Bio:
Clear native Canadian English speaker with a cheerful, fun and creative style. Tailored, easy lessons yet challenging and motivating, using general conversation and literary tools to help build your confidence in speaking. You will be doing most of the talking, since that is what usually needs developing. Otherwise, enjoy helping you get ready for exams, interviews, preparing business materials, technical communication or general improvement in public speaking and travel.
My teaching methodology:
My teaching background:
Teaching English for 16 years now. Have a strong background in technical and business communication, love interesting conversation, passionate about helping students improve pronunciation and challenging them with homonyms, tongue twisters and introduction to what makes up 50% of English...Latin and Greek! After watching Superman for the first time as a kid, the bed became a logical choice to practice flying. Jumping feverishly as hard as possible, indeed for a few seconds I was Superman! However, not knowing how to land very well, it ended in knocking out the front teeth on the headboard and so started 3 long years of training with a phonetic specialist to correct the lisp that had developed. Interestingly, this training has turned out to be very valuable to students seeking speaking skills. Who wooda thunk!?
My background outside of teaching:
Motivated by a big interest in etymology, (word history) and the study of cultures and their relationship with phonology, (sound study), while traveling and living through this miracle of a planet, has made for some mind boggling adventures that are sure to color our conversations as we share our experiences. In order of learning, have experience with French, Spanish, German and now use Portugues as my daily driver. Have exposure to Polish because they make up the bulk of the students. (oh my God is that a hard language...so it's easy to build their confidence when they see how hard a native English speaker struggles with it! You will see just how easy peasy English is once you're done with just a few classes.
