How to create your own English learning environment! A guide to the free internet resources to help you becorne fluent in English! By Kevin A Dean of Prepare IELTS@ www.prepareielts.comHow to create your own English learning environment! A guide to the free internet resources to help you become fluent in English! By Kevin A Dean of Prepare IELTS@ www.prepareielts.comCopyright 2015 Kevin A Dean. All Rights Reserved Disclaimer Copyright Kevin A Dean. The right of Kevin A Dean to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The materials in this guide may include information, products and/or services provided by third parties. Third party materials comprise of the products and opinions expressed by their owners, this being so, no responsibility or liability can be assumed by the author of this work for such materials or opinions. The publication of such third party materials does not constitute a guarantee of any kind regarding the veracity of anything contained within such materials. Publication of such is merely a personal recommendation of such material No part of this publication shall be reproduced in any form in any medium without the prior consent of the author and without being personally attributed to the author. Permission may be granted if a written request is submitted. All trademarks in this guide are the property of their respective owners.Introduction. Hello, and welcome to my first e-book, | hope you wil find it useful and that the resources | mention within these pages will help you to reach your goal of English fluency. My aim here is to reach out to those students who maybe can't afford expensive lessons or can't afford to spend time abroad to learn English, but who want to improve their English because they know it will lead them to a better life. For that reason, all of the resources | will write about here are absolutely free and available to all on the internet. | know that in some countries around the world access to the internet is not universal, but | hope that these resources will be and if not, you can write to me and | will try and find some alternative for you | know that some of you reading this guide will want to improve your English for work, also, a number of you will want to improve your English skills for exams, perhaps the IELTS, which will allow you to enter the university of your choice. For whatever reason, I wish you well in your endeavours. To begin, you know, a question | am often asked as an English teacher, is "How can | learn English fast"?, or "How can | learn English well?” These are interesting questions, if | had a secret method that would enable students to learn English “fast” then | would be much richer than my usually impoverished teacher state. | can teach you how to learn English “well’, but not particularly “fast”, as | have said many times before to other students, learning and becoming proficient at any skill takes time and effort. You have to put in the hours, whether it's leamiing to play an instrument, or learning to drive, or to cook, you haveto practice, no shortcuts really, sorry. But this first question, in itself, leads to more questions. Why does it have to be "learned" quickly, and what does "leamed” mean? If by “learned” the student means to know everything about a language then that is a very hard thing to accomplish. The learning process never ends, nor should it. How many of us can say we have "learned" English, that is to say we know everything we need to know and the learning process is finished and complete. | certainly don't know everything about English, I know quite a lot, but everything ? | don't think so. So what can | as a teacher say to these students? Well, one way | advise my students to improve their English "fast" (although not the only way) is to totally "immerse" yourself into English. | base this advice upon Stephen Krashen's language acquisition learning hypothesis where he argues that a certain amount of "comprehensible input" is necessary for learners to make progress. The best way to acquire this input is to physically “immerse” yourself in the target language society and culture and speak the target language (English) all the time. This would of course mean moving to an English speaking country. If, for whatever reason this is impractical or too expensive, you can sometimes find another option, the intensive, immersion course. What this means is that you go to a hotel or holiday resort in your country and become surrounded by native English speakers for a week, using nothing but English all week long in formal learning situations and informal "chat" sessions. These programmes are popular in some countries, | know of several in Turkey and in Spain for example However, in this day and age, and for those who lack the time and resources, there is another option, you can use the internet with its plethora of free tools and resources, and create your own immersive English speaking environment, So, to do this you need to useEnglish as much possible and try to work English into your daily life, make it part of your routine as you would if you were embarking upon a fitness regime. The idea is to make English an integral part of your day by efficient time management and planning. This, in