5 Signs of a Slow Learning Child and What Parents Can Do

Having a child who is slower to learn than their peers can be difficult for both parents and the child and difficult to identify. Parents may feel overwhelmed or confused when it comes to understanding their child’s learning needs, so it is essential to discern the signs of slow learning in children. This article will provide five signs of a slow-learning child and what parents can do to help their child.

Signs of Slow Learning

It’s crucial to note that all children learn at different paces and in different ways. Slow learning is only relative to an established control group and does not mean a child will not learn eventually. Therefore, fostering an environment that supports multiple learning styles and encourages children to reach their full potential is crucial. However, before you can find ways to support your child’s needs, it’s crucial first to recognize the signs of slow learning. Here are five signs of slow learning in a child.

1. Difficulty Understanding New Concepts and Ideas

Children who are slow to learn often struggle to keep up with their peers when learning new concepts and ideas. They may not be able to understand the material as quickly as their peers and may need extra time to process the information. They may also have difficulty understanding abstract concepts and ideas.

2. Problems Retaining Information

Children who are slow to learn may have difficulty retaining information. They may need extra time to remember new material and be reminded of previously learned material. They may also have difficulty transferring information from one situation to another.

3. Struggles with Reading and Writing

Slow learning children may struggle with reading and writing tasks. They may have difficulty understanding the meaning of words or making connections between words and ideas. They may also have difficulty with spelling, grammar, and writing mechanics.

4. Challenges with Organisation and Time Management

Children who are slow to learn may have difficulty with organization and time management. They may have difficulty keeping track of their assignments and need help staying on task. They may also have difficulty managing their time and need extra time to complete tasks.

What Parents Can Do

Having a slow-learning child can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. The crucial thing to do is to be supportive and understand that children learn best when given the space to learn at their own pace. Here are five tips that parents can use to support a slow-learning child.

1. Talk to the Child’s Teacher

Parents must talk to their child’s teachers to understand their learning needs. The teacher can provide valuable insight into the child’s learning style and any struggles they may have in the classroom. This can help parents better understand their child’s needs and how to support them best.

2. Encourage the Child to Ask Questions

Encouraging children to ask questions can be beneficial for slow learners. It can help them to understand the material better and to make connections between concepts and ideas. Encouraging children to ask questions can also help them become more engaged in learning.

3. Provide Extra Time to Complete Tasks

Providing slow learners extra time to complete tasks can help them be more successful. This may include allowing them extra time to finish tests or assignments or providing additional support to help them stay on task. 

4. Hire a Private Tutor

Hiring a private tutor can be a great way to help a slow-learning child. A private tutor can work one-on-one with a child, tailoring the instruction to their needs. A tutor can provide customized instruction and personalized feedback. Tutors can also provide support by helping the child develop strategies to better understand and retain the material.

Conclusion

Having a child who is slower to learn than their peers can be a challenging experience for parents. However, by talking to the child’s teacher, encouraging the child to ask questions, providing extra time to complete tasks, and hiring a private tutor, parents can play an essential role in helping their slow-learning child succeed.

Prep Academy Tutors is your go-to resource for online tutoring in North America! Our experienced and knowledgeable tutors are here to help your slow-learning child reach their full potential. From developing strategies for better understanding and retaining material to providing full-time support and guidance, our tutors are here to help. Contact us today to get started. 

Why Remedial Support Is an Essential Service for Your Child

Every child has a unique style and learning pace. Some children may learn faster than others, while some may need more time and repetition to grasp the concept. They may also understand an idea through different learning styles, like visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. However, some may struggle with some aspects of their academics, which can hinder their performance. For this reason, you should find remedial tutoring for your child. 

While remedial teaching is available for all students who need short-term support in their learning journey, you must immediately start it to prevent your child from falling behind permanently. 

If you want your child to grow well-rounded and stay ahead of their academics, this article will enumerate six important reasons to seek remedial support.

1. Get Personalized Support

Sometimes, your child may struggle academically not because of the classroom environment but because their educators’ teaching style may not match their learning pace and styles. For this reason, you should invest in remedial support. 

This tutoring service provides individualized assistance to your child to address class concepts, reinforce learning, offer effective work methods and learning strategies, provide additional challenges if necessary, and prevent them from falling behind in class. Getting help from a professional tutor has various benefits, like improved concentration, increased comfort in asking questions, and personalized explanations of complex concepts.

2. Bridge the Gap Where Your Child Has Fallen Behind

Remedial support aims to help students catch up on any subjects they may struggle with in school. A reputable tutoring service will carefully find a tutor for your child based on their characteristics and the topic they struggle to grasp. 

The tutor and student will then collaborate to establish specific and attainable goals for the short and long term. That way, everyone involved, including the learner, parents, and tutor, can monitor progress.

3. Avoid Learning Attrition

Taking time off school during the summer, winter, or spring is essential to help students recharge and prepare for the following academic challenges. The student may also need an extended break if they struggle financially or have a health condition. However, excessive time off can be detrimental because they’ll likely lose the necessary knowledge and skills to move to the next grade. 

Fortunately, learners can regain skills they may have lost during their extended break by investing in remedial teaching. This tutoring service involves tutors using various methods like flashcards, games, and fun activities to reinforce phonics and basic math.

