Tutoring

I offer both individualized writing instruction and support in humanities subject areas. The focus is on engaging your interest, close reading and speaking with enthusiasm in your own voice.

I teach students to do more than just go through the motions and tell the teacher what they imagine she wants to hear. If you start out by writing a facile, authoritative-sounding topic sentence and then cherry picking examples to make your predetermined point—if the formula and mechanics are more important to you than what you are trying to say—then you’ll inevitably end up descending into imprecision, cliché, wordiness and repetition, boring yourself and the rest of us along with you.

Within the context of any given assignment, I’ll help you identify, refine and stoke your own burning questions. Once you’re really engaged, once there’s something in it for you beyond just getting a good grade, that genuine interest will sustain your inquiry and ensure that the result bears your personal stamp.

It doesn’t matter whether you are learning to marshal evidence for a history paper, analyze a poem or master the vocabulary of climate change in a new language. I’ll teach you how to read closely, trust your material and mine it for all the information you need. If it’s going to matter, the mechanics and presentation must serve these larger goals.

For a better idea, please see the sample assignments and feedback on student work under comments & markups and ‘Work.’