Dominic S.

“ Hi, my name is Dominic, and I would like to be your tutor.

I've completed four years of study with the English Department of St. Mary's College of California, including one semester spent abroad. My ultimate goal is to, within 10 years, obtain a Master's and a Doctorate in English and be teaching at the collegiate level.

And now, for a bit about me and my methods:

First and foremost I have one concrete, inflexible...

Hi, my name is Dominic, and I would like to be your tutor.

I've completed four years of study with the English Department of St. Mary's College of California, including one semester spent abroad. My ultimate goal is to, within 10 years, obtain a Master's and a Doctorate in English and be teaching at the collegiate level.

And now, for a bit about me and my methods:

First and foremost I have one concrete, inflexible rule: I will not write your papers for you. I teach, I edit, I proofread, I help, but everything I do is to help you with your work.

Beyond that, my policy mainly focuses on understanding. It's easy to find errors in a paper, explain grammar, help a student learn how or what to say in a speech, but other than knowing how to mask the mistakes none of those offer much help. If a student has trouble reading, I try to find out why, not just provide a method to skim the text for quick answers. Trouble writing? I ask questions to discover why the words just don't want to come out. This is achieved through a three-step process.

Step one is assessment. Over several meetings, each one solving the issue at hand (an assigned essay, trouble with homework, a presentation, a book reading assignment, etc.) I build an understanding of both how the student learns and how he or she expresses the knowledge gained from learning. Not just what is done, but how it's done.

Step two is breaking down behaviors into useful and damaging habits. Useful habits are encouraged and allowed to remain unaffected. Damaging habits are identified, explained why and how they damage the learning process, and either changed to provide a benefit or eliminated completely.

Step three is refinement. After establishing new methods and reinforcing existing useful methods of learning and assignment completion, now comes the polish. Instructing how moving this paragraph there, combining these two steps here, or taking that note instead of this one changes good results into great results. This step takes C's and B's and turns them into B's and A's.

Just helping someone with their lesson comprehension, retention, and assignments is simple. What I do is take a subject that was once a chore and make it into a subject that allows the student to easily and completely articulate his or her thoughts.

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