Well, I am Dominic. I am 26 years of age and English born. Fresh from education with the Open University, and a 120-hour TEFL/TESOS course. I am extremely excited about finally starting my first real teaching job. I love being around and communicating with people from all backgrounds and cultures. I also feel a big responsibility as someone who’s supposed to be not only a skilled teacher, but also a good role model for their pupils. My favourite subjects to teach are reading and writing, but I do not particularly dislike teaching any subject—they are all important after all to develop an all-round high level of the English language. I pride myself on creating an open and free space in order to encourage risk and experimentation from my students with (hopefully) minimal fear. I also encourage lots of student questions and feedback, this then helps to implement new strategies in future lesson plans which are tailored to specific student needs and abilities. Most importantly, a warm, friendly, and productive environment for students and myself is my main goal. In my free time, I enjoy hiking, exercise and having discussions with like-minded people about anything philosophical and perhaps controversial. I'm also extremely passionate about animals and the conservation of our planet. My main passion though is travel, and as I alluded to earlier, I seek experiences with new people and cultures to widen the scope of my consciousness and perceptions, this helps allows me to take in more of the vastness of space, time, nature, and human initiatives.
Teaching styles
It is one of my core beliefs in teaching, that just so happens to be scientifically corroborated, that when teaching a new language to young learners (and to a certain degree adult ones), it is strategically paramount to focus and build upon cognitive development and language acquisition. I employ a variety of alternating and diverse teaching styles and principles to enhance the learning experience and of course, make it fun!
First and foremost, it is important to determine, recognise, and then build upon existing abilities and skills, to acknowledge that each individual learner possesses their own, and that these can, and should be brought forth and utilized to maximise the lesson and student potential. Every lesson will provide the tasks and materials to engage and motivate learners to ascertain meaning, which is of course an important goal. The very discovery of meaning after all, provides motivation.
Each lesson plan will be designed specifically to engage either one or several of the seven intelligence receptors I believe leaners have. The seven are as follows, linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual/spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.
Visual Aids, for example, pictures, diagrams, and charts are used for the benefit of more visual learners for more visual representations of concepts.
Auditory, for example, recorded interviews, phone calls, movies clips and music are useful and very much used by myself. They can and will be used to engage learners in out of classroom exercises.
The use of props, role play and physical activities that are indeed achievable online are important in my eyes to engage the more kinaesthetic learners who need the physical memory or perhaps bodily movement reminders that help them learn.
Storytelling, not just story reading is important, if not more so, to help free the cautious mind and allow the imagination of the younger learner to explore the realms possibility and not only uncover but create meaning and narratives. If used as an oral exercise, this will encourage risk taking in the student’s comprehension and vocabulary, subsequently absorbing new nuances.
Incorporating songs, chants and rhymes can massively reinforce language patterns and rhythm along with pronunciation.
My objective for a mostly activity and student-based learning experience is always present in each lesson plan and my endeavour is always to be a facilitator promoting self-learning and to encourage critical thinking and exploration of the target language.
Why not sign up for a consultation and taster lesson to get to know me and my approach more. Hopefully this will then start us on an exciting journey together learning and mastering the English language for whatever purpose you desire.
Dominic
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