Having lived abroad for seven years myself – mainly in Europe and Asia – I have a good deal of experience learning foreign languages and navigating new cultures. That experience has also given me deep insight into the many challenges facing students who are learning English as a second language.
While overseas, I nearly always had a part-time job tutoring English, typically focused on grammar, vocabulary, comprehension, and accent reduction (one of my students was the former Speaker of the Japanese Parliament!) Now back in New York, I work with a range of ESL clients who are mostly mid-career professionals.
After covering the basics, ESL classes often become frustrating because the students have widely different abilities and needs. It’s extremely difficult to teach effectively a class where, for instance, some students are strong in writing and weak in grammar and others are the opposite. The one-on-one approach I offer is tailored to each student and offers, I believe, the single most effective and efficient route to rapid improvement.
My teaching approach varies with students’ strengths, weaknesses, and needs, but always includes the following:
- Advanced grammar, including parallel construction, complex sentences, subjunctive and imperfect tenses, participles and gerunds, pronouns, irregular verbs
- Usage (e.g., phrasal verbs, idioms, articles and prepositions, slang and colloquialisms)
- Reading comprehension
- Clean, efficient writing
- Spoken English/accent reduction
- Use of real-world materials – business documents, presentation assignments, report drafts, and the like – to make learning even more relevant and rewarding