parents regarding their expectations before actually scheduling a session. One-on-one tutoring isn't much different from any other teaching experience in the sense that it is really inefficient to go about tutoring without a plan of action, and it's really hard to create that plan if you haven't been provided with student goals and/or an idea of why they've hired you as a tutor.

Getting that information through the hands-on process of sitting down with your student and helping them with their homework, as Lawndart described, isn't entirely irrational, but doing so may not be that useful if you haven't developed a certain rapport with the student and familiarity with the student's work. Whereas if you talk to the parents/guardians and student ahead of time and learn, for instance, that the student struggles with persuasive writing, you're not going to waste time going through a student's formative assessments regarding The Illiad.

illirica

I tutored high school math, not English, but I would echo a lot of the advice here - find out what the student needs to work on. Talk to the student, talk to the parents. Look at both what the student is working on now, and what the student is likely to see in the future. It sounds like this student is probably going to college - if so, what is he/she thinking about studying? If you're working with a college prep student you may want to work both on what he needs help with for his high school class, but also talk a little about what to expect from college writing assignments and work on how to do those a little. You might want to throw in something like writing mock lab reports, or work on what a research paper is likely to entail in college. It would probably also just benefit the student to talk about your own college experiences and what to expect from classes.

bsjezz

Cheers, guys. I've spoken to the student on the phone and it sounds like the big priority at the moment is specifically with writing, so I suppose I'll have to suss out whether that's an issue of grammar and style, or appropriate content and structuring thoughts. An ungodly portion of English students' results here are derived from essays and long-form responses written in exam conditions, so assuming the overall aim is good leaving marks I'll be working with a pretty specific format.