Nicu

I am an experienced and enthusiastic teacher of History and EAL (English as an Additional Language) who has lived and worked on in Ashford for about 15 years. Besides my life-long passion for all things History and all aspects of the English Language, I love spending time outdoors and/or visiting interesting cultural locations together with my family.

Tutoring Experience

• 15 years (including 2 years as Head of Department) of teaching EAL in a British school with numerous international pupils; this means both teaching group and individual lessons, but also going into other lessons to support the students with studying another mainstream subject, anything from English and the Humanities, to the Sciences and Business Studies.
• 15 years of teaching IELTS (Academic) as required for the university admission of international students;
• 4 years teaching English as a Second Language iGCSE
• teaching English Language and Culture for Concorde International in two different years
• more than 5 years of teaching KS3 History as well as helping my colleagues with teaching GCSE and A Level History.
• 1 year of teaching the iGCSE Global Perspectives course
• 2 years of full time History teaching abroad (Romania) to students aged between 11 and 19.

Tutoring Approach

Of course, as a tutor, I first and foremost listen and aim to understand the needs of my students. There is simply no other way to have a productive series of support sessions in any school subject.
As an EAL teacher I aim to encourage my pupils on individual paths of academic progress, while providing personalised feedback and support depending on their skills and aims. In practical terms, this not only means being able to work with various levels of language proficiency, but different mainstream subject combinations, or a range of university language requirements too. Sometimes all in the same class. Quite often I use project-based tasks as an useful tool in this context as they allow pupils to work at their own pace, in their own style and on topics of interest/relevance to them.
My approach to teaching History is similar and in class I find great pleasure in covering with any year group or level of ability any of topics on the National Curriculum and beyond. Whenever possible, I identify and highlight to my pupils links with the history of their communities and of the area where they live or where the the school is.