Good O level english tutor NEEDED!

Ipadhz SG

Dear all:

I am a scholar who is at sec 3 now. All my subjects are good except english. Though I study hard,

the english scores are always C5 or B4. I am very very frustrated about it.

My parents suggest me to look for the help from local english tutors. But I don’t know where to find the good tutor. Could

anybody here kindly give me some suggestions? I want to find a good english O-level tutor.

Thank you very much!

mancha SG

The reason you are good in other subjects and not English is because you think in whatever your language is, or in Singlish. Your home language interfears with the quality of your English.

It is too late to learn English formally like from the basic sentence construction and advance grammer. Anyway it takes a long time, this should have been done in your primary school.

Nevermind, don't fret about it. You can still do something about it.

The simplest way is to read and write as much as possible. Go to the library and borrow story books. Those story books for teenagers, that are easy to read. Read as much as you can, book after book. Enid Blyton, Grimms Fairy Tales, The Famous Five, etc. This way you get a feel for the language and good English will come naturally. Also write by copying a few pages wholesale in an exercise book, as much as possible. This will coordinate your hand with your brain in the English language.

Practice, no practice no gain. More practice, more gain. No short cut.

Evelow2012 SG

Hi Ipadz,

To improve your English, you do need to write and read a lot. However, the most important thing is that you need to have good and relevant feedback on your work, so you know how to work on your weakness.

I know a friend's friend who's a school teacher. You might want to check out her blog, http://generalpapertuitionschool.blogspot.sg/ She might be able to help you.

All the best!

StriveOn SG

I agree with mancha.

If you want to be good in English the traditional way, you need to build a strong foundation. You can still do it since you have one and a half years to do it. But will need a lot of hard work and proper guidance.

You can also do the short cut way. I know many foreign students who has good score in English, but when communicating or socialising, their English fails.

Dont mean to insult any school teachers out there, but frankly, school teachers do not make good tutors. Tutors role are different.

Teachers who feels that they can help students individually normally would have quit their school and set-up their own tuition programs.

'O' Levels is not too difficult. Most of the difficulty is in Composition (correct me if I am wrong). And there are ways to remedy that.

PM me if you need more info that I can share with you. Else, good luck in your search.

StriveOn SG

Came across this, about MOE Teachers. You can check it out.

http://sgforums.com/forums/2297/topics/451743?page=2

The interesting part..(see the red text)

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It's not the fault of the teacher, it's the fault of the education system.

When I was an MOE teacher, I once did suggest to a parent that she find tuition for her daughter (who was lagging behind her classmates) as an option. The parent reacted angrily, as you (StriveOn) did. But what the parent failed to understand, is that teachers are themselves the exploited victims of the MOE education system, and that in today's MOE education system, teachers are unable to focus on teaching, but are instead burdened with non-teaching duties.

Every year, many of the best teachers leave MOE, because we realize we can focus better on teaching, and therefore help students more effectively, as tuition teachers rather than as MOE teachers.

The shortcomings of the MOE education system (rather than the individual teachers) are why good tuition teachers or tutors, are arguably fulfilling an important and necessary service to Singapore society. Do not blame the tutors or the teachers, but the MOE education system.

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