Choosing Effective Tutors for GCE O Level Chemistry Students

Halo O Level Students & Parents?of Singapore,?Readers around the globe,

I have been busy in preparing Chemistry notes?& tips for O Level Chemistry Students in various forms (paper, powerpoint &?videos formats) and did not manage to?go to other websites and blogs to read about interesting?posts. This evening i managed to siphoned out some time and was reading the recent blog posts of a?friend Always Lovely. There is a post titled “How to choose an effective tutor or tuition centre for?O Level Students” that caught my attention.

Always lovely is based in Singapore and has been a Top Math Master Trainer for more than a decade. She was sharing her thoughts on the numerous tuition centres and individual tutors that are offering tuition to students in Singapore & how parents choose their services. Apparently, most parents actually select the tutors for their children?with?a Trial & Error mindset and?not based on?the needs of the child. I find it ironical when she mentioned that some tutors actually conduct tuition class for 7 students at any time,?that comes?from 4 different educational levels (Sec 1 to Sec 4). How can the child gain anything from there? Perhaps the tutor only give the 7 students each one piece of summary and ask them to memorise it, i thought? There was also once i heard about a tutor that mentioned in the papers he can coach 4 subjects (Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Maths) all in one lesson of 2 hrs per week, because he perosonally had scored A1/A2 for his GCE O Level examinations for those subjects. I find this amusing if he can actually persuade the parents to let the child enroll with them.

Personally, i do think the following factors are important in selection of tutors to help the student learning needs:

Effectiveness of Tutor/Coach – Parents should get quick feedback from child after the 1st lesson by tutor/coach

Track record of previous students of Tutor/Coach – And NOT just based on the Tutors’s past examinations results

Ability of Coach to build rapport with Child and thus to engage her for effective learning

Passion of the Tutors in helping the child to Utilize available resources & Unleash their potentials

PS: Almost forget about one thing. Do not just pay a Teacher from another school?to teach your child. Cos your child already have hear what he wants in school, another teacher will only come in to?repeat the same old?teachings again (maybe slightly different presentation). Important thing is to?find?someone that your child can relate to and build that kind of passion of learning into your child. I am not saying that all teachers are not good – but when mainstream school methods are not delivering, it is time to seek different methodologies.

Cheers,
Sean

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