There is no student who cannot improve his/her English skills if determined to do so, and my work with hundreds of students bears me out. While not everyone can perfect their English speaking, listening, reading and writing skills, the effort spent developing those skills that are most appropriate for their circumstances can be richly rewarded. Language skills are mastered through discovery, practice, interaction, and responsive feedback, so the best language teachers create a communicative and caring classroom where students are encouraged to inquire, interact, make mistakes, and become their own teachers.
Teaching Goals
My teaching goals will depend on what I assess to be your learning needs and goals and I believe in assessing needs before I begin working with you. My lesson plans focus on topics of interest to you as well as on content you need exposure relative to your chosen path of language study, be it vocational or academic. Regardless of the content, the following four skills will be integrated to enrich the learning:
- Speaking: Skills can be developed through watching videos and listening to podcasts, written dialogues, role plays, making presentations, interactions with me (and your peers as applicable) and teacher feedback.
- Listening: We will listen to/watch videos, short films, lectures, podcasts, and each other. I will teach you strategies to help you understand and interpret more of what you hear.
- Reading: We will focus on learning to recognize the logic, structure, grammar, syntax, and vocabulary in a written text and depending on your needs, learn strategies for identifying main ideas, the meaning of difficult vocabulary, paraphrasing and summarizing.
- Writing: If you need to write for work, in pursuit of additional educational goals, or for your own pleasure, then you will need to understand the requirements for various structures, i.e., emails, memos, vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, paragraph construction, etc.. I will work with you to make those structures transparent and guide you in your attempts to use them.