1-on-1 Lessons and Tutorials

Creative Writing: An exploration of imagination put to pet to develop characters, plots, and interesting story lines in a multi-genre setting for both adults and children, private or group tutoring. Elements of each assignment are designed to target a specific skill and develop the writing through the art of outlining editing, redrafting, writing, and peer-reviewed editing, and a final draft of the short story. Genre is the kind of story explored and can range from nonfiction, biographical, and theme-induced genres including fantasy, western, science fiction, and others. Students may choose which genre they would like to work in before starting tutoring. Creative writing is also available to work an existing short story piece.

Article Writing: an introduction to the world of journalism writing of reporting facts balanced with the angle of the story. The angle of the story is what makes the reader want to read an article and builds the credibility and skills of the writer seeking to be published in the world of journalism. Elements focused on include assigned topics that students must research and present their own story angle without losing the facts and realism of the event. Most topics are of recent occurrencestorylines.

Academic Writing: Introduction to the paragraph, the skeleton of the academic essay. Many international scholars struggle with writing in English as their second language. To build skills as a skilled and academic writer, the key ingredient is to master paragraph writing focused on the ten kinds of paragraphs including cause and effect, descriptive, instructional, and others. The trademark of this tutoring focuses on building better-thinking skills starting with understanding the purpose of each kind of writing assignment, brainstorming, and outlining before beginning the writing process. Following this, the students learn the art of the redraft and reviewing the grammar errors discovered in their first draft.

College Entrance Essays: Most western colleges require an autobiographical writing sample labeled as a personal essay or "college entrance essays". Other titles for this kind of writing exist. This kind of tutoring needs to be done one on one with a student and the professor to work on his/her/their unique strengths, life experiences, volunteering, and career objectives to explore and create the best way of showcasing oneself for the final essay draft. This writing tutoring is a "specific writing purpose" and requires intense redrafts and active participation by the student.

Beginning Conversation: Second language learners practice casual conversation topics and focus on expressing themselves clearly, building vocabulary, and improving sentence structures. Practice includes asking and answering common social questions, and talking about the self, hobbies, and daily activities.

Intermediate Conversation: Second language learners expand their vocabulary in greater intensity through reading short news articles and commenting on what they summarized from the article, why it is important, sharing their opinion about the topic, and relating some cultural story or connection from their own life experience to the class discussion (this is called scaffolding). Short impromptu speeches are explored in which the professor assigned a topic and the student shares their perspective on the topic in under one minute with no preparation time. Short speeches are also explored with the student choosing topics they are interested in and assignments given by the professor in which the student researches, writes, memorizes, and delivers a 3-4 minute mini-presentation about the topic not to just share their opinion but to educate the audience (informative).