One-on-one tutoring

Senior Trisha Xue utilized one-on-one sessions with a tutor. While scrolling through her Twitter feed one night, senior Jay Alexander, who graduated from BVNW in 2015, had sent out a Tweet asking if anyone needed help preparing for the ACT. Xue said she jumped on the opportunity and met with Alexander on a weekly basis.

According to Xue, the meetings consisted of Alexander giving her general tips and advice on how to master each section, as opposed to strictly content-based instruction.

“[Alexander] himself is a very motivating person,” Xue said. “One thing that helped a lot was him telling me about his own personal experience and just about other things in his life that he set his mind to. It was really encouraging.”

Xue said that she preferred the individualized instruction since it was more tailored to her strengths and weaknesses rather than the needs of a big class. She said that Alexander kept her motivated and was able to focus solely on her without distractions for either of them.

“[Alexander] would tell me to do this, this and this this week…and then we would go over and talk about it,” Xue said. “Having him actually keep me accountable to do practice tests helped a lot.”

BVNW English teacher Bill Smithyman also tutors students for the ACT. He said he has helped about 15 people toward better scores.

Smithyman said that each study method presents different benefits for each person. As a tutor, he said the instruction is more personalized due to the instructor’s ability to devote all their time to each student.

“If you come to tutoring and I explain what a participial phrase is, but I haven’t put one into a correcting-the-sentence format… I haven’t really done my job,” Smithyman said. “My goal is to connect all those things to how you would see them on the test.”

Smithyman said that tutoring benefits students by holding them accountable for devoting time to study.

“We live in a society where we love to procrastinate,” Smithyman said. “Tutors are good for making sure that you carve out an hour a week to get better at [test-taking].”