Welcome to my profile!

I'm Dion, I'm a professional and qualified teacher from the UK and I've been teaching and travelling for the last 17 years, getting to know people from all round the world, and learning new things as I go. I have over 15 000 hours of teaching experience.

I have many interests such as playing the piano, movie-going and reading: I love to keep up with the news and have discussions on all sorts of issues!

I'm generally described as a clear speaker, and I think my students find me approachable. I certainly try to be flexible and try to keep things interesting. The most important thing is that the lesson should be an opportunity for the student to speak as much as possible, with corrections and guidance from the teacher.

I have 17 years' continuous experience teaching English as a foreign language to students of various ages - adults and teenagers - from different countries.

After graduating with a degree in English Literature, I obtained a practical and theoretical teaching certificate (TEFL) In Prague at the VIA LINGUA training school.

In Prague, where I worked for a total of 13 years, I taught people from many different walks of life: high-school students, university students, banking, insurance,IT, medicine etc., and many individuals of all shapes and sizes - including a neurologist, an actor, several housewives, lawyers, meteorologists, psychologists, publicists, priests and even an exorcist!

I have prepared students for all of the main Cambridge exams -First Certificate, CAE, Proficiency - as well as IELTS, TOEFL and Trinity.

I spent a year in Shanghai, and a semester in Japan, teaching conversation and listening skills to university students. While in Prague I taught several Korean government workers for a year, with a focus on improving their speaking skills. I have a year's experience teaching Portuguese students, and I worked in Italy on two occasions for a total of 6 months, teaching a wide range of Italian students.

I have taught Academic English as well as cultural courses about life in the UK.

I always try to make sure the lessons are interesting, friendly and productive!

In addition, I have always stressed tailoring the lesson to the particular student, and using a communicative approach whenever possible, maximizing student input and practice. I'm happy for the students to raise any questions which we can then address, whether they are grammar points, vocabulary issues or something more arcane!

Our lessons can be structured exam preparation, thematic conversation, trouble-shooting grammar points, or a mix; if you have a particular weak-point we can focus on that. I can also correct written English in the lesson.

My experience working with students from several different countries has familiarized me with the problems that these different learners from different linguistic backgrounds and cultures face - including specific pronunciation problems and characteristic mistakes.