Creative, effective online and in-person lessons with a friendly, experienced American teacher of English:
I have 20+ years’ experience teaching general English and helping people break down their barriers. I'm comfortable teaching levels low (A1) to high (C2+) and everything in between, in person or online. My school specializes in individual and small group lessons for professionals, language enthusiasts, adults and teens.
I strive to be creative and to design lessons that will help you speak, pronounce and write better English. That’s in addition to whatever you want to accomplish: pass an exam, increase your vocabulary, improve your command of phrasal verbs, revise and better understand grammar, or speak appropriate English in a business setting. I love talking to students and hearing about their lives. But I also take the education part of my work very seriously. As such, I write my own teaching materials. This guarantees I am addressing students’ problems—and students are having some fun.
I also draw on a wide range of engaging, up-to-date materials, including from the Economist, the New York Times, and well-known literature. I have experience teaching Individual lessons, in-company, and large and small groups in academic settings. I hold a degree in English Literature.
The first lesson/consultation is free of charge.
I have 20 years of experience
1. preparing students to PASS exams: Matura, FC, CAE, CPE, IELTS, TOEFL, PET
2. General English
3. Vocabulary building
4. Pronunciation
5. Preparing to work in English/business-focused English
6. Conversation-based classes
7. Mastering question forms, verb tenses and difficult grammar
8. Writing classes for professionals
9. Writing for academic purposes
10. High-proficiency fluency training
prices are 130 per hour online/150 per hour in-company
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A sample of the original materials you'll get at The Ochota English Pages:
Health expressions (how many health-related expressions can you find in my writing?)
Whenever we have a long weekend, I like to go out to my place in the village. I don’t do much—just take it easy and get some rest, and maybe go for a long walk out through the woods. If the city has me feeling down, getting away from it all really does wonders for me. One of my neighbors out there, Dorota, is blind and has an army of chickens and a cow. She’s a veterinarian and employs an assistant, Beata, who sees just fine. Another of my neighbors is Greg, a German who retired after making a fortune selling windows in Warsaw. You read that right: he made a fortune selling windows in Warsaw.
There’s a condition my doctor calls ‘malaise’— feeling out of sorts, like you just can’t get it together, or you can’t put your finger on exactly what’s bothering you. You have a low-grade infection, maybe. Maybe you’re running a fever below the knees. If it’s the city that’s got me stressed out, it can take me days to get over it and really unwind, though if I get out into the woods and the mud and the swamps for a few hours I cheer right up and come back smiling. ‘Don’t track zat mud in zee house’, Greg will say when I rap on his door. But I digress. Walking in the woods: that’s how I get over the ‘malaise’ of city life or modern living or whatever you want to call it.
Next day, it’s with no malaise but a tall mug of beer that Greg comes out and leans on the fence.
“You don’t need to be dying to take a few days off work,” he says.
As if on cue, the cow wanders up and sticks her head through the fence slats beside him, chewing away, the picture of serenity. The two of them stand there looking at me. “Just call in sick,” he finally says. “No sweat.”
“Mental health days,” Dorota calls out from behind the firepit, winking at no one, her midday martini sweating elegantly atop a brick. “They’re big in Denmark, you know.”
“Meeeeee time!” Beata shouts out from a cloud of chickens all acluck, scrabbling and pecking up their food as she doles it out in cupfuls. “Make the call!”
I’ve come to appreciate this wayward fireside counsel. So much so that perhaps I am feeling a bit under the weather. My nose may indeed have just taken a turn for the runnier. Yes, I must be coming down with a cold—or just enough of one to make facing the real world too great a burden to take on today. Maybe I’m not so sick that I need to take an antibiotic, or stay in bed for a week. There’s no need to see a doctor. Let’s not get carried away, after all.
Ruminate on this country fact, instead: Last Winter, when I couldn’t shake a nasty chest infection, Dorota wrote me a doctor’s note, good for a full three days. She and Beata and I promptly took our skis over to the big cross-country loop nearby and skied for the whole afternoon, right out in the sun—10 kilometers in all, up and down the hills until I was worn out and soaking wet and had coughed out any trace of an infection. I was sick as a dog the next day, but right back on my feet within a week.
Greg moved out of Warsaw a long time ago, the city having stressed him out so much that he needed therapy. Now he helps Dorota with the cow and the chickens. Sometimes he chases them; sometimes they chase him. He left the business world behind and became a nature writer and a consultant, though as near as I can tell he mainly consults with squirrels and birds and “bulletins from immortality.” When he needs to blow off some steam or has writer’s block, he heads for the barn to bang on his twenty-piece drum set, a headache you can hear from three big hay fields away. I guess it’s possible his playing “keeps zee pigeons away and zee rodents at bay, as he’s fond of saying—but it for sure puts me and the chickens on edge.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's a call to action on how not to give up on your goals. Please read it and take the test that follows.
I hate to make excuses, but…
But there’s nobody who can fill in for me at work, so I often lack the time I’d need to get out and exercise. This means that instead of making my way over to one of the handful of fitness clubs in my neighborhood, like I should, I often just fall back on my normal routine: walking around in the park after dark. That’s a nice thing to do, but it doesn’t get my blood pumping or my heart rate up, nor help me take off any weight, either. Worse still, when I don’t exercise in earnest /ER nyst/—I mean really work up a sweat /słet/—the guilt eats away at me, but at the wrong part: it leaves the fat untouched.
Well, gone are the days of slothfulness. Laziness shall be a thing of the past. At least that was my thinking on Saturday when I went to the little gym in the park and signed up for a month. All I have to do now is free up some time in my hectic schedule to get over there, work out a fitness plan and follow through on it. I mean really stick to it. Get worked up about working out. Double down on doubling down, and not let laziness creep in and take hold; not let work eat into the time I’ve put aside for working out.
Stick-to-it-iveness /styk TU ə TYV nys/ is a word I like to imagine in Spartan helmet, full battle regalia and chariot /CZER ee jyt/ bearing down, hot on my heels. Chin up, head down: such will be my posture as I stumble along before it, my lungs burning, stick-to-it-iveness cracking the all-too-necessary whip just back of my ear.
Please take my Spartan test.
I hate to __ excuses, but…
But there’s nobody who can __ in for me at work, so I often lack the time I’d need to __ out and exercise. __ means that instead of __ my way over to one of the handful of fitness clubs in my neighborhood, like I should, I often just __ back on my normal routine: __ around in the park after dark. __ is a nice thing to do, but __ doesn’t __ my blood pumping or my heart rate up, nor help me __ off any weight, either. Worse still, when I don’t exercise in—I mean really __ up a sweat—the guilt __ away at me, but at the wrong part: __ leaves the fat untouched.
Well, __ are the days of slothfulness. Laziness shall be a __ of the __. At least __ was my thinking on Saturday, when I went to the little gym in the park and signed __ for a month. All I have to do now is __ up some time in my hectic schedule to __ over there, __ out a fitness plan, and __ through on it. I mean really __ to it. __ worked up about __ out. _Double_ down on doubling down and not let laziness __ in and __ hold, not let work __ into the time I’ve __/__ aside for working out.
Stick-to-it-iveness is a word I like to imagine in Spartan helmet, full battle regalia and chariot bearing __ hot on my heels. Chin __, head __: such will be my posture as I __ along before it, my lungs __, stick-to-it-iveness __ the all-too-necessary whip just back of my ear.
call 537 460 550 if you'd like to see more of my original materials.