What might you do in a typical first session with a student?

Have a conversation with the student to assess his or her confidence level and apprehensions regarding the subject matter, and discover what teaching and studying methods have proven helpful for him or her in the past.

How can you help a student become an independent learner?

By providing the student with tasks and assignments to do alone and then review with me, or simply working with the student at the same time, so that she is used to working and learning independently, rather than simply exchanging her version of work for a corrected version of mine.

If a student has difficulty learning a skill or concept, what would you do?

It is dependent on the individual student; however, my first instinct is that if a student is having difficulty learning the concept it is my fault as the tutor, and I must adjust my teaching methods until the student has demonstrated an understanding of the subject.

How would you help a student get excited/engaged with a subject that they are struggling in?

I would discern what the student's other interests are and try to demonstrate commonalities between the subject and those interests in order to hopefully create the same excitement for the new subject.

What techniques would you use to be sure that a student understands the material?

I would ask specific questions about the material, rather than simply asking the "yes/no question" of whether the student does or does not understand the material. I would also give small assignments to the student that I could review between sessions in order to gauge her independent understanding of the material.

How would you help a student stay motivated?

I would remind the student that staying the course with one's education and acquiring knowledge does not just result in test scores and degrees, it opens up new opportunities that the student may not even be able to dream of yet.

How do you build a student's confidence in a subject?

With positive reinforcement, I remind the student that he or she is already intelligent, and therefore no subject is insurmountable, so long as effort is made.

How do you adapt your tutoring to the student's needs?

By observing the student's grasp of the information and responses to different teaching methods as I teach. Is the student more responsive to visuals? Then I will have to write/draw. Is the student a memorizer? Time to make flashcards.