My experience ranges from teaching German language and conversational skills at the college level to tutoring mathematics, physics, biology, and English to students from middle school through college levels. In the years I have helped students overcome their difficulties, I came to realize that everyone has aptitudes for particular subjects and activities, and different personal interests help determine what approaches to learning work best for any particular person.
For any subject, examples of how knowledge is used "in everyday life" helps you focus on how these subjects relate to your personal interests. I discovered this for myself when I realized that I could change the topic of word problems in math without changing the problem itself! The word problems could be made more relevant to my experience or just turned into a funny sentence, and I was still learning the math concepts.
Starting with that foundation, I apply the philosophy that learning is most fun when it is realized as a process of discovery. Exploring different approaches to solving problems reveals different ways of understanding concepts, and finding the problem-solving path that appeals to you is the first step in discovering how you will succeed in learning what you need to get through life. My tutoring approach is to seek out the context that helps you realize how the academic concepts relate to what you see every day, then to begin examining what you have to study as a process of exploration.
For example, my approach to making English grammar comprehensible is to focus on day-to-day skills--showing how that knowledge is used in real-world professions such as journalism, magazine editing, marketing communications, and public speaking. This approach forms the basis for improved reading comprehension and better development of writing skills.
Likewise, I have helped high school and college students discover for themselves some key concepts in biology and physics, a learning process that helps retain that knowledge throughout life because you made the connections yourself.
I look forward to hearing from you. If you have specific questions related to your learning needs, please describe those issues in your message, and I will be happy to address those questions before getting started.
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