Roberta B.

I am a confident, enthusiastic and friendly individual with the ability to encourage students to achieve their potential by stimulating their enthusiasm for learning and also their determination to succeed.

I believe communication is key and I base my lessons on speaking. I consider myself a people’s person. I am a curious individual and will always find a way to establish good and clear communication between myself and my students. I enjoys exchanging ideas and opinions on general topics, especially art, design, fashion, current affairs, behaviour and philosophy.

I am passionate about what I do and am committed to delivering successful and engaging lessons. Video material and discussions are the tools I use for my lessons, which are usually planned around my students’ needs and their spontaneous input. In EL lessons, any vocabulary/expression encountered during a discussion or by watching a video are analysed and practiced in order to give students the confidence to use those expressions in their written/verbal production. I particularly enjoy doing word-formation exercises and seeing how students can become confident users by manipulating words and becoming more accurate.

When teaching specific subjects such as Art, Business or Communication, I help my students to get familiar with key vocabulary by reading/watching relevant material and use that vocabulary to discuss the ideas related to the topic in question. Communication and discussion are paramount in my classes so that students are encouraged to form/share their opinions and become critical thinkers.

My most recent successful teaching experience was that of training a group of six Chinese students for their Master’s studies in London. I created a 10-week intensive course in which we studied the English language related to their course of study (Fashion Design, Styling and Business Management). We explored topics surrounding fashion, retail and sustainability, we looked at general English grammar as most of the students felt they needed to fill in the gaps of their EL knowledge and we also trained for their final EL exam with LanguageCert.
Out of six students, three passed with top marks, two passed with the minimum marks required by their university and one student deferred their enrollment.
As well as being a culturally enriching experience, I can confidently say it was extremely rewarding for both myself and my students to work together so intensely. They all worked very hard to reach the level needed (from IELTS 5 to 6.5).
I really enjoyed planning and teaching this pre-sessional course because it gave me and my students an opportunity to immerse ourselves in industry-specific topics, analysing both ideas and language.

As for my educational background, I’ve always explored the subjects of Art and Education, and, after teaching in Higher Education for three years, I am currently working on my application for a Fellowship with Advance HE.