4. Boost Self-Esteem, Confidence, and Motivation

When your child feels confident in their abilities, they’re more likely to participate in class and have a greater interest in school. You can help them perform better academically by seeking remedial support. 

Once a tutor and a student have established trust, it creates a positive learning environment because the educator motivates the student and inspires them to do better. Tutoring services recommend finding personal educators with specialized training because they can give each student more attention and support, which is easier to do when they have fewer learners than in a regular classroom. 

5. Improve Communication Skills

Besides impeding a learner’s communication skills in the classroom, students with speech disorders usually fall behind in their academics. These disabilities may also negatively affect their self-esteem, but remedial reading instruction can help them. 

However, if the student shows limited progress, it may indicate they have a learning disability and need more specialized education.

6. Ideal for Dyslexic Students

Remedial teaching can help dyslexic students overcome reading difficulties by rewiring brain connections, resulting in increased neural connections and improved reading proficiency in the long term.

Seeking the Right Academic Help

Every child deserves to learn well at school, regardless of their learning pace, style, and abilities. You can help them succeed academically by enrolling them in tutoring services like remedial support. 

If your child needs professional tutoring, call Prep Academy Tutors! We’re committed to improving your child’s academic performance by offering personalized in-home and online remedial teaching. Find a tutor now, and let’s make getting their report card a stress-free event!

Learning Disabilities: How to Know the Best for Your Child

As a parent, it is important to be aware of learning disabilities and differences that your child might face. Learning disabilities and differences can majorly impact a child’s education, so it is important to understand what they are and how to support your child best. 

This article will provide an overview of learning disabilities and differences and discuss what parents need to know to help their children succeed. We will discuss the different types of learning disabilities and differences, their causes, signs, and symptoms, and the strategies that can be used to support a child with learning disabilities and differences. 

By understanding these topics, parents can better provide the necessary support for their child’s educational success. Learn more about learning differences and where to find online tutors in North America. 

What is a Learning Disability (LD)?

A wide range of cognitive and learning problems that can affect how the brain gathers, arranges, retains, and transfers information are called “learning disabilities.” Some children have learning disabilities (LDs), including math or reading comprehension challenges. 

Hearing loss and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are two learning difficulties that may affect others. Many children who struggle in school may also have different health issues or academic challenges.

What Causes Learning Difficulties?

There are several reasons why a child can have trouble learning. Even when the causes aren’t always known, children sometimes have a parent or other family member who experiences similar or comparable learning and thinking difficulties. 

The first step in addressing a child’s learning issues, regardless of the underlying cause, is acknowledging that your child is struggling and letting teachers and doctors know about your worries. You can determine the underlying causes of the problems by working together and ensuring your child gets the support they require.

Signs of learning Differences and Difficulties in Children

Although learning and cognitive issues aren’t always obvious, several warning signs indicate your child may require help. Keep in mind that children learn and develop at different rates. If your child displays the following symptoms, talk to their teacher and inform the doctor.

Children in preschool may be impacted by the following:

• Delays in learning a language. By the time they are two and a half years old, your preschooler should be able to talk in short phrases or sentences.
• Problems with the conversation. By the time they are three, your child should be speaking well enough for most of what they say to be understood by adults.
• Having problems understanding shapes, colors, numbers, and letters.  
• Having trouble developing rhymes.
• Having difficulties coordinating. Your youngster should be able to hop, use scissors, and button clothes by age five. They should be able to arrange themselves into a circle, square, or triangle.
• The inability to concentrate well. When your youngster is between 3 and 5, sit still and listen to a brief story. As they grow older, your child should be able to concentrate for more extended periods.

Younger students and teenagers may have difficulties:

• Follow directions.
• Retain order at home and in the classroom.
• Understand spoken directions.
• Gain knowledge and understanding of facts.
• Read, spell, or sound out words.
• Write clearly (may have poor handwriting).
• Compute answers to math or word problems.
• Take care to fulfill your obligations.

Who Can Help?

Inform the teachers and doctor if your child is having trouble learning. Pediatricians can diagnose developmental delays and other conditions that might impair a child’s capacity for learning. 

Also, they can recommend authorities in child psychology, developmental and behavioral pediatric medicine, and pediatric neurodevelopmental issues. Teachers employ tests for screening or evaluation to pinpoint problems and determine if school-based or early intervention programs could be beneficial. 

Psychologists and learning specialists are frequently found on school evaluation teams. Lastly, a full-time private tutor can provide one-on-one, comprehensive tutoring for your child. 

Conclusion 

Learning disabilities and differences are important topics for parents to understand. Parents need to learn about the different types of learning disabilities, the signs of learning disabilities, and the different interventions available for a child with a learning disability. 

Furthermore, parents should create an open dialogue with their children and be mindful of the potential signs and symptoms of a learning disability. Parents can ensure their child receives the best education and support available by educating themselves on the subject and being proactive.

Prep Academy Tutors provide services for private in-person and online tutoring. Find a full-time private tutor close to you!

Reasons Why Learning French Is Essential for Students

Learning a second language has become an essential skill for students in today’s globalized world. French is among the most popular languages spoken worldwide, and it is an official language in twenty-nine countries. 

It is also the second most taught language in the world, after English. There are several reasons why learning French is essential for students, and this article will discuss them in detail.

