English tutor all ages / Stress Management

I am a qualified/experienced mental health social worker and qualified TEFL teacher by background. In social services I worked with adults and children in mental health services and learning disabilities. This gave me the opportunity to strengthen my caring skills and understand a great deal about human behaviour and what makes people motivated. As an English teacher I worked privately delivering lessons on a one to one basis or to classes involving both children and adults. I have grown about eight years experience in teaching English with also a complementing teaching experience both in a primary school and a college in London. I have experience of planning, preparing and delivering lessons over the phone, face to face or Skype. I help adults and children improve their listening, speaking, pronunciation, reading and writing skills. My teaching style is about supporting students define how they want to learn and how they wish to reach their goals. Ultimately life is the big world outside of the teaching environment. My aim is to prepare students to enter the real world with confidence and teach them the skills to handle unfamiliar situations when speaking English as second language. I believe a responsible English teacher should carry out their role with great enthusiasm, good communication skills, cultural awareness, classroom management skills and students’ personalised support. I also believe it to be extremely important to build equal speaking opportunities to encourage students to speak as much as possible, i.e. 70% of the time students should discuss things in class and or the remaining 30% it should be for the teacher to try to give students the drive and support to speak and succeed. I make sure I adjust my questions, my challenges and my focus. With lower level students, if they are shy or timid I reassure them that being a little shy in the beginning is normal and they can make as many mistakes as needed, because this is part of the leaning process. This is how students will work out what they need to do to correct themselves. Higher level students may not be too keen on reading and we do not want to bore them , but we want to encourage them to discuss, to skim the material, to make a debate, to form a discussion. This is how I will drive students forward and I think this is a good recipe for success.