
Todd: Miramar tutor
Certified Tutor
Undergraduate Degree: University of Florida - Bachelors, Linguistics
ACT English: 31
Food and cooking, music and visual performance, travel, weightlifting
Adult ESL/ELL
Conversational Spanish
French Horn
Music
Other
Spanish 1
What is your teaching philosophy?
I believe in cooperative learning and the communicative approach to language learning. I am a strong proponent of explicitly teaching pragmatics.
What might you do in a typical first session with a student?
Get to know the student and his/her goals. Assess the starting level for the subject and develop a plan to move forward.
How can you help a student become an independent learner?
Try to adapt the material or the lesson for a real world setting (language learning). Also, avoid lecturing and encourage the student to talk through the material for his/herself.
How would you help a student stay motivated?
Be sure to let the student know when they are making progress, and avoid negative reinforcement.
If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, what would you do?
Try multiple approaches, and determine if they're in congruence with the student's learning style.
How do you help students who are struggling with reading comprehension?
Read passages together and begin with simple facts that they can identify. Then, move into more complex or abstract concepts and ensure to refer back to the source material/passage.
What strategies have you found to be most successful when you start to work with a student?
Communicative learning versus lecturing. Making sure the student is comfortable and feels like they can ask as many questions as they need.
What techniques would you use to be sure that a student understands the material?
Check for understanding by asking questions related to the material. Ask the student to explain the concept/answer back to me, ensuring they understand the WHY.
How do you build a student's confidence in a subject?
Making sure to acknowledge progress when it happens. Recognize the student as an intelligent individual, and build a mutual respect.
How do you evaluate a student's needs?
Communicate. Ask what his/her favorite lessons may have been in the past and why. Try to determine which type of learner (visual, audio, kinesthetic) they are.
What types of materials do you typically use during a tutoring session?
As many real world tokens as possible. YouTube clips or images, published articles, or bits of conversation from corpora.