High School Level English and College Level English tutor

About Ambar

I have a PhD in English Literary Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2018) where I also worked as a Teaching Assistant at the English Department and as a Writing Center Tutor. I am currently taking a hiatus from regular teaching before I begin an MS in Secondary Education in English at the UW-Madison this summer.

My experiences as an English and college composition teacher, along with my experience as a one-on-one writing tutor at the UW Writing Center, have given me the opportunity to teach students the advanced reading and writing skills they need to succeed in college, both within the English major and in other fields.

As a reading tutor I can teach young people in Middle School, High School, and College advanced reading comprehension skills:
• I can teach students to recognize symbols or motifs, imagery, literary devices such as alliteration, personification, antithesis, allusions and more.
• I can teach students to recognize recurrent themes in a story and to identify how the writer is connecting these themes through keywords.
• I can teach students how to recognize when fiction writers are making argument or claims through their stories.

As a writing tutor I can teach young people in Middle School and High School the following necessary writing skills:
• How to write critical claims, and what distinguishes them from opinion.
• How to choose effective examples.
• How to choose relevant and descriptive detail when writing about examples.
• How to write an introduction paragraph by making the essential rhetorical moves of an introduction paragraph to any essay.
• How to write compelling conclusions.

As a college writing tutor I can teach the above along with more advanced writing skills, such as the conventions of academic writing across the curriculum. At the UW-Writing Center I have tutored students from different disciplines and writing at all levels of higher education, from freshman year in college to the graduate and postdoctoral stage. I have taught college students, both local and international, the different expectations of academic writing specific to their disciplines, from the humanities to the social sciences and STEM fields.

As an Spanish and French tutor:

I can tutor students from the beginner level in either language all the way up to the advanced-intermediate and conversational level. I love to teach syntactical and grammatical rules in context, within a conversation. I have my own textbooks and grammar practice workbooks that we can use if you do not have your own. If you are at a more advanced level we can talk about topics that interest you, from films, to novels, to your career interests and hobbies, all the while learning new vocabulary and phrases.

Foreign language background:

I studied abroad in Spain at Universidad San Pablo CEU during Spring 2007, where I took Psychology courses in Spanish. I took Psychology of Aging, Cognitive Neuropsychology, Psychology of Language and Juridical Psychology. I currently volunteer as an English-Spanish Medical Interpreter at the Benevolent Specialist Project (BSP) free clinic in Middleton, WI. I interpret for the Spanish-speaking patients during their doctor’s appointments. I am preparing to take the certification exam as a Medical Interpreter in Spanish-English given by the Certifying Commission of Healthcare Interpreters (CCHI), which is one of the two national certifying organizations for Medical Interpreters.

I completed a French minor while working on my English BA degree and have continued polishing my conversational French. I currently volunteer as a French to English interpreter at the French Church of Madison (L'Eglise Francophone de Madison) at Madison Life Center on the East Side of Madison. I interpret the French preaching into English for the congregation during Sunday services.

I would love to be your Spanish or French tutor!

Sincerely,

Ambar