When I began my tutoring ten years ago I noticed that many of the students I work with struggled with their college prep, honors and AP reading reading requirements. Many confessed they never read outside of school, a troublesome admission since unless they read outside of school 2 hours a week, many will have trouble getting scores…
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Learning styles
Researchers such as Howard Gardner have suggested what some parents have long suspected: There are very different learning styles and students learn in different ways. The spatial/visual learner learns from what is seen, especially diagrams and pictures. The linguistic learner remembers what is read or spoken. They usually perform well in traditional academic settings that…
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When do you need to call a tutor?
The answer is more complicated than it seems. It depends in part, on whether the academic difficulty has appeared just recently or has been a problem for a long time. In other words, has he or she always had problems with a subject such as math or reading, or is it a recent, perhaps subject…
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Test anxiety
One of the most frequent calls I get is about test anxiety. The parent informs me that the student gets good grades in his/her classes, but doesn’t “test well”. Feeling anxious about tests is a form of performance anxiety and can take the form of a nervous stomach, a headache, or even throwing up. Many,…
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