Hi I'm Andrew and I'm an English teacher here at itok II I live in London the
capital of the United Kingdom I'm a language learner myself I've been
learning Portuguese so I know how rewarding it is to make progress in a
foreign language but I also understand some of the challenges that you face
along the way so I would like to help you make the same kind of progress in
English that I think I have managed to make in Portuguese I can help you in
lots of different ways if you want to get a job I can help you to practice for
interviews I can help you write job applications cover letters LinkedIn
profiles everything related to that and also applications in terms of personal
statements on University if you're studying for a test such as the IELTS
examination or Cambridge exams I'd be delighted to help you with that to help
you get the scores you need to move to a new english-speaking country and live
out your dreams if you do want to do test preparation I would urge you if
possible to not wait until the last minute before you start to work with a
teacher very often students come to me needing a seven for example in the IELTS
exam having previously scored say a six and when they come to me at the last
minute and they tell me the test is in three weeks time then
there's really little alternative other than to practice on test type materials
to give you the preparation that you need the specific preparation for the
actual test but what's more important and more new SFIL overall in improving
your IELTS score or your score in the Cambridge exams is actually to help you
improve your general English so when students say how can I get a better
IELTS score the real answer the only truthful answer
is that you need to improve your English and this takes time and believe me I
no because as I say I've been studying Portuguese so I know how long it takes
to make progress for example with my learning what I have found and you may
be a quicker learner than me I don't know but what I have found is that when
I make a mistake especially the kind of mistake that involves a direct
translation where I've been translating from English into Portuguese I need to
be corrected on about ten separate occasions not ten times in one lesson
but in ten different lessons before the switch the light bulb goes on in my
brain and I really start to remember the mistake that I've made the same with new
vocabulary I tend to need to see or hear a new word about ten times before it
really lodges so if you leave your test preparation to the last minute then what
we can do is more minor things like make little tweaks a tweak is a minor change
to your pronunciation and things like that but bigger changes such as a deeper
understanding of grammar and especially the development of the vocabulary that
you need to get really good scores in these English exams can't really be done
if you leave it until one month before your test before you start looking for a
teacher so I think that's an important piece of advice to pass on I am also
very happy to help any kind of intermediate level student or above who
wants to try to attain or reach greater conversational fluency in English I love
conversational lessons in which I get to chat with people from all around the
world and find out all about their lives but we won't just chat I would provide
useful Corrections in terms of pronunciation and grammar and lots of
suggestions as to how you can make your speech
natural using things like phrasal verbs and especially collocations collocations
are combinations of words that appear together much more frequently than you
would expect by chance so for example a common kind of collocation is an
adjective noun collocation such as placing the adjective fresh with a noun
start I want to make a fresh start that's an example of a very native
expression students might say I want to make a new start
grammatically it's correct there's nothing wrong with it but it's not what
we say so a fresh start is an example of that kind of collocation I can also help
you more generally with business English if you need to practice for phone
conferences or you want to do presentations or reports because you
need to do reports or presentations in English as part of your job then I'd be
delighted to help you with those as well and I have a lot of experience of
helping students with things like that if you have any questions then please
feel free to send me a message otherwise I look forward to seeing you in my
classroom soon thank you and goodbye