Information About Osla - Brandon teacher -

(3 reviews)

Personal Description:

I am a 38 year old Brit who grew up in the UK (Durham) but I have lived in the French speaking Caribbean and have a BA Hons in French and I have also spent the last 7 years living in Berlin. My German and French conversation are both near fluent, and having translated and dealt with language at business level I have a good understanding of more complicated German. Having studied both subjects at university level, I am aware of the level required at university.

I have been performing and writing music myself for years, and play guitar, piano and ukulele to a professional level. I have played guitar and piano for most of my adult life (24 years +) and started learning ukulele 4 years ago and have recorded numerous tracks to date, as well as writing various covers for a variety of pop songs.

I do believe though, that having fun with the language and using it conversationally to be the most beneficial to language learning and having taught English as a foreign language I have a wide range of experience in language games and fun activities to learn the language, and as a musician and theatre director, enjoy using music and drama as creative tools in language.learning.

I apply the same approach to my music tutoring: for younger learners my lessons also consist of games and a lot of fun.

Teaching Experience:

I have been working with young people and children for over 15 years: starting at age 15 leading groups of children in nature centre and playing various drama and nature-related games with them. I worked as a private tutor during my time at Leeds university and in my year abroad in the Caribbean, started teaching English as a foreign language, which I continued after my studies in Berlin, and have worked for Berlitz language school as an English teacher and counsellor for the past 6 years, where I also led workshops in various activities and sports, including songwriting and theatre. I have also led a choir.

Earlier this year, I completed a TEFL course, with specific training on one to one lessons where I gained more ideas about fun activities in learning a second language.

As a music tutor, I have so far had great success, teaching adults and children alike. I have taught all 3 instruments, for over 4 years and received great feedback.

Teaching Approach:

I believe it is especially important with language learning for children and adults to see a reason to learn the language: the quickest way is of course immersion: to go to a country, make friends there and have to learn the language- a process which is accelerated if the learner has a friend there they want to communicate with.

In the absence of this, there has to be some connection between the learner and the target language- so where possible I try to find out what the child's interests are and tailor language learning around this (e.g. in a class in which all the boys, loved computer games we designed a real life computer game together) so that they can have fun learning the language. With tutoring, there has to of course be some concentrated grammar learning, which I am of course happy to do but most importantly with practice of the language itself, the grammar start to become second nature.

As a music tutor, I pride myself on catering to students needs and will go out of the way to find arrangements for whatever my students would like to play!