Information About Nina - Ennis tutor -

(6 reviews)

Personal Description:

In January 2019, I packed up my life and decided to finally follow my dream of travelling through Central and South America. Unfortunately, i never made it South (thank you Covid-19!) but I did manage to achieve one of my main goals - to become fluent in Spanish.

A self-taught Spanish speaker, I honed my skills during a year and a half of travels through Mexico, Cuba and Central America, working on my fluency and building my Spanish knowledge and vocabulary through immersion. I lived in villages and small towns, working and volunteering with local communities where nobody or very few people spoke English. I even took over the running and care of a small permaculture farm in Guatemala while the owners went on holiday for 3 weeks, working together with the local indigenous staff and the vet, communicating entirely in Spanish.

Being a language, culture and travel enthusiast, the one thing I love more than improving my own language skills is seeing others progress in theirs and knowing that I was a part of it. To see people go from shy and struggling language learners to confident speakers and language users is a truly beautiful thing. It genuinely makes me proud. Another thing I love about language teaching is that, as a teacher, you learn and develop A LOT. Not only in your own language skills and understanding, but also in social and interpersonal communication and relationships and personally.

Tutoring Experience:

A fully qualified ESL teacher with a Hrs Masters in TESOL (and a Hrs BA in early childhood education) who has been teaching since 2011, in Ireland and abroad (Russia and Nicaragua). My experience spans a wide age range from 1 - 60+ years and a variety of cultural backgrounds. I have taught general, conversational and academic English and helped students prepare for both the IELTS and FCE exams.

Though I do not hold a qualification or certificate in Spanish teaching - I do have the expertise and knowledge necessary to teach a foreign language from my qualifications and experience in ESL and I have the Spanish skills and level required to transfer those skills and expertise to Spanish teaching.

Plus, I have the first-hand experience of actually trying to learn the language and so I know the difficulties facing learners and have plenty of tips and methods for how to tackle them. This, for me, is a very important attribute of a language teacher - first-hand experience of the challenges and frustrations of trying to learn and live in a foreign language.

Approach to Grinds:

I believe the approach depends entirely on the students needs and goals. As stated above, I have a range of teaching experience and so how I teach you will be based on what you need to achieve - practise conversational fluency, develop academic or literacy skills, pass an exam, improve listening, build your vocabulary, pragmatic development - very important and often overlooked!

If you get in touch, we can discuss exactly what you need.