Jon Garrad

Terre des Langues run an intensive two-week learning experience for students learning a foreign language. They travel to a country for two weeks, stay alone with a host family, and spend five hours of every day with a tutor who delivers workshops in grammar, expression and usage and leads educational visits. Constant exposure to English and the absence of interpreters hothouses their communication abilities in a more real context than the classroom, and the tuition can be targeted towards areas where the student needs to develop skills, knowledge or confidence.

As a TdL tutor, I deliver fifty hours of intensive and personalised tuition, primarily to International Baccalaureate students. Key areas of focus include grammar, idioms and dealing with accents. I use visits, tours and board games to develop conversational English vocabulary, intonation and phrasing.

I delivered a series of interventions for either single pupils in need of a skills boost before they entered Year 10, or for pupils retaking GCSE English and Drama coursework. Improvements of up to three grades were not uncommon, with particular advances made in the Shakespeare coursework unit at GCSE.

During my teacher training I was highly praised for my small group seminars, breadth and depth of subject knowledge, and ability to engage with students. As well as teaching English Literature (specialising in the Pre-19th century Literature and Drama paper), I also taught Performing Arts, supporting a group of twenty students in producing and performing a version of Sarah Kane's '4:48 Psychosis'.