Letters | Consider peer tutoring to help all Hong Kong students in need

Readers discuss the benefits of adult mentors versus peer tutors and ask questions about the duration and fate of unsuccessful Strive and Rise applicants

Reading Time:3 minutes

Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun Yuk-han (left), Chief Secretary for Administration Eric Chan Kwok-ki (centre) and Director of Social Welfare Charmaine Lee Pui-sze at the announcement of the Strive and Rise Programme on August 22. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 11:30am, 9 Sep 2022

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The Hong Kong government’s new Strive and Rise Programme aims to recruit adult mentors for 2,000 underprivileged students. However, peer tutoring is a broader, more sustainable policy to help all students academically, and both student tutors and tutees will benefit.

Here is an example to illustrate why that is the case. Tutee Lola doesn’t understand why 3x2=6, so tutor Heidi thinks about how to clarify it and tries to reorganise the ideas in new ways to help Lola understand it.

So Heidi draws three boxes each with two items inside and explains why 3x2=6 by counting the objects. Heidi’s richer, deeper explanation of multiplication as boxes of items, repeated addition and counting helps Lola better understand arithmetic concepts and solution procedures while also integrating and deepening Heidi’s own mastery of arithmetic. Such help often academically benefits the tutor more than the tutee.

As peers often share ways of speaking, they can translate difficult words and ideas into familiar ones more readily than adults can and hence be more effective tutors. For example, when a student incorrectly says, “a negative times a negative is a negative”, a peer might say, “Think of a negative times a negative as removing a ‘dislike’, so it’s a positive result.”

Simply giving the correct answer often does not help. Teachers should show ways to give more effective help and provide students opportunities to practise giving help in class.