Opens Up Job Opportunities

The ability to speak French can open up a world of job opportunities for students. The economy of France ranks sixth in the world, and French companies have a significant presence in many countries. 

The International Olympic Committee, the European Union, and other international organizations all utilize French as a working language. Therefore, students who learn French increase their chances of getting a job in these organizations and French companies. 

One of Canada’s official languages is French, so students who learn French can work in Canada’s bilingual provinces.

Enhances Travel Experiences

France is one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, and several famous attractions, like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, and the Palace of Versailles, are found there. Learning the language can enhance a student’s travel experience in France and other French-speaking countries. 

It allows the student to communicate with locals, understand the culture and traditions, and explore the country more authentically. It can also make travelling more convenient, as signs, menus, and other information are often written in French.

Improves Cognitive Skills

Learning a second language has been shown to increase cognitive abilities like problem-solving, decision-making, and multitasking. Research has also revealed that multilingual individuals have superior cognitive control, which allows them to transition between tasks more efficiently. 

Learning a language improves memory and concentration, as it requires the brain to store and retrieve information. Therefore, students who learn French can improve their cognitive skills, which can benefit them in their academic and professional lives.

Boosts Academic Performance

Learning a second language has also been found to improve academic performance. Studies have shown that students who learn a second language perform better in subjects such as math, science, and reading. 

This is because mastering a second language enhances cognitive abilities like memory, focus, and problem-solving, all of which are necessary for academic success. 

It also enhances cultural awareness and empathy, which can improve social skills and relationships.

Enhances Cultural Awareness

French is not just a language; it is also a culture. Learning French allows students to understand the culture, traditions, and history of French-speaking countries. 

It exposes students to different ways of living, thinking, and communicating, which can broaden their perspectives and enhance cultural awareness. 

Learning French can also promote intercultural dialogue and understanding, which is essential in today’s diverse and interconnected world.

Increases Self-Confidence

Learning a second language can also increase self-confidence. It requires students to step out of their comfort zones and communicate in a new language. 

This can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding. As students learn and improve their French skills, they gain confidence in their abilities and feel more comfortable communicating with others. 

It also promotes a sense of accomplishment and achievement, which can boost self-esteem and motivation.

Conclusion

With the growing importance of globalization and diversity, learning French has become increasingly relevant and necessary for students. Therefore, it is highly recommended that students consider learning French as a valuable investment in their future.

Prep Academy Tutors provides quality French tutoring for students. We offer personalized in-home and online tutoring services for elementary school, high school, and university prep in math, science, English, French, and every subject in between. 

We aim to make sure your child has the tools and confidence to score straight A’s—while enjoying the process! Find your local tutor!

Understanding the Main Causes of Academic Difficulty

It’s not uncommon to experience academic difficulties when going through major life transitions like relocating, starting college, becoming unwell, forming new relationships, or suffering financial difficulties. If you’re having trouble in school, you can get more information about the various factors that contribute to this problem and start thinking about what you can do to improve.

What Are the Usual Instigators of Academic Difficulty?

Most of the time, students’ struggles in the classroom are just one manifestation of a deeper problem. A few instances of potential influences on your academic success are shown below. A student’s struggles in the classroom may stem from more than one source.

• Transitioning to college life.
• Choice of courses; taking on too many credits, a too-difficult course load, or studying topics in which you have little interest.
• Poor study techniques, refusal to get assistance, or both.
• Dilemmas in generating motivation.
• Disconnection from social groups (such as peers, family, and extended kin).
• Family, health, money, stress, and time management at work and in relationships are all examples of “personal difficulties.”
• Choosing a field of study that isn’t a good fit.
• A traumatic experience.
• Inability to make decisions on majors and electives due to lack of clarity regarding the intended path of study.
• An impairment that has not been properly identified or treated.

Study Obstacles That Most Students Face

As part of the learning process, overcoming obstacles to studying, especially when one has a heavy workload, is inevitable for everyone. Problems can be short-term hiccups or indicate a deeper underlying cause of decreased motivation and productivity. Sometimes it seems like an enormous effort of will is required to overcome these challenges, but the key is to keep in mind that anyone with the correct mindset can succeed. This article provides solutions to some of the most prevalent academic challenges faced by students at any point in their education.

• It’s Hard for You to Focus

Even if you’ve managed to get rid of all the interruptions, focusing on your work may still be difficult. It’s not just possible, but typical, for concentration to fade and output to plummet. Almost everyone has experienced the agony of looking at a blank page, unable to get started because their mind keeps wandering. Suppose you’re continually checking Facebook or texting when you know you should be working. In that case, you need to make efforts to increase your concentration levels because procrastination is a symptom of a lack of concentration.

With low motivation, concentration issues have multiple potential root causes. If you can’t get anything done because you can’t stop thinking about something, it’s best to take some time to declutter your thoughts before beginning your task. If you’re having trouble getting started on your task, it might help to write down the problem, talk it over with a friend, go for a brisk walk or do some exercise to get it out of your system. Speaking with a school counsellor about more serious issues might be a good way to work through them and gain some perspective.

• You Often Forget Important Information

Students of all levels frequently express frustration that they cannot memorize everything they need to know to perform well on exams. Remembering all you’ve learned across multiple disciplines can feel like an insurmountable task when you’re juggling a full course load at GCSE and A-level. If you have trouble remembering what you need to know for an exam, you might benefit from learning how to use a few memory aids, even if you did well in learning the material in the first place.

