One thing that struck me most when I was taking lessons with Jonathan was his ability to cater each class to my specific needs. He was extremely helpful not only in equipping me with the necessary skills and mindset to take the final IB examination, but would also use various methods of teaching that would benefit me most during our classes.
I remember vividly during one lesson a week before the final examination, we were working on my ability to quickly identify literary features in online articles, and I was particularly struggling in the aspect of speed. We then switched to an activity where we would each list out all identifiable literary features from a text line by line and would compare our answers. That switch in training not only sparked my competitive nature which benefitted me in working under a time limit, but made me realise the immense amount of valuable points I would usually miss when reading through passages.
The gist of this would be that I was greatly benefitted by the way each class was customised not only to my educational needs, but also to my style of learning and thought processes. I have enrolled in my fair share of English tutorial classes, and my most significant improvements have all been made while working with Jonathan.
I was predicted a low 6 for English A SL prior to the final exams, but after months of work with Jonathan was able to obtain a high 7 in my final IB exams within the 90% range.
Jonathan’s classes did not help me right away, and I only began to notice the fruits of our labour after a couple of classes. But I believe that that is the point of his classes. Rote learning and memorising of various examination techniques would not have gotten me as far as I did. Yet, through his classes, I was able to gain a more in-depth understanding of the writing styles necessary to achieve high scores, and internalised fundamental skills that I used effectively in the final examination.
