Ilona Bell : English

Hi! My name's Ilona. I'm 23 years old and I was born in England and have lived here all my life. I finished my degree in Drama and English Literature two years ago now and I'm currently work for a Chinese company, teaching Chinese children English online. I also spend half the week running a cinema and the marketing for a small arts centre in the North Yorkshire Moors.

I enjoy baking (anything that includes chocolate), reading, binge watching netflix, going to the cinema and video games. (I love my PS4!) I'm a bit of a geek and love The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Doctor Who but I have never seen Star Wars!

I love to travel and right now I am planning some more travelling in 2019 and hopefully in September begin training to be a primary school teacher here in England.

I have an upper 2:1 degree in Drama and English literature and I currently work for a Chinese company called DaDa, teaching Chinese children English as a foreign language.

I love teaching and I'm working towards studying to be a primary school teacher here in the UK though I have experience with teaching adults English as well. This summer I spent two weeks in Italy teaching professional adults conversational English and I loved every second of it and I'm hoping to gain more experience teaching adults through Verbalplanet.

I have been teaching English as a foreign language for 14 months now and I have a 120 hour TEFL certificate.

I'm a friendly, smiley individual and I love to chat. I feel that conversational English is taught accidentally by discussing things the learner is interested in and wants to talk about. Whether you have an interest in books, film, fashion, cooking etc. through conversation over simple interests and hobbies, you can learn a great deal of key vocabulary, sentence structures, phrases and idioms, tenses and the level of formality appropriate for certain conversations. I hope that through interesting discussion, it encourages a learner to speak more and motivates them to push themselves rather than being pushed by a tutor.