An English native speaker teacher and not only
I am an online English native teacher with more than 24 years of experience in helping countless students improve their listening and speaking skills, I am also a Scouser, Liverpool FC fan, lover, dog owner, part-time master chef, wine quaffer, beer drinker, occasional reader of literature, hedonist, capitalist, cyclist, world traveller, website creator, bon viveur, casual hero, storyteller, raconteur, funny guy, fighter of good causes, defender of beliefs, chandelier cleaner and in my spare time a part-time philosopher. I also wrestle bears, solve puzzles, fly test planes and rescue women in distress.
In short, I am a living legend.
All these skills and activities are put into making my lessons both entertaining and educational.
My teaching philosophy
As I am a part-time philosopher people often ask me about my teaching philosophy – I keep things simple.
I take the most difficult rules and reduce them to their simplest form. The result is rules which are short simple and only contain the information you need. I don’t include unimportant details, nor do I include exceptions. Learning a language requires you to remember a lot of information. The less you have to remember the more you will remember.
Fluency is neither achievable nor necessary for most students. Being right most of the time is an achievable aim. Learning only the key parts of the rules will help you achieve this aim.
People like lists. So, here is my teaching philosophy in a list:
- I keep things simple.
- I am very patient.
- If you don’t understand something, I will repeat it.
- If you don’t understand something, I will repeat it.
- Short lessons and often.
- A student should first be entertained before they can learn something.
- Real-life material is the best and most interesting material for a student, so I use it. Most coursebooks are boring, so I don’t use them.
- I won’t give you the answers, but I will give you the skills to find the answers.
- Everyone makes mistakes. I do. You do. My dog does. We will laugh at them and then try again.
- I don’t believe in luck, short cuts, hacks, magic, voodoo, astrology, nor excuses.
- Vidal Sassoon said a very true thing. ‘The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.’
- And finally, I agree with Lizzie…
-
My skills
As you can see from the chart below my skills are not only connected with teaching English online. I am also rather good at being funny. Therefore, my English lessons are a happy and positive experience. Beer and wine tasting, even though I have lots of experience in this, are not done during my lessons.
Neither is cycling nor cooking, although these subjects can of course be discussed to help improve your speaking skills. My singing is terrible so to improve your listening skills I use other audio material.
