Over the course of giving Social Studies tuition to hundreds of students, I have noticed five common areas which proved to be a challenge.

Inferring incorrectly 
Students tend to infer inaccurately in many ways – one way is by being too literal, another is failing to use relevant contextual knowledge to interpret the source. Another form of incorrect inference is when they lift up directly from the source (text sources) or describe it. As for visual sources especially political cartoons, students tend to omit parts of the cartoon, zooming in only on certain portions, and ignoring other portions of the cartoon.

Not having enough content knowledge
Admittedly it is common for students to find Social Studies tedious and most of them refuse to read the textbook or notes given. This is needed for the SRQ section. It is also needed to interpret contextual sources. For non-contextual sources, reading the background information and having a grasp of general knowledge about local events is extremely  useful.

Misreading the question
Another common occurence is interpreting the question wrongly. One cause is due to poor time management and another is because of stressful and nervous mental state. One other cause is simply because of plain carelessness. 

Poor time management
The paper is demanding – in 1 hour 45 minutes, they have to answer 5 SBQs and 2 SRQs. It is not uncommon to have students who fail to complete the paper or rush through questions due to lack of time. Another reason is lack of timed practices. The time is so tight that sometimes students get ready with a certain question because they know the answer or they spend too much time figuring out the source and have no time to write out the answer.

Our Social Studies tuition addresses these issues. We do more than our best to help our students because we know that in many situations, one’s best is not enough and we will go that extra mile to help our students ace this subject.