• You’re Missing Necessary Resources

This is perhaps the simplest issue to resolve here. To do well in school, one needs all the tools available to them, including books, computers, a mentor, and a place to ask questions. If you require literature, it’s best to get recommendations from your instructor to avoid going down the incorrect path academically. You should talk to your parents about getting the necessary equipment, such as a laptop, textbooks, and other school supplies.

Talk to your parents about getting a new piece of technology (such as a laptop or an iPad) if you think there’s a good enough reason to justify the expense. You may have a fighting chance of convincing them if you explain how these items will improve your study time.

Conclusion

Academic difficulty is a common problem for many students but can be avoided with proper planning and understanding of the main causes. By understanding and addressing each of these causes, students can improve their academic performance and reach their educational goals. Additionally, it is important to seek help from teachers, family, and friends to ensure that students stay on track and succeed academically.

If you are looking for an experienced full-time private tutor in Canada and the United States, look no further than our experts here at Prep Academy Tutors. We are here to provide you with personalized in-home and online tutoring services. Call us today for more information about our tutoring services and enrichment programs.

Test Anxiety Tips: What is Test Anxiety and How to Avoid It

The difference between being nervous before or during a test and having test anxiety is that test anxiety interferes with a student’s ability to do well on a test. Nervousness can be productive. Test anxiety, however, is not.

Even for a student who does everything she can to prepare for a test — take detailed notes, study often, do all assigned readings and homework — test anxiety can cause her to underperform.

Standardized testing anxiety can be particularly detrimental to a student’s education. Students with standardized testing anxiety experience anxiety when doing standardize tests like the SAT or MCAT, which are an important gateway to success.

Test anxiety can be experienced by many different types of learners — the experience is not limited to one type of student.

Symptoms of test anxiety can be behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and physical. Some of these include:

• loss of focus
• inability to remember information
• hopelessness
• negative self-talk
• increased heart rate or heart palpitations
• muscle tension or soreness
• shortness of breath
• stomach pain
• headache
• dizziness
• shakiness
• nausea
• irritability

A less common, though severe, symptom is selective mutism, whereby a student becomes unable to speak while taking an exam.

Students preparing for online tests will benefit from understanding what testing anxiety is and what they can do about it. Test anxiety is a serious obstacle, but it’s an obstacle that can be overcome.

What is Test Anxiety?

Test anxiety is a psychological condition that shares many of the same symptoms as anxiety disorders. Anxiety disorders include generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), separation anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and agoraphobia.

Commonly experienced among those who suffer from anxiety, including test anxiety, are anxiety attacks and panic attacks. (The chief difference between anxiety and panic attacks is that anxiety attacks build gradually while panic attacks happen with little to no warning.) These attacks can be both frightening and debilitating. A student who experiences one of these attacks during an exam may be unable to complete it.

Test anxiety manifests differently in every student who experiences it. For some, symptoms may be mild. For others, symptoms may be extreme. To make things even more complicated, children with testing anxiety may not know they have it. They may confuse it with simple nervousness, or believe they’re afraid of tests because they’re not good enough.

Other students may recognize their anxiety but refrain from speaking about it for fear of being negatively perceived or made fun of.

Although test anxiety is common, it’s not a widely understood condition. Teachers and parents with testing anxiety may not be able to identify it in their students if they are not adequately informed.

Unfortunately, some teachers and parents may even believe a student with testing anxiety does poorly on exams not because he has anxiety but because he is underprepared, uninspired, or even lazy. Students who are perceived in this way may come to perceive themselves in this way — which only leads to more anxiety, fear of failure, or humiliation.

Causes of Test Anxiety

Test anxiety can be a symptom of an overarching anxiety disorder. On its own, test anxiety is considered a form of performance anxiety. Performance anxiety is a fear about one’s ability to perform at a specific task.

For this reason, test anxiety has the potential to become a vicious cycle. Because students suffer anxiety during an exam, they come to associate exams with anxiety, and become even more anxious during exams. As a result, they may feel that they have no control over their anxiety, and stop trying to overcome it. This can lead to a state called learned helplessness.

If students don’t learn to recognize their anxiety for what it is, they aren’t likely to seek help. And if they don’t seek treatment, they’re not likely to overcome their anxiety. On the contrary, their anxiety can become worse.

Due to test anxiety, even the most dedicated and promising students can become so distressed by tests, or so humiliated by what they perceive to be personal shortcomings, that they will become fearful of school and fall far short of their academic potential.

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Test Anxiety Tips and Help

Fortunately, there are ways to overcome test anxiety. The first step is to identify test anxiety; the second is to seek help. Prep Academy Tutors can identify test anxiety in their students and help them overcome it in order to become the kind of students they have the potential to be.

Parents living in Ontario may look at tutoring services in Ontario. Parents living in New York may consider private tutoring in NYC — although online tutoring services are available to anyone anywhere.

In addition to enlisting the help of tutors, parents may also seek help for their kids from mental health professionals.

Medication is an option. So too is counselling and different kinds of therapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, psychotherapy, and exposure treatment therapy.

