Tony De Palmas

I am a qualified/experienced mental health social worker and qualified TEFL teacher by background.
In social services I worked with adults and children in mental health services and learning disabilities.
This gave me the opportunity to strengthen my caring skills and understand a great deal about
human behaviour and what makes people motivated.
As an English teacher I worked privately delivering lessons on a one to one basis or to classes
involving both children and adults. I have grown about eight years experience in teaching English
with also a complementing teaching experience both in a primary school and a college in London.
I have experience of planning, preparing and delivering lessons over the phone, face to face or
Skype.
I help adults and children improve their listening, speaking, pronunciation, reading and writing skills.
My teaching style is about supporting students define how they want to learn and how they wish to
reach their goals. Ultimately life is the big world outside of the teaching environment.
My aim is to prepare students to enter the real world with confidence and teach them the skills to
handle unfamiliar situations when speaking English as second language.
I believe a responsible English teacher should carry out their role with great enthusiasm, good
communication skills, cultural awareness, classroom management skills and students’ personalised
support.
I also believe it to be extremely important to build equal speaking opportunities to encourage
students to speak as much as possible, i.e. 70% of the time students should discuss things in class
and or the remaining 30% it should be for the teacher to try to give students the drive and support
to speak and succeed. I make sure I adjust my questions, my challenges and my focus. With lower
level students, if they are shy or timid I reassure them that being a little shy in the beginning is
normal and they can make as many mistakes as needed, because this is part of the leaning process.
This is how students will work out what they need to do to correct themselves. Higher level students
may not be too keen on reading and we do not want to bore them , but we want to encourage them
to discuss, to skim the material, to make a debate, to form a discussion.
This is how I will drive students forward and I think this is a good recipe for success.
I always make sure I finish my sessions on time and I give students as much time for practice as
needed. I provided students with constructive feedback.
Students expect professionalism, visualised instructions, to learn something new, to be corrected
and to finish each class with a sense of achievement.
I believe it is important to use body language to elicit a response from students. They should either
answer my questions or parrot or copy what I say. I use props such as visual material to prop and
model for the students, to facilitate communication.
I taught on line in the past to a variety of Children between the ages of five and twelve. As it was
solely based on interacting with children through a screen, I devised a sock puppet called ‘Danny’ to
encourage them to learn, as well as a soft teddy called ‘Peter’, which turned out to be an instant
success. The children loved the additional entertainment and had a lot of fun whilst learning, which I
believe is the most important thing. For me teaching is a two way process where I learn from
students as much as they learn from me.