What Guides My English Teaching

Since 2008, I have been helping learners genuinely own English. Every student arrives differently: some carry the weight of past classroom failures, others simply need that final push to sound as confident as they already feel inside.

My job is to find where each person actually is, understand what they need, and build from there.

After seventeen years and hundreds of hours with students of all ages and backgrounds, one thing has become clear: grammar rules take hold when they mean something to you personally. Vocabulary grows through genuine exposure and use.

Real progress happens when learning connects to your life, your goals, and the specific way your mind works. That is what every lesson is designed to do.

Problem-Based Learning (PBL)

I start with a real communication challenge: preparing a debate, resolving a misunderstanding in writing, researching and presenting an idea. Students identify what they already know, what they need, and how to find it. Grammar and vocabulary emerge from that process in context, which is why they tend to stay.

This approach changes the dynamic. Students become active participants, engaged with a problem that belongs to them. I am the guide, helping to clarify the challenge, shape the approach, and reflect on progress. The learning, though, is theirs.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

The most effective lessons I have taught were built around something the student genuinely cared about: a scientific question, a historical event, a cultural debate, with English as the medium through which we explored it. When language serves a purpose beyond itself, it is absorbed deeply and retained.

This is why I integrate real-world content into every course. Students develop grammar, vocabulary, and communication skills through purposeful engagement with ideas that matter to them.

Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL)

One of the most important shifts a learner can make is moving from translation, forming a thought in their first language and converting it, to thinking directly in English. Inquiry-based learning accelerates that shift: students investigate topics that interest them, pose their own questions, and use English to find and present answers. The language becomes the tool through which study happens.

This is also one reason I encourage all students to use a good monolingual dictionary. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's, the Oxford Advanced Learner's, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English: any of these will do more for a learner's vocabulary and intuition for the language than a bilingual dictionary, because they require engagement with English on its own terms.

Developing the Whole Learner

Language confidence moves well beyond the classroom. I have watched it change how students approach job interviews, difficult conversations, professional relationships, and how they see themselves. This is why my teaching draws on the Cambridge Life Competencies Framework as a genuine orientation, embedded in every lesson. Communication and critical thinking develop alongside English, because in real use those things are inseparable.

I draw on materials from Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Macmillan Education, and National Geographic Learning, selecting the best fit for each student and course. I have no affiliation with any of them; the choices are based entirely on what works.

Progress needs to be visible and legible, both to the student and to whoever is supporting them. For that reason, I track all students against the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and the Cambridge English Scale: two internationally recognised standards that give a clear, reliable picture of where a learner is and where they are heading. Every student knows their level and what the next one looks like.

To give every student the attention this kind of teaching requires, I usually take ten students per semester.

Every year I review all my materials, and if something better is available, I upgrade or change the coursebook accordingly. If not, I keep what works. I regularly review new releases from major publishers to ensure that what I offer remains current and of the highest quality.

Regarding dictionaries, I recommend the following:

• Oxford Learner's Dictionary

• Cambridge Dictionary

• Merriam-Webster Dictionary

My own preference is British English, and it is the default in my teaching. English belongs to everyone who uses it, though, and exposure to American English, international accents, and regional variation is part of what this course offers. 

Students who can navigate that diversity communicate more confidently and more inclusively.

Three terms per year:

• Spring Term: January to April

• Summer Term: May to August

• Autumn Term: September to December

• Individual Plan: learn on your own schedule

Lesson packages:

• Standard: 15 lessons per term (one per week)

• Extended: 30 lessons per term (two per week)

• Intensive: 45 lessons per term (three per week)

Lessons run for 70 minutes and are taught live via Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or Zoom.

Every element of this approach points in the same direction: toward a learner who uses English with genuine confidence, thinks clearly in it, and keeps improving long after the lessons end.

That is what years of teaching has made clear. Rules memorised in isolation fade. Vocabulary drilled from lists disappears. Skills built through real engagement, connected to real goals, in a classroom where the student is treated as an intelligent adult with something worth saying, stay. They transfer to the job interview, the university seminar, the professional meeting, and every other moment where English actually matters.

The methods here, problem-based learning, content integration, inquiry, whole-learner development, are not pedagogical preferences chosen arbitrarily. They reflect what genuinely works, confirmed repeatedly across students of different ages, backgrounds, and starting points. The framework is principled; the teaching is personal.

What every student shares, regardless of level or goal, is the experience of being taught as an individual. Ten students per semester means that is possible. It means lessons are built around the specific person sitting in them, and progress reflects that.

If you are looking for English teaching that takes both the subject and the student seriously, this is where that happens.