Damian Rivlin

I am a British business English tutor and executive communications coach, based in Minehead, Somerset, teaching online. I have taught English to adults since 2005, first in Chile and now from the UK, and I have delivered more than 2,400 one-to-one lessons online since 2024, alongside corporate coaching for banking and consulting clients.

My students are mostly professionals and postgraduate students: managers preparing presentations, MBA candidates working on applications and interviews, and specialists who need confident English for international meetings. I spent four years teaching academic English to MBA and PhD students on the University of Liverpool's online programmes, so I know what postgraduate study in English actually demands.

I also work with school-age students up to GCSE. I spent six years helping to run a university teacher-education programme in Chile, training English teachers and overseeing how 500+ students were taught and supported, so I bring a teacher's structure to one-to-one tutoring: clear goals, steady practice, honest feedback for both the student and their parents. For GCSE English I focus on the skills examiners actually reward, reading closely, writing clearly and building an argument, and on the confidence that makes revision stick.

On paper: an Executive MBA from IE Business School and Brown University, an MA in Online and Distance Education from the Open University, a BSc in Psychology, a Cambridge teaching qualification (TKT), and a University of Oxford certification in online tutoring.

How I teach

Lessons are built around your real work, not a textbook. If you have a board presentation on Thursday, that is the lesson. We rehearse the situations you actually face: interviews, negotiations, emails that need the right tone, the small talk before the meeting starts. I give direct, specific feedback, and you leave each session with language you will use the same week.

For MBA and university students I work the same way, starting from your own drafts: essays, applications, seminar discussion, thesis defence.

With younger learners the frame is the same but the materials change: past papers, set texts and homework rather than board presentations. Sessions are structured and paced for the age group, and I keep parents in the loop with a short note on progress after each block of lessons.

In the first session we map where you are, where you need to be, and the shortest route between the two.