Ewen

As an extremely high-scoring postgraduate student of teaching English for university study and/or English for business, I am an unusually effective teacher of students preparing for IELTS and for university or work in an English-speaking country. My research at universities in the UK and the USA has focused on IELTS, EAP (English for academic purposes), English for business (EFB), independent adult learning, and learner motivation. I am also a highly capable teacher of GCSE English at O- and A-level, curricula that I am familiar with, and have been a straight-A student in all my studies of English and of Applied Linguistics.

Through research and practice, I have discovered many faster and more efficient ways of helping students achieve their target band scores in the writing and speaking modules of the IELTS test: in both, truly astonishing gains can be made when candidates have learned to deliver above and beyond what IELTS examiners want. I have taken students one and two bands higher in IELTS within a few weeks (once by 2.5 bands in two weeks), so I can deliver significant improvement in quick time to you too - whether your needs are for IELTS, EAP or EFB. I also run a Facebook page for IELTS and EAP, to which I post new content every week and which has been attracting an average of 2,000 followers a month for six months following its re-launch on 8 March 2019 / International Women's Day.

For my master’s degree research into improved ways of preparing for IELTS and for academic writing, I received grades of Distinction in 2012 and then even higher percentage scores for research into motivation for independent learning in 2014-16. My current GPA is 4.0 of 4.0 / 97%, with graduation happening in late 2019.

Most international students come to me for help with essay writing, either for IELTS or for their researched writing at university. The demand for better teaching of writing is unsurprising for three reasons. First of all, academic writing is the most difficult English-language skill to master. Second, in students’ own countries the standard of English writing-teaching is seldom high. Last, few native speakers write well enough themselves to teach it to a high standard. I can help students become much more confident and competent / capable after first analysing their writing to find where they need help, and building a short course to meet their need for near-immediate, significant improvement in their writing.

At levels above IELTS, I also teach and edit students' writing for university, in which - because of excellent grades earned at universities in the UK and the US - I am also a powerfully effective teacher: I know what it takes to succeed at the highest level of master's degree study. I have shown in my own university work that I have an outstanding understanding of the principles and practices of fine academic writing, whether for a 250-word exam essay or a 30,000-word master’s thesis.

Students know me to be not only a helpful tutor but also as an approachable, friendly, highly motivating, funny and entertaining teacher, who is also easy to understand in speech and writing. I will never tire you or bore you – that’s a promise - and above all I will help you to make faster, surer progress towards your own highest goals in education.

Last, I have five reviews from online IELTS students on Removed. All five gave me five stars.

Tutoring Experience

Early in my teaching career I concentrated on one-to-one tutoring in three specialist areas: IELTS, higher-level EAP, and English for business. International students of English know – as I do - that language schools have no interest in speeding up students’ progress in group-learning settings because it maximises schools’ income. I meanwhile am committed to saving international students money – I understand how unfair it is for you to have to study at university level in a language not your own, and I wholeheartedly sympathise. It is harder than merely / simply unfortunate to have such an unreasonably high barrier placed in your path in education.

With a smaller investment and in quicker time working with me, you too will soon move up one or even two band scores in writing and speaking, in which IELTS candidates in every country worldwide score significantly lower than in listening and reading.

Since becoming a teacher 18 years ago, I have taught for many thousands of hours in classrooms and for several thousand more as a one-to-one tutor of students at all levels. Some students I have worked with have called me the best teacher they have ever had (some have added, “In any subject”), and I can and will provide references from students to support my work and me in that claim. I can also give first-class professional and academic references.

These good people rate me highly for this reason above all others: I am committed to helping people succeed through education.

Tutoring Approach

Most if not all genuinely professional ESOL teachers have an individual TESOL ideology and methodology (Spiro, 2013), drawing on their training in and / or study of a mix of techniques and methods as well as on their work experience (Kumaravadivelu, 2006; Stanley, 2013) to teach in ways highly appropriate to their teaching context, exhibiting what Spiro (2013: n.p.) terms “enlightened eclecticism”.

To illustrate, in Vietnam in my teaching of IELTS and EAP, I rely on a principled blend of traditional, context-appropriate (therefore easier-to-follow: Tran, 2013) PPP (not a method: Swan, 2005; Ellis, 2012, but in keeping with Confucian educational tradition), mixed with less traditional, more complex and I believe more achieving and ‘cementing’ real-world TBLT (a method: “learning by doing” – Doughty and Long, 2003: 52): setting the learners real-world communicative tasks (Ellis, 2000) both in and out of class (Oura, 2001).

I find it a highly appropriate, highly effective fusion or synthesis of the tried, trusted and traditional (making students feel safe and at home) with the only form of CLT (communicative language teaching) that I have been able to accept as having genuine pedagogical worth. Students also appreciate the variety, I know, because no lesson ever has the same format - students never know what might happen, how I might surprise them next.

References

Doughty, C. and Long, M. (2003). Optimal psycholinguistic environments for distance foreign language learning [online]. Available at: http://ir.nul.nagoya-u.ac.jp/jspui/bitstream/2237/6283/1/03.pdf [accessed 25 Jul. 2019].

Ellis, R. (2000). Task-based research and language pedagogy. Language Teaching Research, 4(3), 193-220.

Ellis, R. (2012). Language Teaching Research and Language Pedagogy. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons [Kindle edition].

Hamp-Lyons, L. (2001). English for academic purposes. In R. Carter and D. Nunan (eds.) The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 126-130.

Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). TESOL methods: Changing tracks, challenging trends. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 59-81.

Oura, G. K. (2001). Authentic task-based materials: Bringing the real world into the classroom. Sophia Junior College Faculty Bulletin, 21, 65-84.

Spiro, J. (2013). Changing Methodologies in TESOL. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press [Kindle edition].

Stanley, P. (2013). A Critical Ethnography of 'Westerners' Teaching English in China: Shanghaied in Shanghai. Abingdon: Routledge [Kindle edition].

Swan, M. (2005). Legislation by hypothesis: The case of task-based instruction. Applied Linguistics, 26(3), 376-401.

Tran, T. T. (2013). Is the learning approach of students from the Confucian heritage culture problematic? Educational Research for Policy and Practice, 12(1), 57-65.