If you've made it to my blog, you're probably aware that I'm a professional tutor. Now, you're certainly welcome to enjoy the blog and the resources here without ever being a client.
But if you are here and you've come back a time or two to check out my posts, you're probably interested in writing, reading, or English in general.
If you're thinking, yeah, that sounds like me, perhaps tutoring is a good next step. Still not sure whether or not you should consider hiring a tutor? Check out five reasons why tutoring might be right for you.
1. You're taking classes that involve a lot of writing.
If you're still in school and taking classes, there's a pretty good chance that some of your professors ask you to demonstrate what you learn through writing. Perhaps it's an English course with multiple essays. Perhaps it's a Biology course with lab reports and literature reviews. No matter what field you're in, most degrees require a lot of writing of one form or another. And unless you're an English major or someone else who genuinely enjoys writing for its own sake, all of those writing assignments may be a bit overwhelming. More importantly, stress about completing those writing assignments might be distracting you from focusing on the content of the course!
Now, a good tutor won't write your work for you. However, a good tutor can make sure you have the support to make your writing less stressful and less time consuming (at least, that's what I hope I do)! Yes, tutoring takes time -- time that you could spend actually writing. Still, most of my students would tell you that the time they spend in tutoring helps them avoid stress during brainstorming, research, outlining, or revising... which brings me to my second point...
2. You want to write more efficiently.
There's nothing wrong with writing haphazardly or taking your time meandering through your ideas. If you write for a hobby and want to just soak in the process like a warm bath, I won't stop you. Get pruney.
But if you write for any reason other than the pure enjoyment of writing, you probably want to minimize the time you spend doing it! Even people who enjoy writing (like me!) sometimes want to just get it over with. Writing under a deadline is even more stressful, and your instinct might be to sit down and write until you're completely drained, without pausing for any distractions.
Unfortunately, most writers would tell you that very little of their best writing is produced in that kind of frenzy. That "blurt" might be one component of a great writing process, but it's hopefully not the whole thing.
Working with a tutor can help you learn strategies for dividing up your writing process into multiple stages and help you learn how to move efficiently from one stage into the next. The time you spend with the tutor will be far less than the time you save.
Basically, that feeling of not having enough time to write it all well ...? Tutoring can help you break that cycle!
3. You want to know how a reader will react to your work.
If you've ever written something that you thought was completely clear and gotten back a confused look, then tutoring might be right for you. Most of us write with ourselves as the baseline, even if we know that our audience is very different from us. It can be hard to imagine why someone else would be confused when the ideas seem to clear to us!
At its heart, tutoring is asking another thoughtful and skillful reader to react to your work. When I look at my students' work, I am imagining myself as their intended audience. Sometimes I am actually their intended audience, but more often, I am drawing on my breadth of experience and reacting from some point of view other than my own. If that sounds kind of tricky, it is! That's why tutors, peer or professional, are more effective than the kind of peer review you might have done in class. Your classmates are probably great at giving you their own, personal reactions. They're probably not as good at reacting the way an admissions officer or a politician would. It's not their fault; they just don't have the training that a tutor does! It's why I like to think of tutoring as scholarly improv.
Hooray, Interdisciplinary Scholarship! All of that American Studies scholarship is finally paying off!
4. You want to improve your grammar or mechanics.
This one may sound obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people are embarrassed to ask about grammar and mechanics. Too many people falsely believe that being a native speaker of a language makes them an expert in that language. Sorry, nope! Plenty of native English speakers, Americans in particular, do not receive effective instruction in the grammar or mechanics of English. To be perfectly fair, most speakers of the language really don't need that much of it to get by.
So if you're worried that I'll judge your bad grammar, stop it! Just because I notice it doesn't mean I care. Most good writing starts with your thoughts and ideas, and those do not follow any particular grammar.
Now, if you want to be truly effective at sharing those great thoughts and ideas, you do probably want to make sure that your grammar and mechanics are clear enough that they don't interfere with your reader's understanding or comprehension. If that's the case, let's dive into grammar and mechanics, and I will teach you the wonders of syntax and parts of speech and punctuation and ... well, I'll seem too nerdy if I go on, but you get the idea.
Even beyond that, however, it is important to recognize that there are as many grammars as there are Englishes. The grammar that I use in this blog, for example, is quite different from the grammar I might use in a scholarly paper. Different context = different English = different grammar.
And if you're not a native speaker of English, formal grammar study may be useful to help you understand the differences between your mother tongue and this new system. Studying grammar online by yourself is definitely a good place to start, but if you want to run your questions past an expert, that's what a tutor is for.
5. You want to learn more about the English language.
Oh hello, fellow word nerd! Join me! Let's study the history of English, which I find immensely and endlessly fascinating!
Seriously though, English is a remarkable language. It has more words than anyone could rightly need in a lifetime, and it really only has guidelines and habits, not really rules to speak of. All of this adds up to an incredible versatile and malleable tool for expressing new thoughts and pushing the boundaries of human understanding.
If you've ever wondered why we pronounce "dough" like "doe" and "though" like "toe" and also that we have both "bough" and "bow" (the verb) but also "bow" (the noun) .... is your head spinning yet?! Are you excited?! Good! It's time you got an English tutor to help you wade through all of those nuances.
Ready to take the next step? If you recognized yourself in any of these five scenarios, it might be time. Get in touch! Let's see if tutoring is right for you after all.