essence, is what this guide is about, how you can use the internet to improve your listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills, absolutely free. So, over the next few pages, | shall show you ways and means to practice and increase your English ability by Pointing you to free websites, apps, books, podcasts, video courses, and many other things. Let's begin,Chapter 1: Listening As | mentioned earlier, the best way to improve your English skills is to try and make your study a part of your day. In the same way that personal trainers recommend making exercise a regular habit and routine, learning English, indeed, any skill, is no different. Why | mention this in relation to listening is that it is so easy these days to find, download, and listen to good, authentic, English materials in the form of podcasts. If you don't know what a podcast is, it is a digital audio file, available for streaming or download on the internet, the word itself being a portmanteau of “ipod” and “broadcast”. These files are usually available as a series and you can find a podcast about practically anything and everything, whatever your interests are. You can find audiobooks as well, usually a one off, not a series, in fact lots of famous actors record this kind of material and they are well worth listening to. However, you will probably have to pay for these, but here is a site which lists links to free audiobooks so have a look, www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks. 7So, you can download and listen to “authentic” English audio while you are taking part in your daily activities. While travelling to work and coming home again, any time you have some free time, in fact! In this way, you can make English a part of your day without too much effort. Listening to podcasts is one way to “tune” your ears into the sounds of English, and it can also help with comprehension and pronunciation, if you listen and repeat after the speakers, but for now, | will list some podcasts | particularly recommend 1) The BBC.....they have several good episodes, such as “6 minute English’, and “News Report” but I really like this one “The English We Speak’. It covers lots of ground with many topics, and you can read the transcript as well, also available on iTunes. http//www.bbe.co.uk/programmes/p02pc9zn/episodes/downloads 2) Another good site is All Ears English, this an American site with American accents, so if you like that sort of thing, give it a try, over 16 million people have downloaded their episodes... http://allearsenglish.com/ 3) Ifyou do prefer English accents, then may I recommend Teacher Luke? He lives in Paris and has some excellent material about all manner of English related topics...http://teacherluke.co.uk/ 4) If you need help with the IELTS, then give this a try, IELTS Podcast with Ben Worthington, http:/wwwieltspodcast.com/, All Ears English also have an IELTS section if you are taking this exam any time soon.5) My last recommendation (although there are many more | could have mentioned, just Google “English podcasts” to see 100s of options) is a good one for learners of all abilities, English Class 101. The hosts of this site have different levels of listening and they also have variable playback speeds, so you can listen to a track at normal, or reduced speed, ideal for lower levels. http://www.englishclass101.com/ The good thing about having this resource is you can listen to them almost anywhere, in the car, on the bus, tram, etc. the important thing is to make sure you listen to something you are interested in, There are so many pods available that you should be able to find something that matches your interests, to avoid boredom setting in. One more thing | should mention, if you find the speed of the audio is a little fast for you to understand properly then what you can do is to find a media player that allows you to alter the tempo, either faster or slower. My personal recommendation is the GOM Audio Player. You can make it your default player if you like, then you open the control panel and the tempo control is within. Slow it down as much as you need for comprehension... > Fuser onWatching. Now, listening to podcasts is not the only way to get listening practice, improve comprehension skills, etc. As | am sure you know, watching films and TV is also an important way to immerse yourself in English, watching these programmes in the evening, for example, can be an excellent way to further make English an integral part of your daily study routine, so much so that you might forget it is actually study. | do not want you to think that watching these things is too easy and you can “just” watch films and shows and magically speak fluent English, watching these resources is but one part of a total system of using all four skills, listening, reading, writing, and most importantly speaking, Listening, in itself, is of course, essentially passive, maybe you will “tune” your ears into the sounds 10of English, maybe you will pick up some new words and expressions that natives use, but as | mentioned, listening is but one part of a total system, the other skills we will come to in subsequent chapters of this book So to return to watching, one question that people