Experience
I have been a teacher for 25 years. My passion is in teaching humanities subjects. I believe that students misunderstand these subjects and that they can all do well. When I work with my students, they attain good results eventually because I help them in three aspects. I nurture them to love the subjects, I teach them how and what to remember, and I show them how to write good answers.
From F9 (Prelim) to C5 in Combined Humanities (Social Sudies and Geography) Xander Seng, O level student of 2022, St Patrick’s Secondary School
Duration of tuition: 1 Year
Mr Tong has been instrumental in guiding my son in his preparation for O-Levels. My son struggles a lot with putting his thoughts on paper as he has multiple learning difficulties such as dyslexia and dysgraphia, just to name a few. As a result, he avoids all types of homework which involves writing. Tuition sessions were the only time that he was willing to attempt doing work, with lots of patience and prompting from Mr Tong, who never once gave up on him. In fact, Mr Tong also went the extra mile to develop customised notes for him to suit his learning style. Based solely on his weekly lessons with Mr Tong which was increased to twice a week nearer to his o levels, he managed to pass his Social Studies and Geography (Combined Humanities) for the first time. He scored C5, a jump from his usual F9, far exceeding our expectations. This is only possible with Mr Tong’s relentless support. Thank you Mr Tong for all your hard work and for believing in Xander.
From C6 (SA1) to B4 (Prelim) to A1 in Combined Humanities (Social studies and History)
Kenneth Giauw, O level student of 2021, Victoria School
Duration of tuition: 8 months
Mr Tong is an amazing humanities teacher. Before I started attending his lessons, I was struggling with the subject a lot. For example, I always had difficulty presenting my answers for both my source based and essay questions in an "appropriate and convincing" manner, especially on the part of explanation. I also had problems with time management which caused me to always write incomplete answers during exams. With the help of Mr Tong, I was able to gradually improve on the quality of my answers and my speed of writing, hence being able to write more well explained paragraphs during my exams.
During the first few months of tuition, Mr Tong would spend lesson time going through the content of every chapter in the History and Social Studies syllabus (priority given to the ones which are predicted to be highly likely to come out in the O Level exams). After that, he would get me to rewrite all the key points of the chapter without referring to anything. To reinforce my learning, he would provide me with various essay questions related to the chapter to work on. This not only helped to train my writing skills, but also allowed me to explore different angles of the issue discussed in the essay question so that I could also have a better understanding of my content. The notes provided by him are also very organised and concise. In every chapter, Mr Tong would also provide easy and interesting code words (acronyms) which helped me to remember my content better.
When nearing the exams, Mr Tong would give me "surprise time trials" where he would give me exam papers from other schools for me to finish under time. He also gave me a rough guideline on how much time I should allocate to the respective questions in the whole paper. This helped to train my time management skills. He would also give me a list of essay questions from other schools for me to practice and even went through specific explanation techniques for certain chapter questions like the Rise of Hitler in History. Being an approachable, patient and dedicated tutor, he was also willing to spend time marking the work I had done then go through the mistakes being made in my answers and teach me how to correct these mistakes and generally improve on the presentation of my answers.
All in all, I would like to thank Mr Tong for his unwavering support and dedication towards tutoring me throughout this uneven journey from SA1 all the way to O Levels. The entire process of practicing many papers may be tiring but at the same time fruitful as well.
Tong has helped to build my confidence and interest towards the subject and eventually allowed me to attain an A1 for the subject which I never thought I would achieve at all! Thank you Mr Tong
[...]
