General

My tutoring philosophy involves patience, yet persistence. If it’s not working one way, let’s work at it together. If it’s still not working that way, let’s try another avenue.

Words ex-colleagues have used to describe me in the past would include a good communicator, personable, organised, enthusiastic, positive and a good listener.

Exam strategy is paramount. I’ll show you how to best budget your time in the exam, tips regarding exam preparation & technique, and what the examiner is actually looking to see on paper.

I’ll help you develop techniques to improve your mental arithmetic and your short- and long-term memory through visualisation, mind maps and other methods. As well as making learning less difficult, these will help you work quicker and more effectively in the exam, thus maximising your grade.

I like to use aide memoires if material is difficult to learn – e.g. using the initial letters of “Oliver Had A Handful Of Apples” for the formulae of Sine, Cosine & Tan of an angle in a triangle.

During the tuition, we’ll try to minimise the use of computers and software, as you won’t have these at your disposal in the exam hall.

I like to think of myself as a facilitator and a nurturer. You are the one who has the ability and you are the one who will hopefully put in the work to achieve what you want. It’s my job to lead you along the right path, manoeuvre you around any obstacles along the way and shepherd you to your destination.

Maths

I’m a big believer in getting the foundations right and building the knowledge and understanding from a solid base. Therefore, I’m not a fan of rote learning. However, being a pragmatist, I’m aware that a certain amount of this will be necessary and that the ultimate objective is to maximize your CAO points.

I’m a firm advocate of incremental learning – building your knowledge up like a snowball – you still use all the Maths you’ve ever learned going right back to when you started school. Remember, by taking small steps, eventually the likes of Mount Everest was conquered.

I believe Maths gets a bad rap because it looks from the outside like an abstract language of numbers and letters, graphs and symbols. However, when you get into it and it’s under your control, it’s a very powerful tool in your armoury. It’s the basic building blocks of Science, Engineering and Technology. Most people’s attitude to Maths seems to be one of “oh, I can’t do that – it looks really complex”, but it’s actually not that difficult if you give it a chance. Pull back the curtains in time and you could find that the scary Maths monsters in your head were all in your imagination.