Natural remedies are another option. These include:

• meditation
• exercise
• diet
• sleep
• avoiding stimulants like energy drinks or coffee

The goal is to find the sort of help that best suits your child’s needs.

Communication

If you think your children may have test anxiety, it’s important that you communicate with them and help them understand that test anxiety is neither permanent nor inescapable.

There are questions you can ask your children to find out whether they have test anxiety:

1. Do you worry about taking tests?
2. Do you feel different when you take tests?
3. When you take a test, do you feel like you know as much, or remember as much, about the subject as you do when you’re not taking a test?
4. Do you find that, when you take a test, you suddenly forget what you’ve learned?
5. Do you find it tough to concentrate when you take a test?
6. Do you experience physical symptoms while taking a test that you tend not to experience otherwise?

As parents, another beneficial thing to do is talk to your child’s tutors and teachers. They may be able to tell whether your child behaves differently during tests, or seems to underperform compared to their performance in class or on homework assignments.

For example, if a teacher notices that your child doesn’t fidget during class, but does fidget during tests, this might be a sign that your child experiences test anxiety.

Test anxiety damages students’ self-confidence in their ability to do well in school. Our certified tutors understand how to identify test anxiety and teach coping strategies that boost confidence and in turn improve students’ academic performance.

Keeping Students Focused with Homeschooling

Online learning and homeschooling are our new normal, which is why it’s essential to ensure that students have all the tools and resources they need to thrive in a remote learning environment.

As it stands right now, primary students and their parents are choosing between in-class and online learning. Prep Academy Tutors offers online tutoring services and small group tutoring to help students adjust to this new normal.

The reality is that parents are at different comfort levels when it comes to sending their students back to school, and more are turning to learning pods and other homeschooling alternatives to help continue their child’s educational journey.

Common Distractions

While there are distractions everywhere, the home does pose some unique distractions for students. The good news is that, with the help of parents, teachers, and tutors, students can learn to focus and stay on task despite these environmental factors.

Some of the common distraction’s students experience learning from home include:

Electronics: Students have more access to technology when learning at home. It’s important to monitor access to technology and set boundaries.

People: Having everyone at home —parents, grandparents, and siblings alike — can distract students who want to spend time with their family or find it hard to focus when others are around.

Procrastination: When students procrastinate, even leaving a room to get a glass of water can be a distraction. When procrastinating, students will use everything as a reason not to tackle the task at hand

Noise: While some students may learn well with background noise, others can get distracted by noise from the television, room chatter, or general bustling. Consider the ways you can accommodate for the noise level that your student requires to be productive. 

Limiting Your Student’s Distractions

The good news is that long time homeschooled students, and remote workers alike, have learned how to best combat the common distractions experienced at home to maximize their productivity.

With the right tools, students can thrive by learning at home. A CCHE study revealed that homeschooled students score 15 to 30 percentile points higher than public school students on standardized academic achievement tests.

The 4 Habits All Successful Students Share

The way we learn new information and skills may have changed significantly over the past twenty years, but no matter how many new technological tools we acquire, basic study skills are still a central part of education at all levels.

Consistently, the most effective students — the ones able to rapidly master new disciplines and incorporate new information into their understanding of the world — are those who have built a reliable set of habits that help them synthesize new information quickly and to retain what they have learned over the long run.

Good study habits can:

• Make studying easier
• Make studying faster
• Reduce the time needed to synthesize new information
• Improve grades
• Lock information into the long-term memory

So what are these habits, and how can students who want to study more efficiently acquire them?

In this article, we’ll go over four of the most important study habits a high school or college student can develop and explore some of the strategies that can help you make them part of your daily life.

1. Regular Goals

When you start out in a new subject or discipline, learning is often stimulating and fun — after all, it’s empowering to discover new things about the world. But once the initial excitement wears off and your realize just how much you don’t know, it’s easy to get discouraged. Learning a handful of words in Japanese makes you feel smart and accomplished: putting in the hard work to master the language’s complex grammar is another thing entirely.  

We often imagine that the thing that separates students who learn a few words and then give up from those who go one to achieve a degree of fluency is simply a matter of motivation and dedication. But motivation is about more than just drive, and motivated students tend to be good at providing themselves with incentives.

Setting regular goals is an essential part of this, because regular goals help students to feel that they are making a progress. Learning a language or mastering calculus takes a long time; if you are constantly measuring yourself against some kind of perfect ideal, it will be hard to stay the course.

But if you find ways to set regular goals — learning a cluster of words every week and a grammatical tense every month, for example — you can measure your progress more effectively.

Having outside help can make this a bit easier, which is why you might want to find a tutor near you if you’re worried that you won’t be able to hold yourself to your stated goals on your own.

2. Good Time Management

We tend not to think of time management as being a studying skill, per se, but effective studying is all about making the most of the hours available: the problem most students face is not that they can’t master the material, but that they struggle to balance all of their different time commitments, and can’t dedicate the time a given learning task requires.

For this reason, becoming a better student typically means finding ways to use one’s time more efficiently.

One common problem students run into with time management is that they aren’t sufficiently realistic about how long certain tasks will take. This leads to forms of magical thinking whereby students convince themselves that they can do more with their study time than is actually possible.

