What is your teaching philosophy?

A student should always feel comfortable to make mistakes.

What might you do in a typical first session with a student?

Gauge their interests, their level of comprehension, their previous successes and their roadblocks. Getting a student to laugh or smile also lets me know that they are comfortable. It's all about finding that connection and security whereby the student knows that they are permitted to make mistakes in order to learn.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

Tapping into the student's innate creative abilities. Making the learning at home be both investigative and self-effacing.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

Set short term, accomplishable goals all while recognizing the student's successes.

If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, what would you do?

After trying several different approaches, move away to another topic. I call it the "Ice Box Laugh." Sometimes, a concept needs to be ruminated upon in order for it to really sink in. For others, learning a cumulative skill one link up on the chain helps jog the concept's logic in place.

How do you help students who are struggling with reading comprehension?

We do four things with language: read it, write it, speak it, and listen to it. I would have my student couple reading with listening, either with an audio book and the hardcopy of a text, or simply subtitles for films. The more ways we let the language enter at once, the more quickly and definitively concepts are understood.

What strategies have you found to be most successful when you start to work with a student?

Making sure they're comfortable and that the lessons will be immediately utilized within their lives. This way, they are more easily and frequently practiced and exercised.

How would you help a student get excited/engaged with a subject that they are struggling in?

By relating it to their own interests. For example, no one truly enjoys tables of conjugation. However, if the verbs used are immediately applicable to their daily vocabulary, they are more apt to find them useful and, therefore, learn them by osmosis.

What techniques would you use to be sure that a student understands the material?

I love the cumulative review. My lessons are structured into units, with a cumulative exercise or project at the end of each section.

How do you build a student's confidence in a subject?

By a detailed review of the successes of the student each lesson.

How do you evaluate a student's needs?

By making sure I've understood their overall goal. If that goal is, for example, to pass a test, I would make sure that they were prepared to pass the test and would incorporate timed exercises and test prep. If the overall goal were to be able to carry on a conversation, I would respond to their need to be comfortable expressing themselves and training their ears as well as their pronunciation. It's all dependent on the student's overall goal and time frame by which to accomplish it.

How do you adapt your tutoring to the student's needs?

By observing their responses to certain types of exercises or concepts.

What types of materials do you typically use during a tutoring session?

I love to draw out concept maps, so I use a lot of paper. I also use books, conversation, and real-life situations to help students jump into the deep end.