All About Finding & Evaluating Tutors
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vinegar:
That's the reason why I never hire private tutor.I've a lot of assessment books on the shelf n leave it to the tutor to use.
So far,none of my tutor recommends me any book to buy.I was the one who told her which books r good based on my judgment.
i guess most tutors do not bring their teaching material,right?I mean i am ok they use the books on the shelf. But i've this english tutor,made my son use different books each time...i feel a bit disorganized. She always gives a lot of homework,comprehension,copy compo..& i've to spend times to teach my son complete the homework she gave.
I prefer to have structured & in-house materials, not teaching from assessment books which I can easily buy from popular. What's the value add? If using assessment books, I might as well assign pages for my kids to do, why pay a tutor to do what I can do :scratchhead: -
As to how to choose the right center, there’s no one best center in my opinion. What’s good for other kids may not be suitable for yours. Have to trial & error. I usually give max 6 months to trial
How I guage is that the difficulty level should ideally be between 20% - 30%. ie, should not get too high marks for worksheets, so that there’s room for improvements for that 20% - 30%. Thus if my kids come home with close to perfect marks for their worksheets, I will withdraw them from that center, don’t waste time
On the other hand, the center’s worksheets should not be so tough till there are mistakes everywhere. Kids will be overwhelmed if couldn’t catch up with the pace. That’s means standard is too high, time to shop around again. -
Sleepy,
It is easy to assign papers but not that easy to explain mistakes made. My tutor recommends two assessment books and I bought another two. It lifts my load to know that she can explain to son what is wrong with his answers as son gives me a blank look when I took over to try to coach him earlier and looking into dictionary eats into our time and we are not familiar with the boundaries of language tested. He used to approach the previous tuition centre that produces excellent inhouse materials for clarifications, but the teacher was tight for time as she needs to prepare for next class. And she is a china national and my boy needs someone who can explain in english if need be. Credit should also be given to this china teacher who offer to help my boy during her off slots, but we couldn’t afford the time to go down every week on a separate day. -
does anyone have a good english tutor to recommend for my pri5? i prefer 1 to 1. we are in hougang area.
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janet_lee88:
Great! Happy news for us! haha. Definitely. A teacher with no passion and fire are usually out there just to teach for a living. I am very particular when it comes to this, I believe that as long as the teacher is driven by her/his passion to teach the kids, the kids will definitely do well under her/his guidance.Hi AdonciaTang,
A tutor who is professional, teaches with passion and inspires students makes a great deal of difference. My son passed his test recently with good grades...he felt very happy. I am grateful for the confidence instilled. -
Hi AdonciaTang,
A TEACHER with passion, inspires students and stimulates interest...that is a tough job for those who teach for as a job.
Honestly, if some of the admin work and non-core stuff like CCA activities are lessened, I believe our poor teachers will have more stamina.
MOE should ban moonlighting. -
SarChar:
does anyone have a good english tutor to recommend for my pri5? i prefer 1 to 1. we are in hougang area.
Dear SarChar,
You have a PM in your inbox.
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If I may offer some observations and suggestions.......creative English writing is not just about the language. Even teachers who are creative writers will find it hard to impart such a quality to students based on a several hours-a-week type of instruction. I have seen lesson materials for \"creative writing\" classes which are really passage after cliche-filled passage meant to be memorised and regurgitated come exam time. English is after all a tool we use to communicate, and to take in information with. It would be better in the long run for your child (who is still young enough) if he were to build up the habit of reading more, on his own. The key to that would be to surround him with English reading materials on matters and stories that are of interest to him (this may take some research and observation on your part) and, if distractions (the TV, computer games, etc) are a problem, to limit the availability of these distractions. If he takes to reading at least part of the time, in a year or two you should see marked improvement in most aspects of his English, and it would have been painless, and the critical life-skill of obtaining information from written material will have been learnt.
Oral English is a big problem for us: we just don't have the ideal environment for it. We adults speak adulterated English (even in parliament!!), and children pick it up. English teachers in school do their best, and then the science teachers undo it all (lol). Perhaps as a priority, you should get your child to first learn to speak grammatically, and worry about the enunciation later (opinions might differ on this). A tutor with strong verbal ability in this would be helpful.
Cheers -
agree…nowadays with the temptation fr. ipad,iphone,etc…i got the hard times to get my kid to pick up the books n read.
even his teacher encourages them to learn thru playing games.They were given few websites on learning multiplication table thru games.I don’t really like the idea,coz at the end,he was holding the multiplication table booklet n typed in the answers.Tried to get him to memorize but he was very reluctant.
where to find a tutor who could help to foster his interests in reading?i myself hv the prob to get him to sit still n read an interesting comic. Recently just fired his english tutor who made him copy the compo all the times. -
vinegar:
technology may not always be a good thing...when there was no such thing as ipad, iphone or PC (there was, but usage of it was not so dependent), we kids would pick up a book to read. now parents have to monitor kids' free time.agree....nowadays with the temptation fr. ipad,iphone,etc....i got the hard times to get my kid to pick up the books n read.
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