All of
Alan’s current tutoring subjects are listed at the left. You
can read more about
Alan’s qualifications in specific subjects below.
ACT English
I have worked as a writer and editor for more than 20 years, but my greatest strength as an ACT English tutor is recognizing the kinds of questions most students are likely to miss and helping them recognize those.
I am also good at helping students understand when they can trust their ear and when they must follow rules because standard oral American English doesn't follow the rules the test's grammarians are looking for.
ACT Math
This is one of my specialties. I'm good at helping students get comfortable with the content areas where they feel a little shaky, because confidence is one of the most important issues in taking the test. But my greatest strength is in helping them learn a half-dozen short-cuts to getting answers quickly and learning which questions to skip the first time through. Finally, there are 8 or 10 things they need to look for throughout the test. When they spot one, it's a sure short-cut to the right answer. I've had students jump from a 19 to a 27 and a 24 to a 30 after 8 or 10 sessions.
ACT Reading
Reading comprehension is one of the slowest content areas to improve a score on, because the truth is reading a lot over several years is really the best way to do extremely well on this test. However, there are a number of ways to approach the test that will improve most students' scores 3 or 4 points, and it doesn't take most students more than half a dozen sessions to get the hang of those techniques.
ACT Science
This is an odd test, because it actually relies very little on the supposed content, scientific knowledge. What it tests most is the ability to make sense of charts, figures, tables and diagrams, and to recognize what patterns in those visual aids imply. Some reading comprehension work and some math work can help, but more than anything this is an area where practice in the techniques of taking the test will pay off. I help students work through practice tests until they're comfortable working them quickly on their own.
Algebra 1
It's not unusual for students who have had no previous problem getting good grades in math to stumble when they hit algebra. Often this is because there are a few of the foundational skills that they never really internalized, so they've found work-arounds that take a while but get them the answer. Working to strengthen those skills usually helps a lot. There are several other conceptual issues that sometimes trip students up until the right explanation makes sense to them--working with negative numbers, with the nature of equations, with variables, etc. I've found that many students who thought they hated math can start to enjoy the pattern-recognition aspect of algebra and can become quite proficient in it.
ESL/ESOL
I spent two years teaching English at the American Language Center in Morocco, teaching all levels from beginners to those preparing to take the TOEFL test. More recently I have volunteered as an ESL tutor at Kentuckiana Refugee Ministries.
While my experience is that conducting the classes entirely in English is the fastest way to become proficient, I am comfortable adjusting the amount of native-language use to the preferences of the student. I am at ease in both French and Spanish and speak enough Moroccan Arabic to be helpful to students from North Africa.
French
I was fortunate to have an excellent French teacher in high school and a sister taking the same level of French at another school, so we learned it together as a way of speaking that our parents couldn't understand. For many students, there are several obstacles to learning French. First, leaving the gravitational field of English for the first time is extremely hard, especially when they don't really understand how English works. Second, they are ashamed to "make a fool of themselves" in classes with friends; finally, they simply don't have enough exposure to actually living in the language to have it become real to them or to develop an ear. Working on all these fronts, I find that students can venture out into conversation sufficiently to begin thinking in French. Once they accomplish that, the fire is lit and it's a matter of adding enough fuel to keep it roaring but not so much as to smother it.
Geometry
Some students find geometry makes perfect sense--you can just look at it. For others, it seems totally arbitrary. For the latter, I try to show them why it is that things are as they are. Once these start to add together to make sense, they build on each other. I work very little on proving theorems, focusing much more on helping students recognize patterns and why they make sense. Generally this pattern-based logic will help the students who aren't visually oriented, which is the majority of those who don't do well in geometry.
Public Speaking
Hi, I've given public speeches for most of the past 25 years as the head of a major communications organ for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and am currently an adjunct teacher at Spalding University in Louisville, where I teach four courses a year in "Effective Public Speaking 201."
If these are not sufficient qualifications, I can give you more detail.
SAT Writing
First off, I need to say that I don't think either the SAT or the ACT does a very good job of assessing writing skills; they give dorky prompts that pose unrealistic either/or questions, and their grading is notoriously poor. I can, however, teach students to organize their thoughts quickly and write a good essay which is most likely to succeed with those evaluating the essays. I can help them overcome the most obvious problems that plague beginning writers and warn more skilled writers off a few reefs that can wreck their chances for a good score.
Study Skills
Having been a tutor since 2010, and having worked with students of all ages and ability levels in that time, I'm pretty familiar with the various issues that students (and especially parents) are referring to when they speak about study skills. The first of these tends actually to be time management skills, which tends to be related to the second, which is focus and attention management issues. Of course, many are actually asking about the specific skills related to studying, such as how to read and take notes from textbooks, how to study for a test from notes, and how to organize one's thoughts for writing an essay or paper. Often neither the student nor the parents can accurately describe or diagnose which of these issues or combinations of these issues are at the heart of the student's inability to function successfully in school, and it may take a bit of discussion and observation to establish where it's most fruitful to start working with the student.
TOEFL
I spent two years teaching English at the American Language Center in Morocco, teaching all levels from beginners to those preparing to take the TOEFL test. More recently I have been volunteering as an ESL tutor at Kentuckiana Refugee Ministries.
While my experience is that conducting the classes entirely in English is the fastest way to become proficient, I am comfortable adjusting the amount of native-language use to the preferences of the student. I am at ease in both French and Spanish and speak enough Moroccan Arabic to be helpful to students from North Africa.