Hello I`m Stephanie O.!
I graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a Bachelors of Science in Biology and minor in Asian Studies. My strong passion for the Japanese Language lead me to study abroad in Japan during my undergraduate career and later work there after graduation. I also earned a N2 level on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). I have a strong passion for mentoring students (in academics or languages) so they can achieve academic and personal success! I have experience teaching English in Japan and have learned languages on my own, so I am aware of the challenges that a language learner goes through. I can give them tools so they can achieve their language learning goals and achieve their intended fluency level in their target language. I learned Japanese while at school but when the curriculum was not moving at a satisfying pace I chose to learn on my own. I sought ways to make language learning fun and exciting and those ways allowed me to gain N2 proficiency!

I enjoyed math while in school and it was my best subject. Hopefully, my passion for this subject will help my students as well. I am currently enrolled in chemistry courses so all the information is fresh in my mind therefore I can use the currently topics I am studying now to help my students. I can also give them my tips and tricks in the topics as well. Also, as I helped my fellow classmates with topics that they were confused about and saw their smiles when they understood, I realized that tutoring was something that I wanted to do.

I believe in building the students confidence because the student believes they can succeed they can. Thus, my tutoring approach is positive encouragement first, then I ask students what they currently know about the subject or what their teacher has already taught them on the subject. I will align myself along this prior knowledge and build on it. I also provide different ways of thinking about the subject if the student is still confused by using various other examples and tricks that I used to learn the subject myself. This is another technique that I use: examples, examples, examples! The more examples you have, the more practice you do, therefore the more chances you get to commit the topic to memory. With languages, I believe in making language learning fun. I like to use songs, movies, YouTube videos, or manga to learn topics. And conversation is key. If possible, I believe in speaking from day 1 or we can build your language le