Writing is an art that can be developed with encouragement, guidance, and skilled, quality coaching.
Roberta Staley offers a wide range of tutoring services for high school English and post-secondary students.
As an educator, Roberta has taught writing at the post-secondary level for a decade and tutored high school students in English composition and comprehension. As well, she helps Grade 12 students craft university entrance essays, which are key to acceptance at a top institution. Tutoring online or in person, she helps students understand assignment criteria, formulate clear and focused ideas and guide their research, leading to a final, polished product. Under her tutelage, students — high school or post-secondary — hone their critical thinking skills, learn how to structure essays and articles, improve their grammar, refine their writing style and learn the discipline of self-editing.
Grades 9-12 English
As an English tutor, Roberta works one-on-one with students either online or in her home in Vancouver. Instruction includes reading and analyzing assigned novels as well as essay assignment prep. She will consult with the student’s English school instructor and/or counsellor to establish learning objectives. After each private session, a report is sent to the parents detailing the learning objectives, the activities that were undertaken, the student’s overall understanding and improvement strategies, as well as homework.
University Entrance Essays
Getting into a top university is the dream of many students and their families, requiring hard work, good grades and competitive admission test scores. What can tip the balance in a student’s favour is the quality of the university entrance essay. From initial concept to final draft, Roberta works one-on-one with students to ensure that their essay showcases their critical thinking skills, individuality, creativity and writing abilities.
First and Second-Year University Paper Writing
As a tutor, Roberta works one-on-one with students to help them prepare and write exemplary essays for first- and second-year Humanities classes, such as English or political science. She also provides editing of first-draft essays.
Learn to Edit
This is for more advanced writing students who want to become rigorous self-editors or who aspire to be writing instructors or coaches. As an English tutor, Roberta teaches the four levels of editing: substantive, copyediting, proofreading and stylistic. Working one-on-one, students learn to assess and edit material for content, structure, style, grammatical accuracy, readability and marketability.