Why Your Maths Tutor and English Tutor Should Teach Completely Differently

Most tutoring advice treats every subject the same: explain clearly, be patient, ask good questions. But after many years of tutoring both, I can tell you that good maths tutoring and good English tutoring are nearly opposite jobs — and a tutor who uses one method for everything is doing half their students a disservice.

In maths, the reps are the meal

You can be entertained by mathematical explanations all day and learn nothing. Explanation is the garnish; the reps are the meal. The skills of problem-solving and calculation are built one way: by doing problems.

So a good maths tutor deliberately avoids doing the thinking for the student. If the equation says x + 2 = 5, I don't say "subtract two from both sides." I ask:

What are we trying to do? — We want to know what x equals. So what's in the way? — This plus two. And what undoes a plus two?

The student walks the path themselves; I just keep them on it. It's slower in the moment and much faster over a term, because the student is building the actual skill instead of watching me perform it. A maths tutor who spends the hour patiently explaining can make a session feel productive while the student quietly becomes a passenger — waiting to be taught instead of learning to think.

In English, the thinking-out-loud is the point

By Years 11 and 12, English isn't about the language — spelling and grammar are assumed (though most kids now struggle with both, thanks to a lifetime of spellcheckers). What senior English actually tests is the ability to understand and express genuinely difficult ideas. Read an HSC essay question sometime: they're hard to parse on purpose. It's mental weightlifting.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: most teenagers don't yet have a stock of sophisticated ideas of their own. Nobody does at sixteen. We all build one the same way — by absorbing the thinking of people around us until it becomes our own. So in English, I do the opposite of what I do in maths: as much thinking out loud as possible. I hand students insights simple enough to latch onto, and they carry them into their essays. That's not cheating; that's how intellectual development has always worked.

The other half of English tutoring is feedback. An essay written without feedback is a rep with bad form. Every piece of writing needs marking — structure, logic, technique, and above all: did you actually answer the question? Which means an English student needs a tutor who will genuinely read their work between or during sessions, not just chat about the text.

The same principle, applied differently

Notice both methods serve one goal: the student doing the real work. In maths, the real work is solving; explanation can crowd it out, so the tutor holds back. In English, the real work is wrestling with ideas; a student can't wrestle with ideas they've never encountered, so the tutor feeds them in — then demands the writing reps.

Everything else follows from asking: what does the rep look like in this subject, and what's blocking the student from doing it? Even something as unglamorous as handwriting speed — a genuine bottleneck for many HSC students in every subject, and one that no amount of explaining will fix.

How to use this when choosing a tutor

Ask a prospective tutor one question: "How is your approach different for maths and English?"

A tutor who understands their craft will light up — this is the kind of thing good tutors think about constantly. A blank look, or a generic answer about being patient and clear, tells you they have one gear. That might be fine if it happens to be the right gear for your child's subject. But I wouldn't bet a term's fees on it.

For more on what to look for (and the one credential you must verify yourself), see How to choose the right HSC tutor in Sydney.

Or watch the method in action: book a free trial session — the first one is always free.