Momchil

I grew up in Bulgaria and Belgium, and have been in an international environment from an early age. This has made me quite extroverted yet very patient since I have benefited from my own teachers' patience when learning English and French. Always with a positive attitude, I have absolute confidence in my students' ability to succeed. My interests are in languages (I have knowledge in 7, at varying levels), books, history and culture as well as my engineering degree with which I am currently applying for a PhD in Artificial Intelligence. In my spare time I enjoy reading, playing chess and hanging out with friends for a walk or over coffee.

Tutoring Experience

I have lived in England since 2011 and I have been a private English tutor for 5 years now. My experience with English is not merely academic but also a cultural and a literary one. In my opinion language does not exist in a vacuum but lives in a cultural environment where everyday communication plays a central role. Language therefore changes the same way a story unfolds and hence it is important for me that I have continuously lived in England and exposed myself to English in all its forms. In my view to be fully proficient in a language one should feel the freedom to take active part in all and every one of its expressions.

Tutoring Approach

Primarily I teach English because I enjoy the one-on-one interaction with a student, the process of understanding the way someone else thinks and ultimately helping them achieve their educational goal. In my experience confidence is crucial in making progress in a new languages, and there are as many ways to be confident as there are people on the planet. I adjust my teaching approach to each student specifically but I always feel certain in each student's ability to get to where they want to arrive in their learning. That being said, in general I tend to stress more exposure and so-called 'native input', and to be less fussy about perfect grammar (which often dries out the fun of learning English). The main reason people take forever to learn a new language is because there are so many rules to be mindful of and so many things to pay attention to all at once. Yet we learn our mother tongue with no effort at all. This is partly due to our minds being very plastic at birth but also because as infants we do not hesitate to imitate our parents and to just have a go without fearing mistakes. The role of the tutor is to recreate that safe and care-free environment as far as possible.