Information About Oliver - City of London teacher

Personal Description:

I am experienced professional language tutor, having taught for over five years. I have a variety of experience working with both children and adults in the UK and in Russia.

I am in the process of applying for a PhD focusing on urban space in post-Soviet Russia at University College London. I have nearly completed my Master of Research in East European Studies, also at University College London, writing a 20 000-word dissertation on contemporary Russian literature as part of this degree. I graduated from the University of Leeds with a First Class degree in Russian, where I received an award for the highest overall grade in the graduate class of 2017.

I am available for online tutoring in English and Russian. I am also available to assist with university applications, editing personal statements and proofreading academic essays.

In my spare time I am an avid lover of baking (my new lockdown hobby), cricket (watching and playing, although the latter very badly…) and reading (not just Russian literature!).

Teaching Experience:

Russian
I have tutored GCSE and A Level Russian, with particular focus on grammatical complexities (particularly from the native English point of view) and assisting preparation for the Independent Research Project at A Level. I also have experience with Beginners Russian, teaching the alphabet and basic grammatical constructions, including verb conjugation, gender and cases.

English as a Second Language (ESL)
I have taught GCSE ESL, working particularly on pronunciation and grammatical uncertainties that have arisen during students’ other lessons, and in everyday life.

Having spent significant time in Russia, I have a lot of experience tutoring English to the native Russian speaker in a variety of contexts: one-to-one and group, as well as both beginner and advanced . I also taught English at the Russian Classical School, Ekaterinburg, designing lessons that contained a mixture of vocabulary and grammatical exercises, and fun activities (tongue twisters, language games, singing along to Beatles songs etc.). I have also taught ESL at summer camps to speakers of different languages - including Russian, Italian and Turkish - and levels - from beginner to advanced. Here the focus had to be more on the fun language activities listed above, in order to make learning conducive to the holiday camp atmosphere.

In addition, I have completed a TEFL 50-hour course.

English
I have tutored A Level English Literature, focusing on detailed textual analysis in poetry and drama. In GCSE English Language and Literature I have covered all aspects of the syllabus, including creative writing, language and textual analysis as well as spelling, punctuation and grammar. At both levels, I focus on the building blocks of essay writing, use various techniques to develop arguments, thus improving answers to exam-style essay questions.

Teaching Approach:

My approach is to create an informal and relaxed atmosphere where students feel comfortable enough to show their personality. This helps them make mistakes, recognise these errors and thus make improvements: I find constructive self-criticism to be an extremely successful method of helping students to achieve their potential. I create bespoke lesson plans before each lesson in collaboration with students and, where appropriate, parents in order to enable the best possible development and make the most of students` potential.