My name is Anna and I’m 40 years old.
I was born
in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, South East England.
Tunbridge Wells is about 60 km from London
and other well known towns in the area are Canterbury
and Dover.
Most of my adult life I have lived abroad so I know the problems and stress of learning another language. I moved to Paris
when I was 18 to do a degree in French Studies.
Thanks to my language skills I started working with Eurostar,
the train company that goes directly from London to Paris and Brussels and there I met my lovely husband Salvatore
The next year we moved to Rome
where we got married.
We decided to move back to London but I felt a bit lost so I thought about my best past work experience, working for Kaplan Educational Centre
in Paris. I volunteered at some local ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes where the students were mainly refugees and asylum seekers. I really loved it and they paid for me to do teaching qualifications (CELTA)
and to work for them. I did the teaching course at Waltham Forest College and it was great
but hard because we lived in a studio flat
at the time so to study quietly I sat on the floor in the bathroom! At the same time I taught some lessons in Redbridge,
mainly Indian and African students. I soon found full time work with TBG Learning
and to foreign students from all over Europe. I was really thrown in at the deep end
but I learnt a lot. Life in London was not right for us so we moved (again?!) to Milan
and met some great people. When my children were born
we moved to my husband’s home town of Caltagirone
in Sicily for a quieter life. Since I have been here I have worked helping prepare students for Cambridge, Trinity and IELTS exams
and I have learnt a lot about the web as a tool and as a way of doing lessons. There are a lot of great resources out there but there is also a lot of wrong information. I spend a lot of time looking for the best materials. Skype lessons are great because –
- you can do them when and where you want,
- you don’t have to waste time travelling to a class, or money on a schedule you know can’t respect,
- I do not systematically follow any books and I don’t have a fixed programme. The lessons are 100% personalized around your needs, and you can communicate one to one 100% of the time
- there is no embarrassment - It’s just you and me!
- my method is communicative, that means practice of using structures and vocabulary through conversation to make them easier to remember
So contact me with your questions, doubts or to schedule your trial lesson. Speak to you soon!
