Steven Bullen

Hello! My name is Steven, and I am from a small town in the south of England. However, I currently live in Peru, where I am volunteering to build a community garden. As an English teacher, I offer relaxed lessons based around natural conversations. I like to get to know each of my students personally, so that I can help you to practice and improve in the areas that are most important and useful to you. Tell me what your motivations are for improving your English, and let's get started.

We all have different motivations for wanting to learn a new language, so I like to adapt my classes to each student based on your goals. In our first lessons, I will get to know more about you and your reasons for wanting to improve your English. We will discuss your work, studies, hobbies and family, and from there I will plan your next lessons based around your own personal targets and interests. We will focus upon the vocabulary that you will need the most, and the areas of English that you would like to practice. Everything is about you and your goals.

I have been working as an English teacher on the HeyLangu platform since the beginning of 2024. However, prior to this, I worked as a private English tutor, providing lessons to both adults and children, both online and in-person. My journey to become an English teacher started with my first trip to New Zealand in 2016, where I lived in a busy house full of travellers from all over the world. Many of these people had travelled to New Zealand to explore the country and to find work, but were having problems because of their limited English skills. So, it was there at the kitchen table that I began giving informal English lessons to my housemates, and I started to see just how life-changing it can be to speak another language. When I returned home to England, I enrolled onto two separate TEFL courses in order to improve my formal teaching skills. I gained a Level 5 certificate in teaching English as a foreign language, along with an advanced course in teaching English online.

After coming home from New Zealand, I also began studying to become a mental health counsellor. I took a break from these studies in 2021, to volunteer in Peru. I joined an international children's charity, in which we gave free classes on topics related to mental health, but based around the joy of skateboarding - a sport which I have loved since I was a teenager. When I first arrived to Peru, I spoke very little Spanish. Suddenly, simple conversations about my work, my studies, and especially my opinions and emotions, were now very difficult. This process of learning a new language myself has helped to shape the way that I now teach English. I understand how embarrassing it can be to make so many mistakes, and how frustrating it can be when we want to express our own thoughts and opinions. Therefore, I always encourage my students to relax, to accept that they will make mistakes, to learn at their own pace, and to celebrate their achievements, step by step.