often ask when I recommend watching films, eto, is “Should | have the subtitles on or off2". A good question to be sure. | would say it depends on you, for example, some people like to watch the show for the first time without the titles and then maybe have them on for the second or third viewing, whatever works for you, You can have your own language subs, or just English, or in some media players, you can have two sets of subtitles running simultaneously, if your eyes can keep up with that. Although you can buy DVDs of the latest films and shows, all of which have a variety of subtitles contained within the disc, the point of this guide is to spend zero money, So, once again, as we know, the internet will provide. If you want to watch material without subtitles, of course there are hundreds of websites you can do so, | am sure your country has some sites for this purpose, probably illegal, however, that is not my concem, let your own conscience be the guide as to whether you watch films and shows without paying for them. So let's have a look at some good websites where you can watch films and shows with subtitles for free. First though, there is one thing | want to mention, for a lot of material available these days, if you download them to your computer then you can also download a subtitle as a separate file (usually as an .srt file), and open it with the show/film depending on which media player you use. For example, | can recommend www.opensubtitles.org and www.moviesubtitles.org as good examples of this kind of site, and if you install GOM Media Player (although several players will do this) it is possible to add the .srt file while you play your film/show. If you uhave any trouble, check out YouTube for tutorial videos on how to do this. What | want to tell you about now are some sites where you can stream material with subtitles, of course, on YouTube many videos have the subtitles embedded in them, but there some sites aimed at language leamers that have this service available. My first choice is www.ororo.ty, this site has a nice variety of shows and films, however, while nearly all the series are free to watch, for some of the films you need a subscription, so it's up to you what you do here. If you want to watch films with titles without any fees, then | can similarly recommend www.subsmovies.com, this site has some of the latest films available so check it out. So in the next chapter, | want to tell you about how to improve your vocabulary, possibly the most effective way to do so, by reading. 12Chapter 2: reading Why read? Three reasons...Well, most teachers would agree with me that the single most effective way to improve your vocabulary is by reading, not just reading passively but actively engaging with any new language you find by writing it down into a ‘Lexical notebook" or by inputting it in one of many apps available for this purpose. If you only learn 5- 10 new words a day, then over a week that's around 70 new words, over a month that's around 300 + new words to add to your vocabulary, not bad eh? Also, depending upon what you read, you can see some good examples for writing, the texts you read will show you structures and expressions you can use in your writings. As 3well as this, there are certain differences between spoken and written English grammar, such as the use of more complex tense forms for example, so it is well worth knowing about them both. This is of course depends on the genre of the text, but in general we can say that written English is more complex than most spoken forms. You can work at your own pace, which is something you cannot easily do when listening or speaking, while reading you can spend as long as you like with the text. Read a page a day, or in five minutes, however you do it best. The first thing for you to decide is what to read, and where to find it. There are many blogs, news sites, etc, mostly free to all, so finding “authentic” material is not a problem. | say “authentic” by which | mean, material written by native speakers/writers of English, aimed at other writers/speakers of English, not the kind of materials you might find in English coursebooks which are always graded and written to illustrate a particular grammatical or linguistic point. Whatever you do read, it will obviously be more enjoyable and memorable if it is a subject which interests you, whether it be about football, cooking, or whatever. So, you need to decide if the material is appropriate for you, if it is not too difficult for your level. You can buy so called “graded” readers which are written for different levels of ability, beginner, intermediate, etc, but what you need is to choose something which is a little bit above your current level. This can be difficult to judge, and the labels the publishers use are often not consistent, so if you open the book (or electronic book) and see how much you understand, if you understand 100 per cent, then it's too simple, if you understand around 70 percent then it's about right. If you want to be as accurate as possible in your self assessment, then try this level test from Oxford University press, 14Auseful way to check the level of an electronic book or text (as we are talking about free internet resources) is