It’s not in my interest to get as many students as possible. Time spent teaching students cannot be scaled (unless I hire other teachers). However, I can scale the learning materials and the digital courses. Teaching more than two or three hours a day is challenging. It requires a high level of cognitive work and concentration. This is one of the reasons why I don’t put time into promoting lessons because of the sheer resources required to teach effectively. At the same time I value my students. My students are important. The experience gained from teaching is invaluable and this is what has helped me produce the Complete Course on Thinkific and the Daily Training Audio Programme.
The Value of Personalised Coaching
I have over 15 years of experience teaching in this field, and I always strive to offer services that provide genuine value. I understand that to some people private coaching still might seem expensive, but they need to understand that a personalised one to one service is a luxury. This is why I ask people to spend time reading through my articles and trying out my course materials before they contact me for lessons. Students will realise that I am offering a high quality service that is extremely effective when executed properly.
Experience and the Reality of Progress
I do not guarantee that the student will see the progress they desire because I’m not the student. Results are driven by a combination of the student’s willingness and the teacher’s direction. I’m not the one learning the materials. I am not the one internalising the target sounds of English. I am the one responsible for providing the training, the resources and the exercises to help the student achieve their goals.
And this is something that I am confident that I can provide to a very high standard mainly because of the amount of experience and teaching hours I have in this field. It’s not just about having a teacher trained in phonetics, linguistics, languages or pronunciation, but the sheer number of hours the teacher has spent teaching students from various backgrounds, observing their progress and adjusting the methodology to help the student achieve their goals. Different students have different challenges that the teacher must adapt to. My teaching methodology still isn’t perfect. It never will be. However, I’m pretty confident on my part.
The Required Time Commitment
The student has to put in the time and the effort. This doesn’t mean that they have to study continuously, they need to have a little discipline. They just need to follow the programme and do the exercises as instructed. There is no need to seek exercises or materials, they just need to follow the programme I have set. This means an average of 15 minutes of self study each day and one 40 minute lesson a week. This equates to a total of approximately two and a half hours a week.
Building Awareness and Achieving Results
The student will be given thorough instruction to help them achieve their goals at a reasonable pace. They will have a much better understanding of the sounds of English, how the sounds are articulated, how the target sound differs from their native language and what needs to be done to make these changes. The student will develop self awareness and this is key. Once the student has developed a better awareness of the sounds of English, they will notice that they are also better able to articulate the sounds of English in a native like manner. The student will move from individual sounds or phonemes as we call them to individual syllables, then words and then sentences. When you break down the sounds, changing your accent really isn’t as difficult as some might think.