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Learn More About Neil's Experience:

ACT I am presently employed as an ACT prep tutor for the English, Reading and Science sections. In the last 3 months, I have successfully improved the scores for all eight students I have tutored. These are all students from elite Chicago suburban high schools: New Trier, Evanston Township, Highland Park. My knowledge and interest in grammar is superior and precise, both from my educational background and my years as a writer/editor when I was a slave to the Chicago Manual of Style. My reading comprehension and testing skills are also superior, as is my ability to diagnose and articulate to students exactly what they need to know to improve their own skills. I routinely take the 4 to 5 practice tests I require my students to take and rarely make an error myself. grammar My educational background in English, my teaching experience in both basic and advanced composition courses, and my years as a writer and editor have made a correct and precise knowledge of grammar and usage a unique specialty of mine. I combine a knowledge of traditional prescriptive grammatical approaches with a linguistics-based descriptive approach. This allows me, at times, to provide explanations of grammatical conventions that are more logical and simpler to comprehend. The result, when I've done ACT prep, is that students' English test scores jump after one session. It GRE I scored in the 97th percentile on the verbal portion of the GRE and in the 92nd percentile of the special test on Literature. Actually, on taking the literature practice test on the GRE last week, I scored in the 99th percentile, so I must have learned something in graduate school. I do not teach the quantitative section. LSAT I have taken the LSAT and scored a 171 (99% percentile). Confirmation is available on request. I have already devised an LSAT lesson plan that includes both diagnostics and remedies. The test is only a disciplined application of a skill, logic, that everyone already possesses. That application, on this test, can be accomplished by the use of a fairly small set of logic principles and tools -- all are teachable. I know what to teach; I am able to teach it; therefore, we will have happy, successful students. proofreading I spent ten years as a free-lance editor/writer. I can both proofread for spelling and grammar and for usage. I am aware of the absolute rules that govern reasoned, formal discourse, and I am well-versed in the changing trends that are up for debate in current usage.