Violeta Zajecaranovic : Greek

I grew up in Serbia but I studied abroad too, mostly in England. I love traveling so I have experienced different cultures and peoples not only in Europe but in Asia and America as well. I have lived most of my life in Greece where I taught English to children and adults alike not only in traditional and modern classrooms but as a tutor at their homes too.

I love children and my goal is to help them grow up open-minded and educated so that they will be able to face challenges when they become adults. I am a patient and dedicated teacher who helps students engage in the learning process. I am kind and I never underestimate their abilities because everything is possible no matter how difficult it may seem.

I am a university graduate English teacher with a TEFL certification of 120 hours. I worked as a teacher of English as a foreign language in different countries over Europe for more than 10 years. Most of this time I worked in Greece so that I am fluent in Greek too. I have studied a few foreign languages myself so I understand the challenge and this helped me a lot in many ways to excel in my teaching career. I believe that learning a foreign language can vastly upgrade teachers' awareness of how difficult it may be to a student sometimes so that a teacher always finds ways on how to be of assistance in that case.

Well, at the beginner level it is difficult to engage students that much so I use simple games and insist on using only English words during our session. As the level accelerates I engage them ever more of course. The main point is to trigger the conversation that will be appealing to them so they know what to say. To do so, I ask questions to find out their interests. Students are different and this variety makes me collect different pictures and information so that I can help the conversation keep going. I teach grammar too using pictures because grammar is everywhere in everyday conversation. I do not hold on the grammar rules that much but show, through examples, how it works instead. Then, I encourage the student to do the same through conversation. I may change the way of course according to how talkative the student happens to be.

As you can see I believe that a lesson should be student-centered rather than teacher-centered. I let my students talk no matter how many mistakes they make. I correct the mistakes in the feedback that I send. Therefore I gradually help my students make fewer mistakes each time they express themselves in English.

Generally, students shape the method I use, since they are the ones who need to understand, learn and apply it later on.