Nicholas

I enjoy teaching and have worked as teacher of English as a foreign language since 1997 and I am still doing it! I am now teaching 'A' level history, which I enjoy and have taught this for 6 years. I have also taught history at school level.

In may spare time I like to paint/draw. I also went to art school in Russia. I have a wife and son, aged 3.

Tutoring Experience

I have been a teacher since 1997, when I started off in Russia teaching English as a foreign language, although I had done some private literacy tutoring in East London before this. I taught English and history for one year in 2000-2001 at a school in London, before returning to Russia for five years where I taught English as a foreign language to children and adults (one-to-one). I returned to the UK in the summers to work at a summer school for English in Devon. I returned properly to the UK in 2006 and have, since then, taught A level history as well as general supply in schools/colleges in Devon and the West Midlands and London! At the moment, my preferred subject to teach is history and I taught two girls who came to my home two years ago, history at A level and they both passed and got good grades. My most recent student (who is on here) got an A this year (2022).

Tutoring Approach

With history I tend to give the student a big, fat marker pen and a large sheet of paper and a drawing board and we write down notes/diagrams onto the board. This is like our 'black/white board' but also our 'notes'. I also make use of pictures, if I have any books with photographs in, etc. as I think history is a very visual subject and this helps understanding. I spend time explaining essay technique and we do 'dummy runs' of writing answers to past paper questions on the same large sheets and for h/w. These can then be e-mailed to me for checking afterwards.

I also use You Tube videos and textbooks and create comprehension questions for the student to answer. This helps generate morale, because it is quite easy and builds knowledge.

ESOL/EFL is a different approach- much less note taking and more use of communicative activities. I try to get the student involved as much as possible, for example in telling stories, either real or fictitious. I try to get the students to carry out creative tasks like this or mock interviews/dialogues 'in character'.