Dr Emma Smith

Hertford College, English tutor

At Oxford we assess individuals, not pieces of paper. We try to assess people's achievement within the context in which they've been working, and try to match their interests and potential to our own specific courses.

Tutorials foster skills of hard work, self motivation, and confidence. That's the confidence to rethink opinions, listen to counterviews, and reassess – not the confidence to express the same old views louder or more eloquently. They also foster the ability to process and synthesise large amounts of material, subject-specific skills of research and argument, and the ability to write coherently and under time pressure.

In English, tutorials are at the heart of the undergraduate experience – that's the place to process and think about lectures and other learning opportunities.

As a college tutor I can tailor my approach to suit the particular needs of the individual student, bearing in mind the ultimate demands of university assessment.

I can reward, or try to temper, individual students taking intellectual risks, or being more disciplined; or being more or less opinionated depending on where they are in the course and what their preferred learning styles are.

Seeing my college students all the time enables me to track their progress and development. It's hard to convey how closely we know our students given the small numbers involved at a college level.