Mark S.

I was born in 1973 and raised in London. After graduating in Film (my lifelong obsession) from the University of Kent, I spent 15 years working in the UK film industry as a Script Analyst. At this time I was also working as a freelance journalist and proofreader until qualifying as an EFL Teacher 20 years ago. Since then, I have lived in and taught English in Krakow, Rome, Sicily, Venice, Paris, Jordan, Austria, Turkey and Moscow, where I operated my own English-language consultancy. I am now back home in London where I continue to teach English.

I have experience of teaching all ages and levels, and have taught general English, business English, academic English, English for exams (IELTS, BEC, TOEFL, FCE, CAE, CPE etc) and every other sort of English lesson, as well as teaching English grammar to newly qualified native English teachers. I have taught all ages, from 5 to 73 and I speak some foreign languages myself (French and Italian – intermediate, Polish and Russian – elementary). For the last ten years I have focussed on helping teenage students to pass specialised English exams, including in English literature. For English Literature students, I have taught IGCE, A-Level and IB, and since literature is one of the great loves of my life, I am familiar with all of the canonical classics of the English language. My work as a script editor and freelance journalist also feeds into this work, and teaching Literature is perhaps my favourite type of lesson to teach.

Number of Hours Taught : 25000 / Number of Students Taught : 1000+

I use the classical English as a Foreign Language methodology, with the emphasis on communication. This a fresher and more modern approach than the traditional state school approach in many countries, where the students sit in silence as the teacher dictates cold grammar rules. I have had students of all ages (from 6 to 75) and all levels (from zero to near-native) and have taught many different types of English (for exams, for business, for acting, for specific jobs etc).