to copy and paste it into httos://readability-score.com/ and you will get a report on the ease of reading and an estimate of the level it is aimed at. There are many free sites to find books but | will just mention this one, http://www.readcentral.com/ you can find more yourself, remember Google is your friend....! If you are an intermediate user of English, and | imagine you are otherwise reading this book would be a little difficult, then you can read some online newspapers, my recommendation here is The Guardian, not because | agree with its political stance, far from it, but because the quality of the writing is usually very high. There are many others of course, one site | like because it has a collection of stories compiled from news sites around the world is www.realclearworld.com, with this one site you can find all the news reading material you will ever need. Now, if you are not intermediate, and you want something a little easier then allow me to suggest a great site called www, breakingnewsenglish.com. This has lessons based on current news stories which are graded in up to 7 levels, they are relatively short and have many activities for you to do, such as quizzes, gapfills, etc, and what's more you can listen to a recording of the story at several different speeds, from fast to slow. | highly commend this site, so be sure to check it out. 15Of course, apart from the news, as | mentioned above, blogs are a great way to read relevant to your interests, there are so many catering to all interests and hobbies so you can take your pic, what | will do however is to list some blogs specific to English learning. | won't go into the details of each one as they are quite well-known but here are my top five Breaking News Englis| tgstoos pom Fat, re Pe 6 e-Book sas Sect Exe pea esa an webstes, ao eee cd Slay Kay Csnas se can tay sus é astesbeatabih sla Mine usthes Peet amet ep pkey Crs ‘arco m= — ‘ance nbn sare ‘er wasa arb seo an Fac gt on Rh Sih lave was yg ro We an Ocean Suwe/Marte tak [.] tips, take a look and see for yourself. 1)_https://community.reallifeglobal.com/ 2) hittpJ/englishwithatwist.com/ 3) http://www.myenglishteacher.ew/blog/ 4) http:/learnrealenglish,com/category/blog 5) http/www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl 16Tools... Just to mention a few tools you might find useful to help in your reading and in improving your vocabulary. You know how these days every website has adverts and popups that gets in the way of your reading? This can be quite annoying and also it can be a distraction from the serious business of reading. To make your online reading more effective | suggest that, if possible, you use Google Chrome as your browser. The reason is that Chrome has some interesting and useful extensions that will help you with your vocabulary. 1) Clearly: what this does is to make any web page clean and easy to read by removing everything but the text and pics related to the article. You can also print it for later review. Look at the before and after pictures. a ai ‘ =e) 7Cities around world tighten New Years Eve security amid terroratack feats Much cleaner and with no distractions 2) Lingua.ly: this is designed to work on online newspapers or similar material, it is a translator and dictionary tool which when you double click on a word, you get definitions, grammar, and audio to help you develop your vocabulary. Seriously, this has a lot of potential, | recommend this unreservedly. 3) TheFreeDictionary.com: another dictionary extension, you double click on any word on any website and instantly get a definition, useful if you only want a dictionary as this is not as involved as Lingua.ly. 4) MindTheWord: this is pretty good as well as a language immersion tool, what it does is, on every page it randomly translates a few words into the target language you specify, As the translated words remain in context, itis relatively easy for you to work out what they mean in the context of your native language. This is perhaps best used by beginners or pre intermediate students, but as a tool to get you started, I recommend it. 18,Ok, what | want to write about now are some more general tools to help you develop your vocabulary. As | have mentioned before, you can start your own “lexical notebook” and write down every new word, phrase or expression that you find. You can look up some synonyms, find an antonym, and maybe put a couple of example sentences in the new language in context. How you arrange it is up to you, use coloured pens, whatever. If you are more technologically minded then you might like to try a couple of apps for this purpose. | shall suggest two here, www.memrise.com and Anki What these do is to allow you to create your personalised set of flashcards, or you can use one from the archives. If you don't know what | mean by flashcards, then it is one of the old ways of memorising something. What you would do is to make some cards, then write a word in one language on the one side, and write the word in your language on the the other side, and use them in various ways to test yourself and by so doing memorise the words. While this method is still used by many people today, technology has made it simpler and you can use these two