Can being a tutor improve your personal qualities? We think it can. Tutoring is great for many reasons. It looks great on a resume, it has the potential make a big impact in someone’s life and it can bring in some real extra cash flow. Other than the obvious benefits, what does being a tutor actually do for you? Truth is, it can do a lot.

 

If you have ever thought about becoming a tutor in Hong Kong or elsewhere here are some skills everyone has that will naturally develop further when you become a tutor.

 

Become a better listener

Of course being a student helps you to develop your listening skills but once you become a tutor you need to develop those skills even further. Listening to exactly what areas the student is struggling at in a subject and what specific difficulties they are facing is important to pinpoint where you need to apply a teaching method.

 

Patience

You’ll discover levels of patience you didn’t know where possible. Not only will you need to balance your patience you may need to keep your students patience on check. If they aren’t grasping a concept as quickly as they would like, your task is to keep them motivated to learn. It may take longer than you both would like, but with patience, you’ll get it.

 

Communicate honestly

As an authority figure, it’s your job to be honest with your students and give them the critical feedback they need to improve. This, of course, needs to be done tactfully so as to not dishearten them from learning. You’ll find that once you have built a rapport with your student(s) communicating in an open and honest way is something they want to hear and will respect coming from you.

 

Create Passion

It’s likely that you have a love of some kind for the subject you wish to teach. It is important to relay this to your pupil. If you are enthusiastic and excited about learning and, more importantly, about them learning, they will feed off that energy. If you try to teach with no conviction in your lessons they won’t be paying attention either and you are essentially both wasting time. Very often teaching a student will bring out the inner passion you have within for a specific topic or subject. Feed off that.  

 

Become adaptable and flexible

You will face students that aren’t able to grasp the information as easily as other. You will have students that find learning no challenge at all. You’ll have some that learn from listening and you’ll have some that learn from doing. You must adapt and choose the best course of education for each individual student.