I am a detail-oriented and driven 4th year medical student at Cambridge University. I am interested in the science of learning and metacognition and how tools from the literature can be harnessed to have the highest yield study session EVERY session.

My Grades:
A-level Biology, Chemistry, Maths, Physics: A*, A*, A*, A*
GCSE Biology, Chemistry, Maths, Physics: 9,9,9,9

My teaching style involves working from the ground up. Teaching the very basic foundation of the topic before adding the more complex concepts. To best teach, I use a mixture of verbal questions and mini-written assignments to ensure the student has got to grips with the concept. I find verbal questions requiring verbal answers really help the student work through their thought processes out loud and see where they are lacking in knowledge and need clarification.

In addition to teaching, I will constantly remind the student of factors involved in effective learning, something I am very passionate about.

A quick insight into factors that play a significant role in effective learning.

Effective learning can be divided into 3 stages: Before, during, and after the learning bout.

Before and after, you need to prime yourself for absorbing information. This includes things such as getting enough sleep the night before, being well nourished before starting work, and eliminating known distractions plus reducing the risk of distractions. Sleep for example is crucial for learning, both before and after a study session. Poor sleep leads to reduced motivation, concentration, working memory (The RAM of the brain), and reduced memory formation to name a few. Studies have shown that good sleep on the night of studying is crucial, but it doesn’t end there. For ample memory formation, sleep on subsequent days after learning needs to be optimal as well.

During the study session itself, methods such as active recall and spaced repetition are common in the education space, but there are ways to improve on these methods to reduce the time taken to learn large sums of information. For example, the spacing of recalled information during a study session should tend towards being longer than shorter in order to give the brain the signal that that piece of information is worth remembering long term. An example of this is rather than recalling a list of words every 2 minutes, recalling it every 15 minutes will force you to make mistakes and provide a stronger learning stimulus. Recalling information too often is almost like re-reading the information because you have not let yourself forget some of the content hence it is dangerously close to simply recognizing the information.

I believe the best thing I can do as a tutor is to make the student self-sufficient and equip them with the best science-backed tools to achieve the grades they want to achieve.