It was great to observe Jonah Magner's advanced English session. I'm primarily a science tutor but I have tutored standard English on the side. Having never properly observed English tutoring before I found this observation enlightening! Jonah suggested that they begin by answering a 'generic' essay question to practice response structure and analytical flow: he was quick making this practice question on his feet. Jonah also gave his student advice as he worked with her on her analysis, emphasising the importance of flow and making an essay easy to read. They also took a break halfway through, had a chat and played uno which is a great ability.
English tutoring is interesting because it is subjective. The tutor and the student inevitably develop different ideas reading the same text, and to some extent the analysis which they develop together is a collaboration of those ideas.
This makes it kind of a fun one to tutor. It's satisfying when a student appreciates your own idea, and interesting when they come up with good ones themselves. This also poses a challenge, though, where the tutor's inevitably more experienced ideas can begin to dominate the collaboration. It's really important for a student's ideas to be wholly, or at least 90%, their own, or they won't be able to remember and especially adapt them to the variety of difficult questions that they may receive in their time as a HSC English student undertaking the syllabus and, ultimately, the HSC examination. Jonah did a good job of avoiding this by asking his student questions about her analysis and, when he had analysis of his own to share, prompting the student to develop it herself by asking leading questions.
Overall it was a great session to watch and I learned some tips and tricks for english tutoring. Good to see that the google doc is universal.
