Darren
Hello!
Hello everyone, my name is Darren. I live in Normandy in France with my beautiful wife but am originally from Essex, just outside of London. I work with my wife hosting European exchange students to teach them English as a second language. They have ranged from a dottie little 10 year old to a mature student aged similarly to myself. My wife took the Tefl exam and I thought I would just help her with the hosting but I loved the teaching side of it and took the exam myself to become a qualified teacher too. So I have dealt with a wide range of learning skills and levels with the various students so I know I will be able to help you, or your child, advance your English skills in an enjoyable and relaxed manor. I can offer you tailored and bespoke lessons to allow you to maximise your learning. My teaching style is for you to be relaxed and comfortable. After a quick assesment of your level we can begin to work together on where you need to improve by using some quick tips to get you going, building your confidence and to help with the English that will help you the most in the immediate future. We can then expand your skills until you are comfortably fluent. I understand how difficult it is to learn English so my teaching will be sympathetic to you skills and we can move at your pace, you'll be amazed at how quickly you will see the improvement.
As per my initial introduction, i thought i was going to support my wife hosting European exchange students in our home in Northern France. But i surprised myself how much i enjoyed the teaching and took the Tefl exam. I have spent my whole adult life working in banking, for some of the biggest banks in Europe and the world. The hours were incredibly long, incredibly intense and any mistake could cost a client millions. When the wife and I decided to make the move to France to renovate a property, i changed totally as i no longer need to travel into London daily. I now spend a lot of time with a hammer or a paint brush. I love my sports, especially football and tennis. I watch more now but still do tennis coaching with friends and students. I also love movies and box sets on tv, along with reading crime novels from my favourite authors. Now, every French school holiday, we have a house full of kids learning how to speak English. Even though they only stay for a week at a time, lots of them stay in touch and continue to correspond with us, many choose to rebook and come back the following year. Their parents have left us great commentaries and appreciate that it's not just the language skills that improve but their confidence and enjoyment in learning English as a subject when they return to school. That is very gratifying
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My teaching style is relaxed, relaxed, relaxed. I have found that the more comfortable people are the more likely they are able to learn a second language. I try to avoid going into too much grammatical detail and prefer to work on lexical phrases that are commonly used in English, particularly focusing on any studies or work a student deals with day to day. This helps to engage everyone rather than trying to give too much information about details they are not likely to use immediately. We can then expand vocabulary and conversational skills to deal with more general language use and as confidence grows then go into more detailed learning and fine tune pronunciation