apps to do the same job. Make of any new words you find during the day, on your phone or in your book, then in the evening transfer them to your app and spend some time studying Of course, you will need a good dictionary, if you don't like the ones | mentioned earlier then the Cambridge online dictionary is excellent, it has both British and American pronunciation for every word and you can add it to your browser if you like. An interesting twist on the standard dictionary which many people like is a visual dictionary. This is for leamers who have a more visual based learning style and who responds well to graphics instead of text. As you see, when you enter the word it produces a pictorial representation of associated words, all you do is put the mouse over the word to see its meaning. 19Sasppy Wordssom "ean ay neta rai Another good tool is a thesaurus, this as you may know is a dictionary of synonyms, so when you enter a new word you not only get a definition but also a list of words that have the same or similar meaning, this obviously means that your vocabulary will be improved for instead of learning only one word you can learn two, three, four or more. My recommendation here is www.thesaurus.com. As you will see when you search for a word it produces a list of synonyms, along with a pronunciation guide, etc. And as | mentioned above, enter all your new vocab into your lexical notebook and remember to review it regularly. Ok, so having looked at reading, we shouldn't neglect an equally important skill that of writing which is the subject of our next chapter. 20Chapter 3: Wi First thing you may ask is, why is writing important? | know that for many of you, the priority is speaking, and with good reason. However, when learning your first language, you didn't just speak in the classroom, you listened to the teacher, and wrote down what he/she told you, as well as speaking. And of course, if you are taking any exams, such as the IELTS for example, then you will certainly need to develop your writing ability. So, if you are serious about improving your English then writing is one of the skills you really need to practice, The main reason is that of grammar, as you know the difference between spoken and 21written English is significant (more complex sentences, fewer contractions, less idioms, more tenses used when writing, etc). And that of register, the most appropriate words to be used in a given context, in other words how formal or informal given the situation and who you are writing to, Also, the structure and format of writing is usually more “fixed”, especially in business communication and academic works, for example, so this must be studied separately. There are several reasons then for including writing practice in your daily study programme, and | shall mention a few ways which you might exercise this very useful skill 1) Write a blog. Ok, this might seem a bit ambitious if you have never done much writing before but | know several people who do/have done this and they tell me it really works. It's easy to sign up to a free blogging site (Wordpress, Wix, Weebly, etc) and to get started. You can write about anything that takes your fancy and let the words flow, some people write about their experience in learning a language, or whatever your interests are. 2) Write on a forum/community website. If a blog is too much at the start, then you can join several sites and write short pieces of text and get “natives” to correct them for you. | suggest the forum at http://www.italki.com/notebook, this is a great site which as well as having professional teachers also has a fantastic community of language learners. You can answer questions about your own language, ask about English, and comment on other people's writing. Similarly, you can do the same on http//polyglotelub.com/ and also on http://iang-8.comy. 3) Find a penpal. A bit old fashioned but still useful, you sign up to http/www.interpals.net/, create a profile, then look for someone to write to. The 22advantage here is that you can develop a “relationship” with your penpal that can really work, you can share as much or as little as you like, and as you don't communicate synchronously (in the same time) this means you can put more time and effort into your letters and correct any errors before sending your message. 4) Live chat in an online chat room. This next tip is slightly different in that, the other means of writing were asynchronous (not at the same time) which as | just mentioned gives you more thinking time when writing. To complement your skills, | recommend you also try live chat. The need for speed, the need to write and respond quickly to a thread in the conversation, helps you to develop different cognitive skills and will help you improve your overall English ability. Chat room English is very like spoken English in that it is contracted, and heavily context dependent, and to improve you need to be able to use and understand all of the different styles and registers of English as you can. A search of the net will reveal many chat rooms, but two | have tried myself are http://englishchats.org/ and http:/www.speaking24.com/indexchat.php, no registration required, just choose a username and begin Tools: in order to give you a little assistance if you are less than confident in your grammar, syntax, etc, | can recommend https:/iwww.grammarly.com/, this is yet another extension for Google Chrome and does a lot more than your spellcheck on Word might do. It has powerful logarithms which correct your words in context as well as poor vocabulary usage, not just if something is miss-spelled, as Word does, 23@ vere Better Writing Made Easy So that's about it for writing, in the next chapter | shall tum to what for many of you, is the most urgent English skill to master, speaking. 