Martin W.

I have been teaching for 19 years in the UK, Japan, China, Thailand, Georgia, Serbia, and Russia. For the last 12 years I have been examining IELTS in China, Russia, Uzbekistan, and online. Aside from teaching I have also worked as the head of the language department in a business school/university and I founded an English school in Saint Petersburg, Russia. For the last few years, I have been working as a personal tutor for a high-profile family in Moscow, and I keep up examining duties in the form of IELTS, IELTS Life Skills, Aptis and ESAT-J. For the latter two exams projects I worked as a Senior Examiner and Quality Assurance Examiner Manager respectively.

I have taught a wide range of international students, predominantly those from the countries I have lived in (i.e. Russian speakers and Japanese speakers), and I also speak Russian and Japanese at B2 level. I have worked in various summer schools and international schools where I have taught students from many other nations (Asians, South Americans, virtually all kinds of Europeans). There is hardly a nationality that I have not encountered while teaching. To give an example of diversity, I taught as a volunteer in Pyongyang, North Korea for 2 weeks where the students had high accuracy and a studied command of English but very little communication experience, and I taught teenage students in summer schools for whom Arabic was their L1, and it was their first experience of living in an English speaking country. In all aforementioned cases I was primarily teaching English for communication, but with a fair amount of exam English and English for Specific/Academic Purposes, too.

Communicative Approach/Dogme - My preferred way to study, for levels B1 upwards, where emergent language and a mixture of post-class and spot-correction is key.

CLIL- Content Learning in Class, focusing on one of my areas of expertise (literature, philosophy, buisness), I deliver classes where learning English is a by-product of learning the main focus topic.

IELTS/TOEFL/OGE/GMAT Exam preparation - requiring a more stuctured course plan to help students achieve test results with, sometimes, a short time.

Michel Thomas Method - for when I teach one of my second languages (i.e. Japanese), English can be the main language of communication, and the reverse is also possible.

TPR (Total Physical Response) - For teaching youngsters and some A1 adult learners. This is a very physical approach where actions and association play a strong role in memoy and language learning.