Designs and delivers personalised English language courses for individuals and for groups of professionals.

Online Webcam English Classes

I have been teaching French and German business people English in online webcam classes since 2013. I have limited myself to doing one-to-one classes and the majority of my learners are at the lower levels. This learning method is extremely effective: I have many returning students and test results rarely fall below 70%. The question…

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Overseas Nurses – Addressing the Challenge

The National Health Service is a distinctive feature of British culture and is something we in the UK have either direct or indirect experience of. Its difficulties bounce forever back and forth between politicians, but for every criticism we hear there is usually a more than re-balancing anecdote about a medical success which has been…

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The Future is ……….. difficult in English

Grammar books dedicate many pages to explaining how to talk and write about the future in English, so unsurprisingly it is always difficult to master the subtleties of this verb tense. This article focuses on three future verb forms because they are very useful and can be misused and misunderstood. Since it is now summer…

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Improve My English Quickly

In our hurried and hassled lives we often need fast solutions to help us get what we want. As regards learning English, the phrase ‘fast solutions’ is a little misleading; what we really mean is the best and most efficient solution to get us from where we are to where we want to be. If…

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The Real Cost of Poor English

A problem with being an English language teacher is that I am surrounded by language for most of my waking hours and it’s hard to hear (or read) mistakes without wanting to help the speaker (or writer) to correct them. I have had to become tolerant of English mistakes that are beyond my control. However,…

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The Nuts and Bolts of Language Learning

The Nuts and Bolts of Language Learning

Here are the three essentials of learning a language. The student has a defined goal that motivates them to want to learn. The student works on language skills and systems. The teacher uses a style of teaching that mirrors the student’s learning style. That was a distillation of what academic textbooks have to say. My…

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Is it Time for Good Habits?

Is it Time for Good Habits?

I overheard this recently ‘How’re you?’ with a reply of ‘I’m good’. Although I didn’t know the speaker, I understood from this that she was feeling healthy and happy at that point in time. And, judging from her listener’s smiles and nods she understood this too. So, mission accomplished; it was a fine example of…

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