What makes a good tutor?

The basics of how to be a good tutor

The first quality of a good tutor is organisation and time management skills. Being a tutor consists of multiple things here at Tutoring4You, that’s why our students love us! This includes planning & delivering the lesson, completing post-lesson feedback and answering any questions that your students have. Therefore, in order to be successful in your tutoring the key is to be organised. For example, set time aside each week to plan your sessions and get any other admin work you may have. In addition to this, make sure you are aware of your exam period and any holidays that you may be going on so that if you do need to change any sessions you can do this with a lot of notice which will hopefully bring the least amount of disruption to the student.

Being dynamic and on the ball

Another quality that makes a good tutor is being understanding and having good adaptability skills. Not all 2 students are the same. Students may differ in abilities as well as other factors such as the time it takes them to learn and understand new concepts or the ways in which they learn content. Therefore, it is really important to recognise each individuals own strengths and weaknesses and how they learn best in order to the most productive. For example, one student may learn best with more interactive methods such as kahoots and drawings and another student may learn best by talking through the content and doing past paper questions. Make sure to recognise this so you can prepare personalised lessons for each student.

A bit of common sense but all good tutors have this

Another factor that makes a good tutor is good curriculum knowledge. A lot of students will ask very specific questions in the lesson that you cannot prepare beforehand. Therefore it is integral to have a detailed level of subject knowledge in order to be able to explain content to your students. If you feel weaker about a certain area of content, make sure you go over it beforehand to reteach yourself. If you are not confident about a topic then your student will not be!

Patience is paramount

In addition to this, to be a good tutor you must be patient and determined. As mentioned previously, sometimes specific concepts can take longer for students to get their heads around, especially the more difficult subjects. It is very important to stay determined if a student is struggling to understand a topic. Do not give up or be disheartened by this and instead find other ways in which you could explain the subject to this student, for example using real life examples or more creative examples to engage the student more. I like to try and find examples that relate to the student. For example, I have a student who plays a lot of cricket and I link a lot of my sessions and explanations to cricket which I believe he finds helpful.

Final thing needed to be a good tutor

I also believe that in order to be a good tutor building rapport is crucial. This is crucial for making the student feel more comfortable and allows you to identify their strengths and weaknesses better. Ways to build rapport consist of asking students their hobbies and other facts about them. This does not have to take long at all but allows the sessions to feel more personal.