It is important to find out how long certain routine learning tasks actually take (how long, for example, does it take you to read a page of a history book, or write a thousand-word position paper), and then base your study plan on realistic metrics regarding what you can accomplish with the time you have.

Time management isn’t just about allocating yourself enough time to complete a learning object, however. It’s also about using that time strategically.

Cramming is an excellent example of where this often goes wrong: if you have four hours to prepare for a major test, that time will be far better spent in half hour or forty-five minute blocks of studying time spread out across the week, rather than a single intensive session the day before the test. 

While certain mnemonic techniques can help you remember key information more easily, scientists who study how memory works know that there are no real shortcuts for mastering complex material: you need regular exposure over time in order to lock major and minor details into your long-term memory.

Again, when you find your local tutor they may be able to help with time management simply by virtue of requiring you to do regular, weekly work, thereby keeping you on task and not giving you a chance to fall behind in your studies.

3. Willingness to Use the Resources at their Disposal

We are living in a time of unprecedented access to educational tools. Companies like Udemy, Duolingo, Masterclass and other online learning sites have all become massively popular by making learning software, games, and lectures widely available to the public. You can now receive high-level instruction in everything from German and literature to cooking and coding on your phone.

And the resources that are available are not only digital — even small Canadian cities now feature thriving innovation hubs that can help students of all ages connect to quality instruction and learning opportunities. And of course, tutoring services like Prep Academy Tutors can help students get hand’s-on help with English, French, math, science and other challenging subjects.

The most effective students don’t just set regular goals and manage their time well — they also look beyond the textbook to find resources that can help them learn more effectively.

Studying is, for many people, a deeply social act, and using the resources other people provide to make learning easier is an important way to make the information really stick. After all, a student who is regularly meeting with tutors and peers will have new material regularly reinforced, which plays an important role in locking it into the long-term memory.

If you want to find out how tutoring can help you meet your learning goals, contact us to learn more about our tutoring services or take a look at the tutoring opportunities we offer in your city or community.

4. Routines

Study habits are just that: habits that form an almost unconscious part of our everyday lives. The routine nature of habits is part of what makes them so effective. Once you have developed good study habits, it is easy to make learning a regular part of your life even when you aren’t preparing for final exams.

But developing good study habits is easier said than done, especially for busy high school or college students who have a lot of activities to schedule in every week. For this reason, building these studying routines into your life requires an intentional and strategic approach, one that avoids overly optimistic thinking and focuses on what is doable.

There are plenty of tools online that can help you create a study routine that works for you, but here are five easy steps that can get you started:

1. Make a list of your learning goals for the month.
2. Determine how long each of these goals will take to complete — and be realistic.
3. Sit down with your calendar and map out what your week and month look like. What activities and events are locked in? Where do you have time to spare?
4. Portion out your study time into twenty-five minute blocks, with five minute breaks between, and see how many blocks you have over the course of the week.
5. Allocate the tasks you need to complete to these time blocks, being sure to spread out major tasks like exam prep over a few days.

Like many things in life, there are no shortcuts when it comes to studying. If you want to see positive results, you just need to put the hours in.

But this can also be a liberating thing to realize. After all, if acquiring a new skill, learning a new discipline, or mastering a new language is simply a matter of studying smart enough and long enough, then the only thing holding you back from achieving your goals is proper planning.

One of the most important benefits that comes with professional tutoring is the feeling that you are not alone. Intellectual work can be tiring and isolating, and working with a tutor is a great way to feel not only that you have the expert help you need to overcome the obstacles in your path, but also have the human support you need to stay motivated.

If you want to overcome your personal learning challenges in 2020, get in touch with Prep Academy Tutors today and find the tutor in your city who is right for you!

How Students in Ontario Can Master High School French

Because Canada is a bilingual country, acquiring a high level of French fluency while in high school can be an essential stepping stone toward careers in politics, public service, academia, law, and medicine — not to mention unlocking incredible opportunities for travel and personal development outside of work. 

But for parents raising kids in heavily Anglophone parts of the country, like Western Ontario, it can be hard to know how to make dreams of bilingualism a reality.

After all, the nature of Canada’s education system is such that the resources available in some areas — French immersion programs and robust community support for language learning — simply aren’t available in others.

If you want to help your high schooler get the most out of their French curriculum and achieve the kind of fluency that will prepare them for success in university and the workplace, here are four ways you can help them tap into their full language-learning potential.

1. Get Extra Support

Probably the first thing you need to understand about your child’s high school French curriculum is that it is not really designed to produce students who are able to communicate like native French speakers. Instead, it is meant to provide a strong foundation in the kind of skills students can learn most easily outside a French-speaking context — grammar and writing being the most significant.

This means that helping students really master French is generally going to require doing additional language-learning outside of school.

This isn’t always easy: in Toronto’s downtown core, there is significant access to French language cultural institutions that can help you enhance your child’s education prospects, but in other parts of the GTA they are not so readily available. 

For this reason, you may need to consider engaging private help to provide the educational boost that one-on-one conversation and grammar work with a French expert can provide.

A private tutor can provide many benefits for people learning French as a second language, including but not limited to:

• Targeted support that deals with individual learning obstacles
• One-on-one help that lets students move at their own pace
• A safe environment where students can make mistakes and build their confidence without fear of judgement
• Expert education help that understands the pedagogy of linguistics and can incorporate modern methods for language acquisition into private lessons. 

