KiasuParents - Parenting in Singapore

My son's current tutor (1 to 1) just go through essays/articles with him and ask him questions. For the essays my son wrote, she will make general comments like must cite examples or use statistics to substantiate your points, must quote from authority or famous people, etc. I have a feeling my son is not learning much.

What else can/should I expect from her?

Can anyone help me please?

Thank you!

Hi Lavina

Not an easy job (being the parent or the tutor! ), but here are some suggestions.

For the essays, if what your son is missing is evidence, you could ask the tutor to point him toward some good, quick sources, where he can read up about topics he's interested in. These could be books with compilations of quotes or famous speeches, or even websites of periodicals like The Economist that cover current issues with more depth and context.

The step up from writing mostly narrative English essays in secondary school to writing about intellectual and political issues in GP is quite substantial. Many kids do feel a little overwhelmed. Perhaps after some initial spoonfeeding of ideas and quotes from the tutor, your son can then progress to putting together his own lists of examples.

Discussing articles is important because the comprehension paper has a large 10 mark "instant response" short essay at the end, where the students have to write intelligently about the passage they're given.

However, there are also lots of standalone questions in the comprehension that involve paraphrasing and summary skills. So if he's not getting much practice on that, could ask tutor to do some work with him on that too.

Best of luck!

Hi

First of, what are your GP Tutor's qualifications and experience? Based on that, you can set your expectations.

If for example, the GP Tutor is a certified teacher and has taught the subject at JC level. He or she should be well equipped to teach the skills required to handle GP Comprehensions and Essays. The content/knowledge is something that the student has to acquire and obtain through reading newspapers, magazines etc.

Cheers

I would say that a GP tutor has to focus on two aspects in teaching GP. One is skills. Skills in analysing and framing the essay question, paragraph development, using logic and other persuasive techniques just to name a few. The second aspect is knowledge. Learning about tons and tons of new things is NOT essential. Application is more important.

Just my point of view: if the teacher is not giving 2-3 different articles (from different sources) on the same issue, then I think using the article for discussion is useless. I can elaborate more on this, but I think that just making intelligent talk during tuition is not the way to approach GP. Learning to see the big picture is important. What is even more important is to apply the big picture to specific situations.

Hi, I think both365Psych n Quinessential Mum have facets that are important to consider. The ability of the student to learn to frame his writing to be both relevant and insightful is a combination of processing/critical evaluation skills of ideas (gleaned from examples) and technical writing skills of vocabulary and sentence structure. Both areas are significantly challenging tasks and your tutor has to be able to show your child how to do it and then to allow your child to practise both critical evaluation and language skills.
As the spouse of Hanseo who has been teaching this subject in 2 colleges in the last 14 years, I have seen the subject develop in the degree of technical difficulty in both the essay and comprehension components and this subject is substantially more difficult than O level English. Hope this helps.

Not convenient to reveal here publicly.

thoughtfulminds wrote:

Han Seo wrote: As the spouse of Hanseo who has been teaching this subject in 2 colleges in the last 14 years, I have seen the subject develop in the degree of technical difficulty in both the essay and comprehension components and this subject is substantially more difficult than O level English.

Sorry, but I've been tripping over the phrase, "As the spouse of Hanseo who has been teaching..." You mean your hubby/wife teaches? Does it also mean that spouse of Hanseo teaches English at O Level?

Thank you for all the replies.
I think I will eavesdrop on the lessons more closely going forward.
Problem is my son dislikes the subject and is very passive. Then I paiseh to interrupt or post questions also.
Hopefully the tutor (current jc teacher) can help.

365psych wrote:

thoughtfulminds wrote:

Han Seo wrote: As the spouse of Hanseo who has been teaching this subject in 2 colleges in the last 14 years, I have seen the subject develop in the degree of technical difficulty in both the essay and comprehension components and this subject is substantially more difficult than O level English.

Sorry, but I've been tripping over the phrase, "As the spouse of Hanseo who has been teaching..." You mean your hubby/wife teaches? Does it also mean that spouse of Hanseo teaches English at O Level?

It's my hubby. He is a GP teacher. He has taught GCE 'O' level English before but that was quite some time back.

Lavina wrote:... I paiseh to interrupt ...

Don't paiseh. You are paying for a service. In fact, you should ask questions...it will be a game changer.

But, GP cannot be learned passively. The student cannot be a sponge. If it goes on like this, might as well not have tuition. Don't know if you want to see if grades change without tuition.