This handout introduces a set of tutoring skills that will help you help students who are experiencing difficulties in learning. With these skills you will be able to clearly identify student learning problems and then use course materials and direct instruction to overcome these difficulties. Finding the Problem Before you begin to help a student, you have to find out what the student knows and does not know. When you have isolated the difficulty, you can build on what the student knows to overcome the obstacle. Different students come to tutors with different problems.
Some students know exactly where they are having trouble.
Other students point out general areas of difficulty. And some students can only vaguely describe the source of confusion. When the student can describe a difficulty only vaguely or generally, however, you should spend some time in isolating the source of trouble. Use the course outline, text, exercises, assignments etc. as reference points for defining what the student has to learn and figuring out precisely where the student's difficulties lie. Once you have located course materials relevant to the student's difficulty, you can further pinpoint the student's difficulty by asking additional questions about the material.