Award-Winning Private English Tutoring in Glendale, AZ

"The student did really well on the essay lesson. We went over basic essay structure and worked on an essay together, and I'm going to leave him with topics to write his own essay under timed conditions and have him go over it with me. I'm not concerned at all by his progress, and I think with practice he'll do very well. "

"During my first tutoring session with the student, I began by discussing with her areas that she felt she was strong versus areas she considered herself needing assistance in. Her strengths, as a student, include the following: creative writing skills, being disciplined, paying attention when taught and being able to retain what she learns, excelling in the subjects of math and Chinese, and being in honors courses. To grow as a writer, she will need to learn the following: to properly structure her essays, writing fundamentals and correct grammar, to develop a strong thesis statement and where to position it in her introduction, how to support her arguments, to consistently capitalize proper nouns, proper sentence mechanics and punctuation, to avoid run-on sentences and lengthy paragraphs, and to best plan her time when she has several essays due at once. Next, I gathered information as to what her current essay assignments were, when each was due, and what progress she'd already made towards each. She had two essays due by Monday and one additional essay due on Tuesday. She had already completed her final draft of the essay due on Tuesday, had done the rough draft for one of the essays due on Monday, and had completed the outline for the other essay due on Monday, using a graphic organizer provided by her teacher. I determined it best to begin our work on the essay that was in the rough draft stage, as it was the one closest to completion, of the two remaining, with just the editing and revision stages left. Upon having her explain this writing assignment and the topic of this essay, we began reviewing, editing, and revising her work, one paragraph at a time. As we did so, I had her notate key grammar and punctuation tips that I provided so she could refer to them in the future when writing essays; she will create a folder to house said notes, as well as other relevant pointers I come across and email to her from time-to-time as references. During this two hour session, we revised half of her three-page, 1000+ word essay. I assigned her the following homework, in preparation for our tutoring session the next day."

"We spent the entire session drafting the student's interpretive essay. He is to complete the next body paragraph of his essay."