24Chapter 4: Speaking Now to turn to the most important skill (for most of you at least) that of speaking. | know that for many people practising your spoken English is not an easy matter, Maybe the country and city where you live does not have many speakers of English available for you to talk with. And for example, if you decide to go to a language school course, you will often find yourself in a classroom with 4, 6, 8, 10 or more students. The amount of speaking time you will get in such a situation is less than ideal to say the least, maybe 5 to 10 mins maximum per session, and of course research has shown that this traditional classroom setting can be less than effective for many learners. That is if you are living somewhere that offers such a course and that you can afford it, neither of which may be 25true for you. Fortunately, as you know, there is no real reason to neglect this vital area of your English study. As this guide shows, the intemet is there to provide to all your language resource needs and speaking is no exception. The obvious way is to find an online teacher and pay for lessons, but as this guide is all about free resources then we won't go down that route, What you can do is to find either a community of non-natives (whose English may be better or worse than yours) and join them, there are many such groups and sites around for this purpose, or, and | think this is the route most of you will want to take, find a “native” speaker of English and practice with them. So, | would like to recommend several websites where you can find, and practice with, native speakers of English, using some kind of VOIP such as Skype, QQ, Hangouts, or whatever. Most of these sites are for language exchange, where you share your native tongue in exchange for help and practice in English. What you do is to register, create a profile, then you can search for partners by language and/or location, you contact them, and wait for a response. Now, this first contact is important, if you come across as too needy (‘please, help me, please, please”) or too demanding (‘I want to practice my English, now!"), no one will want to chat with you. The key here is exchange, offer something first. The language you use is vital to making a good first impression, ("Hello, my name is...., | speak ......, | was wondering if you might like to have a chat sometime in....and English, | would really like to talk to you if possible. Maybe we can set a time if convenient, etc”) you get the idea. Polite and to the point. Once you make contact, how you arrange things is up to you, but let's look at some sites to find partners first. 26My top tip is www.talki.com, they have professional and community teachers, and more importantly, many people looking for language partners. As | mentioned earlier, you can also post questions and answer questions, etc, as well as finding partners. Language Exchange ms so an os omnes fren Gene uv ee ee HEE eevee | won't say too much about these next choices, but | have used and can recommend them all. They all have a slightly different way of working but you can check them out and see which onels suit you best. 1) www.busuu.com 2) www.polyglotclub.com 3) wwwlivemocha.com 4) www.mylanquageexchange.com 5) www.conversationexchange.com Now I know | wrote that this guide is about free internet resources, and indeed it is, but there are a number of websites where you can find people or groups of people to meet in 27person and practice your English that way. So it's not really straying from the point so much. Of course, this does depend upon whereabouts you live, if you live in a capital or a major city, then you should be able to find some of the groups I shall mention. If not, then the above mentioned websites will have to serve. One thing | should say, some but not all of these groups are for language exchange, others may just be ex-pat meetings where the common language will be English, so keep that in mind. 1) My personal favourite of these meet up sites is wwwmeetup.com, you can usually find them in most capitals around the world, where people share a variety of interests. If you look at the screenshot below, you can see my personal meetup group here in Prague. This group has been going for over a year now and we get a mixture of locals, tourists and natives who come along for a drink and a chat in English. It's easy to search for and find a group, give it a try!.. (BE Find — Start — invite 2 @ erase ect css Drink and talk in English! Beietes ow : ° f=) Wednesday, January 18,2015, 20PIPcratePub 2) Another very popular site you may know of is www.couchsurfing.org, which is the site for hosting travellers, etc, but who also hold meetups and all kinds of activities around the world and the common language is usually always English. 