Fortunately, if you are looking for a French tutor in Mississauga we can put you in touch with highly qualified instructors who can help your child get the extra support they need.

2. Understand the Difference Between Academic Success and Fluency

In Ontario, most students who are not from Francophone families will first encounter French when they start school. While access to primary and secondary education in the French language is one of the key benefits of living in a bilingual country, the downside is that young students quickly come to think of French as a subject of study rather than a mode of communication.

While it is certainly true that academic success in French is extremely important — and language acquisition unquestionably relies on intensive, rigorous study — a language is a living thing, and simply memorizing vocabulary and conjugation patterns will never get you to full fluency.

This is why it is important to find opportunities for more creative language use outside of school. This could mean getting involved in an extra-curricular language club, or it could mean finding a pen-pall to communicate with via social media.

One of the major advantages of learning French in the twenty-first century is that it is easier than it has ever been to find authentic French language resources on the internet, and to gain exposure to French film, television, and news outlets online, no matter where you live.

If you want to augment your school’s language curriculum and go beyond academic mastery of the language, here are a few helpful tips for engaging with French on your own time:

• Public screenings of French films (or watching French movies online)
• Following French language accounts on social media
• Reading national news stories in both languages
• Reading French translations of your favourite books

A good education plan will involve both tips to improve your SSAT scores and maximize your chances for getting into a good post-secondary program and providing you with the tools you need to communicate effectively with native speakers.

3. Make it Social

Unless you’re studying a dead language like Latin or Ancient Greek, you will never be able to attain fluency on your own. Languages are inherently social, and language acquisition relies on a number of social factors — not least of which being a student’s opportunities to engage with other people who speak the language they are trying to learn.

Students now have an unprecedented number of options for learning not just French, but any major language they have an interest in. Education apps like Duolingo and Busuu make it possible to study your language of choice in engaging and stimulating ways whenever you want, wherever you want.

But while these apps can play an important role in increasing exposure and helping you master new vocabulary, without regular interactions with other language students or native speakers, there is a hard ceiling limiting how far you can go if these are your only language-learning tools.

This can pose a problem, especially for students who don’t have the option of spending summers in a French-speaking environment or attending French-language summer camps. As many experts have noted, because of the social interactions that come with it, immersion plays an outsized role in helping students become confident and practiced in a new language.

Without opportunities for immersion, it can be extremely difficult to truly attain fluency. So what should people with limited options to use French in their daily lives do to overcome this obstacle? 

There are no easy answers to this question, but it is important to remember that fluency and academic success is a team game — and if you’re going to succeed, you need to find a team. Tutoring is helpful not just because it gives kids an opportunity to correct their mistakes and practice their speaking, but also because it can help them plug into a wider network of language learners who can help them find out about French language speaking opportunities that exist in their own communities.

Languages are social tools, so building a community of language learners who will help you use that tool in social ways is essential if meaningful language acquisition is actually to take place.

4. Do a Little Every Day

Probably the best piece of practical advice for language learners is also the simplest: do a little bit of work every day. Time and time again, research has shown that there is simply no substitute for steady, incremental progress in language learning, which is why it is so important that students practice their French every day — even if it is only for fifteen minutes to half an hour.

When you learn a second language, you are essentially reprogramming your brain, and this takes time. Apps and services that promise to help you become fluent in a matter of weeks are making an impossible pitch, for the simple reason that it takes most of us years to be able to meaningfully communicate in our own language, let alone a second one.

This shouldn’t be discouraging: like physical fitness, the key is to make language learning part of your routine, so it becomes as familiar and comfortable as the drive to school. Just like exercise, problems tend to come when the routine is disrupted.

One of the reasons why tutoring has proven to be such an effective method for helping people learn new languages is that tutoring builds language learning into the schedule of every week, increasingly the likelihood that students will keep up with their homework and continue to learn a little bit every day.

If you want to learn more about us and how our approach can help your kids improve their French, and even achieve fluency by the time they graduate, get in touch with us today to find out how our unique, hand’s-on approach helps students build confidence and master the studying techniques that will help them become independent learners.

More than simply increasing earning potential or giving students a shot at getting into better schools, learning a second language is one of the great intellectual pleasures of a fulfilled life — a good that is worth pursuing for its own sake.

If you want to give the gift of bilingualism to your children but are worried that you don’t have the necessary skills or tools, call Prep Academy Tutors today!

How Montreal Parents Can Promote Literacy at Home

There is no city in North America quite like Montreal. Famous for its relaxed pace of life, romantic architecture, and refined culture, the city’s bilingualism and biculturalism help it to stand out in a country where English and French tend to be geographically divided. No wonder Montrealers are so fond of their home!

But while Montreal can be a great place to raise a family, parents in bilingual cities like Montreal face special challenges — especially if they are part of the Anglophone minority. That’s why Prep Academy Tutors works with a number of talented and professional literacy specialists in Montreal who can help you make sure your children develop strong reading and writing skills early in life.

For most people, developing literacy skills is a lifelong process, one we never really stop working on, which is why it is so critical to give kids a strong foundation they can build off of. If you are looking for ways you can promote literacy in your own home, here are a few of the things you can do to help give your kids a head start.

