10 Reasons Why Tutoring Works!

Why does tutoring work? Put another way, what things make tutoring effective? You need to know this because tutoring while missing some of these ingredients can drastically reduce your progress.

1 Targeted Instruction

In the classroom, teachers try to teach year-level content to a large group of students. And these students often have very different learning needs.

With personalised tutoring, we start with what you understand and can do. We then teach you specifically what you need to reach your goal. In other words, your sessions are focused on helping you get from where you are to where you want to be.

2 A Coaching Relationship

As a tutor, I am not there to be your friend or your enemy. I am here to help you improve in whatever area I am tutoring you in.

Students are far more likely to succeed when tutors (and teachers) passionately care about helping them do so. I am committed to helping you achieve your learning goals, and it brings me great pleasure to do so.

As I tutor, I can do this within a one-on-one coaching relationship with you. I constantly challenge you. But I do so respectfully and while offering support.

3 Focus

It is hard to learn when you are distracted and cannot focus. Sadly, many of my students tell me it is hard to do so in a classroom with misbehaving classmates.

Tutoring sessions take place in a quiet environment, making it much easier to focus on what you are learning.

The personal, one-on-one nature of tutoring makes this even easier.

4 Expertise

Research shows that tutors who are experts in teaching and learning have more impact on their students’ success. Put simply, you want a tutor who knows the material and is good at helping you learn it.

I have over 30 years of teaching experience and was recognised by the Qld College of Teachers for leading excellence in teaching and learning.

5 Instruction

Tutoring (and teaching) is more effective when your tutor explains things you need to understand and shows how to do the things you need to be able to do.

But I have seen:

• Senior school assignments that require students to know and do things they haven’t been taught.
• Homework tasks that have nothing to do with what has been taught in class.

In your tutoring session, I explain things until you understand them and show you how to do things as often as needed.

6 Understanding

Apart from things such as times tables, you need to understand what you have learned rather than just being able to parrot back answers.

Understanding comes from thinking hard about what I explained and showed you during instruction.

When thinking about things, it helps to make meaningful connections between them. For example, “How are common fractions, decimal fractions and percentages similar and different.”

And, in a one-on-one tutoring session, it is much easier to let me know when you don’t understand.

7 Practice

Whether it is remembering the structure of a neuron or how to find out the pre-GST price of a dress, practice is crucial.

Psychologists call this retrieval practice, and it has a proven impact on your ability to remember. Surprisingly, it also improves your understanding.

You will practice things during our tutoring sessions. But it is best to space out practice. So, you will also get practice tasks between sessions.

8 Feedback

Getting feedback on your practice questions and tasks tells you how well you have understood things and helps you avoid the illusion of learning. But it also does far more.

It tells me specific things you haven’t understood. I then reteach you these things.

We repeat the process until you remember things correctly. So, feedback is crucial to successful tutoring.

9 Confidence & Motivation

My students don’t enjoy my tutoring sessions because I entertain them. Instead, they like the fact that they have had some real and measurable success.

It may be true that confidence helps motivate students and increases the likelihood of success. It is also true that real success builds both confidence and motivation.

10 Effort

The one-on-one nature of tutoring and your tutor’s expertise underpins nearly all the above factors.

Yet, one essential thing is missing – effort on your part is vital to success.

You must regularly turn up and work hard during our sessions – even when you want to do other things. You must also complete the small amount of homework I give you.

But effort involves more than just turning up and working hard. You need to ask for help whenever you don’t understand things. You may feel more comfortable doing this one-on-one with a tutor who cares.