How do I know if having a Tutor is going to help?

One of the most important aspects of learning and succeeding is individual assessment.  It is important for your tutor to assess your strengths and weaknesses as it helps you to find out where you are personally struggling.  It can also show how far you have come and where you have made positive progress!

When we refer a Cardiff & Vale tutor to you, one of the first things that our tutor will do is to carry out an ‘initial assessment’. This is a way of finding out more about you, your approach to the given subject and to pinpoint the areas that you find particularly difficult.   After that, the tutor will also carry out a  ‘formative assessment’. That might sound like a scary phrase but it basically just means they will be keeping track of how you are improving and in what areas specifically. There are lots of fun ways for you to keep track of progress together with your tutor.

An example of one of these is ‘Traffic Lighting Topics’.  As you grow in confidence you can allocate new colours to them to visually see your own progress. Red represents ‘difficult’, amber represents ‘some difficulty’ and green represents being completely ‘confident’ with a given topic.   As you progress and improve, you can assess yourself by changing these colours as you grow in ability and confidence.

Exam preparation

A tutor can really help most as you prepare for your upcoming exams.  Your tutor will encourage you to work through past exam papers and mark them together with you as this helps you to understand what the examiner is giving credit to and the marskscheme.  The final exam is the ultimate form of assessment, which is why it is so important  for mini assessments to be carried out along the way so you are fully prepared for this.

So, our assessments may sound scary but it’s really just a way of helping you to fully prepare and so we can make sure you be see your own progress!