1. Model Good Reading Habits

As any experienced English teacher will tell you, it’s easy to tell the difference between kids who read at home and kids who don’t. The single best way to develop strong literacy skills is to spend a significant portion of time every day reading, and kids who read for pleasure will have a natural advantage over those who don’t.

And if you want to get your kids to pick up books — especially if they are between the ages of five and ten — one of the most effective ways to do that is to read yourself. Young children will often mimic their parents’ behaviour as they explore the world around them, so if you want your kids to have good reading habits, normalizing reading as a leisure activity can have a powerful impact.

Parents are busier than ever, of course, and it isn’t always going to be possible to spend as much time reading as you might like, but even half an hour a day can make a difference by showing your kids that there are entertainment alternatives to watching television, playing computer games, or spending time on one’s phone.

But if you have young children at home and really want to get them hooked on reading, there is simply no better way to do so than by reading to them before bed. Scientific studies have shown that this has value far beyond helping to cultivate literacy: it also helps them developing longer attention spans, feel more connection to you as a parent, and improves behaviour. 

2. Talk About What You Read

Getting your child to read is the first part of the battle, but it isn’t he entirety of it — if you want to help them develop the kind of critical reading skills that will help them succeed in school and in life, you also need to find ways to encourage them to interact with the material they are reading.

Checking in regularly about what books they are reading and what they think of them is an easy and practical way to help them think through what they are consuming. This can be as simple as asking them to recount the major plot points of a the story, or can involve detailed discussions about how the stories make them feel and what they like or dislike about what they’re reading.

In some families, this happens fairly informally — around the dinner table, perhaps, or while commuting to and from school or after-school activities. But if this kind of conversation doesn’t come naturally to your kids, you can make it an aspect of the daily routine to ask them a few questions about what they have read, what they have liked, and what they think about it.

Not only will this serve as a good way to develop critical reading skills, it will also help them express their opinions in constructive and thoughtful ways, and develop confidence in their own ideas. 

3. Encourage Your Kids to Express Creativity Through Writing

Most advice about cultivating literacy in children focuses heavily on reading, the assumption being that learning good reading habits will naturally impact one’s abilities to communicate using writing. And while it is certainly true that kids who read tend to find that writing comes more naturally, it’s no substitute for time spent actually writing.

But how do you get an active child with so many other distractions in their life to sit down and start composing? If it can be a challenge to get kids reading, getting them to write something of their own should be next to impossible, right?

Fortunately, the technology-saturated world of the twenty-first century actually offers a lot of opportunities for kids to develop their abilities as writers and their own distinct writing voices. Thanks to text, chat, and internet apps, writing has remained an immediately applicable skill, and getting a young person to write more doesn’t necessarily mean sitting them down to compose something longhand using paper and a pen.

But one of the best ways to make writing more appealing to young children is to encourage them to see it as a means to expressing themselves and exercising their creativity. Writing their own stories and poems, creating captions for pictures online, and even writing plays they can perform with their friends are all ways young kids can develop an appreciation for the beauty and complexity of written language, an appreciation that will make them more likely to spend time on activities that will improve their abilities as written communicators.

4. Get Help from a Private Tutor

While there are lots of things you can do to make reading and writing a bigger part of everyday life for you and your kids, sometimes there is no substitute for structured education, especially if your child is facing particular struggles mastering the basics of reading and writing.

In situations like this, hiring a private tutor in Montreal with experience teaching and a strong knowledge of the pedagogical tools that can be used to help develop literacy skills can be the most effective way to get your kids reading and writing as soon as possible.

One of the most common challenges students face when learning to read and write in the classroom is accessing the kind of one-on-one help that is essential for helping students overcome their own particular struggles, and while Quebec’s education system remains one of Canada’s strongest, the teacher shortage is having an impact on the amount of hands-on instruction individual students can expect to receive. Hiring a tutor can provide students having difficulties mastering the English curriculum with a vital life-line that can mean the difference between a passing grade and a failing one.

At Prep Academy Tutors, we champion a one-on-one approach designed to target the particular problems individual kids are facing. We also understand that tackling difficult subject material can be a little scary, especially for younger children, which is why our tutors offer lessons in your home, where students will feel more relaxed and comfortable. If you want to learn more about how we work you can get in touch with us about our Montreal English tutoring program today.

There are many benefits to raising your children in a bilingual environment. Not only will it give your child the natural advantage when it comes to picking up a second language, according to some scientific studies, it can also make it easier for children to switch between tasks and learn other languages later in life. 

But one of the drawbacks of growing up bilingual can be a lack of full proficiency in either language. If a child only speaks English in the home but goes to a French-language school (or vice versa), they will tend to have a bifurcated vocabulary in which their language proficiency changes depending on the context.

For example, a child might be completely comfortable discussing domestic or family-related matters in English, while not being able to talk in any great detail about work-related issues for which they only ever use French.

If you are concerned about ensuring that your child develops the literacy skills they need for effective communication in English, call us to learn more about how we can provide the kind of personally tailored approach kids need in order to master reading and writing.

Whether you are looking for tutoring support for high school students preparing for admission to one of Montreal’s prestigious universities, or want to make sure your children get a head start on reading and writing at the primary level, Prep Academy Tutors can get you the teaching help you need to set your kids up for a lifetime of academic and personal success.