What Does a Python™ Tutor Do?

Tutors assist students in better understanding a subject reviewing material for a specific class or spending time explaining concepts that they do not fully comprehend. A PythonTM tutor is someone who specializes in assisting students in mastering the PythonTM programming language. He will work with students on fundamental programming concepts, PythonTM source code syntax, and object-oriented programming concepts. A PythonTM tutor can also assist students in debugging their own programs’ source code.

When communicating in writing, students must use proper punctuation, word placement, and sentence structure in order to be understood. Programming languages have their own syntax rules for using punctuation in order for source code to properly execute as a program, just as languages have syntax that must be followed in order for someone to be understood other speakers of the language. The PythonTM programming language has a simpler syntax than many other programming languages, making it easier to concentrate on general programming concepts rather than specific language syntax rules. As a result, many introductory computer science courses teach programming fundamentals using PythonTM. Students must still follow syntactical rules in PythonTM, and a PythonTM tutor can go over these with them in the same way that English tutors go over proper grammar usage with English students.

PythonTM is a type of object-oriented programming language. This means that programmers can write the code for a data structure and then tell the program to use it as a blueprint for creating multiple, independently functioning instances of that data structure. For many students who are new to programming, this can be a difficult concept to grasp, but it is a key feature of this and many other programming languages. A PythonTM tutor can assist students in reviewing the syntax used PythonTM to create the base code for these data structures, as well as the syntax and methodology for instructing a PythonTM program to create multiple instances of a data structure from the base code they created. To help students understand such complex topics, a tutor can go over real-world examples of how software developers use object-oriented programming.

A PythonTM tutor assists students with problems in the source code of their programming assignments in the same way that math tutors assist students with equations and English tutors assist students with essays. When a tutor reviews PythonTM source code with students, he or she usually has the opportunity to work with those students on the language’s syntax, proper use of basic programming concepts, and proper application of object-oriented concepts. Working with the student on his or her source code can also help the tutor identify any conceptual areas where the student requires additional review time.