Maria Alexe

My main goal is to fill in any gaps that may exist in the student's understanding in the language mechanism. I aim to help students become independent users of a language as quickly as they can, so they can then further their study at their own pace and in their own time. New vocabulary is then used to practise and solidify the newly-acquired knowledge.

For example: if we are learning a new tense, I will spend one session on explanation, examples, and basic exercises on the topic, and then ask the student to use the newly-acquired tense making sentences with or talking about a new vocabulary topic, such as activities, food, or whatever we have explored recently.

In the case of more advanced learners, the focus is usually on speaking, and when occasional gaps in their knowledge or vocabulary become visible, we will focus on those before continuing with the speaking practice.

In terms of materials used, I have my own collection of resources such as grammar and vocabulary books, and I use different media for audio and video content such as YouTube videos and film extracts that are relevant to the topics explored.

I always tell my students that language learning is very similar to practising a musical instrument, which means that, being both highly practical and highly theoretical, it must be revisited as frequently as possible, ideally on a daily basis, which means that I give plenty of homework between sessions, enough to give learners the chance to work on their language skills every day!