283) You can also try http://polyglotclub.com/ which is just for language exchange. 4) Or www.internations.org which is an expat professional networking site, but again where the de facto language is English. So there you are, as you see there are opportunities for both online and face to face speaking practice, if you take the time to make use of them. My students often find that going to a social activity meetup can be less stressful than talking to a strange foreigner online, there is less pressure, you can have a drink (which helps), and it is a social setting, unlike a classroom for example. 29Summary, stay motivated... So, at last, the end. | am sorry this book is a little long but the more | started thinking of my favourite resources, the more | found | needed to say. It was my intention to show you that, even if you don't have access to traditional language learning methods, as long as you have access to the internet, you can seriously improve your English language skills. In fact, it is the failure of these “traditional” English language teaching methods that inspired this book, and my current approach to teaching. Many students have told me about how they have been to such language courses in their home countries and come 30away still not being able to speak English. If anyone did improve it was probably in spite of those methods, not because of them! What does this mean for you, the learner? It means that most successful language leamers | have met, have been the ones who took charge of their own learning. The ones who took the time and effort to make English a part of their daily lives by using some of the resources and methods outlined above. This can be you too. In summary then, I would like to say, take some time every day to practice, regular and consistent practice is the key, and stay motivated. Think of how your life could be different if you could master English, then take this thought and use it to inspire you. wish you luck in your endeavours. 31About the author. Hi, I hope you have enjoyed reading this guide to free internet resources and that you find the materials | suggest to be useful in your English study. In case you don't know, let me tell you something about myself, my name is Kevin A Dean and | am a native English teacher currently living in Prague, Czech Republic although | have lived and taught in Turkey, China, Hungary before | came to Prague. | have taught groups, both large and small, one to one lessons, dealing with general English, Business English and exam courses, such as, IELTS, TOEFL, CAE, etc.. Now up until about a year ago | had never given any English lessons online, | had always worked for language schools or companies and given private face to face lessons. My online “journey” began when a company | worked for in Budapest asked me to use their internet platform to give a lesson, | tried it and it was interesting but | thought no more about it. Later, as | was asked to do more of these kind of classes | began to see the potential of the internet for English teaching and education in general. In particular, for me | could see the potential of working independently, setting my own rates, deciding who or what | would teach, and when, Then later when | moved to Prague, and started my own business “Leam English Prague”, 32| became tired of chasing all over town to meet students and | began the transition from “offline” to online teaching. | started by joining the popular platforms, italki.com and verbling.com, where | still have a profile by the way. Overtime, my online profile grew and | stopped teaching in person in Prague and moved 100 per cent to online lessons and courses. After a while | realised my personal knack or “niche” was for teaching, or coaching, for examinations, the IELTS in particular, which is what | mainly do nowadays. So, if you need help to get the score you need for the IELTS, then I'm your man. | have been specializing in the IELTS for some time now and | have developed a method for improving your band score in both writing and speaking, using my own materials. If you want to check out some of them, then have a look at my IELTS blog: www.prepareielts.com, which is where | write and publish articles all about the IELTS (when I have the time, of course). | do help students in other things, such as interview preparation, writing, proofreading, etc, but my main focus is the IELTS these days. In sum, I can say | have helped many students around the world achieve their language goals, whether it was to get a good score on the IELTS, take an interview in English, help them write their personal statement for university, or to help with Business English when talking to foreign customers. | really love teaching English as | can see the very real difference | can help people make to their lives; this is my motivation for being a teacher. | am a firm believer in the power of education to make a difference in the world and | hope to be able to help you too as far as | can, so feel free to get in touch anytime. After all, my motto is “ipsa scientia potestas est” .... Knowledge in itself is power! 33