Hello everyone, my name is Lee, I am a Citizen from the UK and a Native Speaker of English with 10 years experience in teaching English, with vast experience in online and offline teaching. Currently I am self-employed and an Independant Online English Tutor for over 35 students.
ABOUT ME
“Get students to talk as much as possible in full sentences
Have fun whilst achieving our learning goals
EDUCATION BACKGROUND
I completed my BA Hons degree majoring in “Information Management” in 2008 whilst at the University of Brighton. I have also completed a 120hr TEFL Certification with the company I-to-I.
7 YEARS IN KOREA
I spent a total of 7 years teaching English in South Korea, teaching in public elementary schools under the government, this is where I developed the organisational skills, confidence and passion to teach English. This role involved creating schedules, lesson plans and managed budgets for regular lessons, English camps and after school programs and taught online classes.
ONLINE EXPERIENCE
TEACHERLEEH.CO.UK
2022.10~now
I have spent the past 10 months working privately for myself. I work full-time in this role and am fully booked with students from China. I teach 50 classes a week to 35 different students aged from 3-13 years old. If you want to join my classes you can learn more about it here
DaDa ABC
2019.07-2021.12
I have taught over 8,000 lessons with Dada ABC approximately 10,000 classes overall. In this time, I was awarded 5 top-20 teacher medals.
Tutoringgo
2021.3-2021.10
This is a Korean Company where I taught for six months doing about 50 classes of conversational classes with Korean adults. I am very comfortable teaching adults. Message me for enquiries on adult courses available.
Heytalk
2021.03~Now
I currently work part time at Heytalk, teaching physical class sizes of 40-60 students online, projecting my image into a physical classroom. A Chinese co-teacher helps with classroom management and any translation issues whilst I teach all the students.
Class100
2020.03~2021.12
I previously worked for this Chinese company until they shut down in late 2021. The role was the same as HeyTalk, but with different online classroom software.
SKILLS
Computing Expertise
In the past 3 years I have independently taught over 10,000 lessons online, teaching both students 1-to-1 and teaching classrooms with over 50 students. So, I have been able to master the use of technology and ensure I have the perfect hardware, Internet speed and software to enhance the skills I developed whilst teaching offline in South Korea. This coupled with my degree in ICT has aided me greatly as the future of education becomes more online. However, offline classrooms are where I developed my co-teaching skills.
Effective Communicator: Verbal and Non-Verbal
Communicative skills are constantly used in my lessons to adapt to the needs and level of the learners, for example using shorter sentences with more basic vocabulary or challenging sentence structures and detailed conversation topics for more advanced learners. Effective language use coupled with precise TPR has helped my students understand the target language of the class and meet the class objectives. This is a skill that has been developed over thousands of classes to make students feel comfortable in a new language and not lost or overwhelmed. Connecting with students will also aid communication, by learning their interests and will help overcome their shyness.
PHILOSOPHY
Creating a Bond
My primary goal in the first few classes is to get familiar with my student, to create a closeness and comfort. They need to feel they can be themselves around me, so they can study without fear and be more willing to make errors when communicating in English, so I can help them improve.
This is also done by building trust with me, knowing I will not judge them or criticise them, but provide feedback on the areas they need for improvement.
Understanding Students Interests
Focus on the interests of students is one of my key strategies when I create a lesson plan and conduct my classes. The lesson must be relevant to the students and appeal to their interests. For example with online classes I ask them to show me there toys or a drawing they recently did. Forming this personal bond is at the heart of my lessons, not just in 1-to-1 classes but in larger classes too.
TEACHING APPROACH
Structured Approach: Meet our Lesson Aims and Learning Goals
My framework is broken down such as:
Re-cap, Warm Up, Presentation, Practice, Production (Known as the 3 Ps in the field of ESL), Review
Presentation(Present the idea of today’s lesson i.e. maybe it is about teaching prepositions or personal pronouns); this part will involve using PPTs/PDFs/videos and other digital media to introduce the target language and the context.
Practice: Here we will focus on pronunciation of the new target language and the sentence structure/pattern using a conversational/role play simulation: I.e., pretending we are ordering food at a restaurant or looking for a younger sibling whilst playing hide and seek to discuss prepositions.
Production: Students will do the work by themselves without the teachers input, for example gap-fill exercises or listening activities or reading passages with concept-checking questions. This is for the teacher to see if the student has absorbed the points of the lesson well or if more revision needs to be done.
Overall written activities are kept to a minimum, as it is often time consuming and can be done at home by the student.
Be Flexible within a Structure
Although in my classes I follow a curriculum and we aim to meet our lesson objectives each class using the structured approach outline above, I still allow flexibility in how I teach, embracing new ideas that come from students or myself, as well as change teaching methods immediately during the lesson if the students aren't enjoying the lesson, for example shifting from speaking orientated classes to reading if the students don’t feel like chatting that day. Get the students engaged and talking firstly, then you can shift the focus of your lesson or use more TPR, gamification and props if the students are confused, bored or shy.