Elizabeth
Ambassador
- Hourly rate £50
- Response Time 5h
- Number of students 50+
Book a class
Acquire a clearer, more confident British English accent (see my video) Cheerful & caring English coach with First class Hons degree + CELTA offers Standard British English / Received Pronunciation
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- London
- By webcam
Ambassador
We host the best tutors. Quality of their profile, experience in their field. Elizabeth will be happy to arrange your first Vocabulary - English lesson.
About the lesson
[Scroll down for special 90 minute price offer] Online teaching through Zoom or Skype is brilliant for accent reduction and pronunciation lessons! So, if you are finding you lack confidence in your English speaking skills, worry about your accent or keep needing to repeat yourself, now is an ideal time to seek professional help - tailored specially for you - towards a clearer, easily understood Standard Southern British accent or conventional Received Pronunciation. Once you find yourself speaking with assurance and confidence, you will quickly come across as the person you really are.
As a CELTA qualified, English and foreign language teacher with many years experience both in schools and as a private tutor, I offer one to one private tuition to adults - online these days - from my dedicated teaching room in the heart of London. My goal is also to make these lessons fun and of specific interest and assistance to you, the individual student.
I also offer editing of presentations, dissertations, articles etc and targeted tuition for the IELTS exams, specialising in writing tasks 1 and 2 (General or Academic) as well as the speaking component.
My methods are right up to date. In addition to helping with general English, I install a sure knowledge of the 45 different sounds of English – that’s right 45 – and, where helpful, their various phonetic symbols. (There are only 26 alphabet letters, by the way!) At the same time, I use short videos and transcriptions, advertisements, story telling, humour, games, diagrams, muscle exercises, texts, poetry, conversations and dialogues to practise the melody and stress of British English and make sure you acquire excellent presentation skills.
The very first lesson will acquaint you with the 45th sound, the schwa /ə/, the most common vowel sound in British English but one that until recently has all too often been neglected. From there you will learn how to stress and destress words in sentence chunks, how to modulate the pitch of your voice, how to convey extra meaning simply by altering your intonation. Ear training is very important and listening skills are given as much attention as speaking through use of games and audio texts.
For any of you particularly anxious to improve your general English skills, I aim to teach these as needed through the medium of pronunciation lessons.
I am very generous with my time, but strongly advise accepting the special offer of a 90+ minute session for £60 (as opposed to £50 for 60 minutes), as I have found this represents by far the best value in terms of money and concentration level. I also cannot stress highly enough how important it is that you put in the extra revision work for each lesson at home. Specially prepared handouts and audio material plus recordings of each lesson are supplied as email attachments.
Still not convinced? Send me an email preferably stating your first language and a few details about yourself and what you wish to achieve or give me a ring (remembering to leave your number in your message please) and we can discuss your needs. I have taught all sorts of people and all sorts of nationalities privately and in language schools for many years and many of my students have continued sessions with me for months, even years, at a time.
Stay safe, stay focused, Elizabeth
subjects
- Vocabulary - English
- ESOL (English)
- English speaking
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+3
English writing
IELTS
Accent Reduction-English
languages
- French
- English
- Italian
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+2
German
Japanese
levels
- Primary
- Secondary
- GCSE
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+19
AS Level
A Level
Adult education
Diploma
Undergraduate
BTEC
Masters
Doctorate
A1
A2
B1
B2
C1
C2
Beginner
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Kids
About Elizabeth
As a First class honours language graduate, native speaker and CELTA and IELTS trained British English accent coach, I have taught Standard British English or Received Pronunciation to hundreds of students from all over the world. My students have ranged from high school pupils to CEOs, from priests to actors and, however short or long a time you have at your disposal, I am sure that from the very first session you will find much to help you in your quest to speak clearly, intelligibly and with far greater confidence.
Review
All of our reviews are collected by us and are 100% reliable. They correspond to a real experience lived by the students of Elizabeth.
5 (22 reviews)
Monika
Perfect! Elizabeth is very knowledgeable and reliable teacher. Elizabeth sent me additional materials and exercises to practice at home. Moreover, she recorded our lesson and sent it to me by email for me to revise. I had a specific goal to achieve, thus I was working on my own text. Elizabeth recorded her self explaining me highlighted words that I was struggling with, she did that in her own private time, outside of the lesson. I need to say that she is an expert, she loves what she is doing, she enjoying sharing her knowledge. I really recommend her!!! She is a MASTER! Excellent value for money!
Monika
Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Monika had problems with certain vowel sounds, notably nurse and goat and trap and thought but was actually an extremely fluent speaker with good reading skills. This time she was primarily seeking help with the pronunciation of certain specialised words but if she decides to work on her intonation and sentence stress I would be happy to help.
Annapaola
Perfect! "The no bs method", I would call it, as Elisabeth is full on from the first to the last minute of the session. Also, whenever I thought we were just "chatting", Elisabeth would give me some feedback. She's alert and resourceful, does not waste time and gives 100% to the lesson. It's been a hard session, but it's flown by.
Annapaola
Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Annapaola has a good ear and is highly motivated but rather lacks confidence. She has a little trouble with certain phonemes, mainly the nurse vowel and the trap vowel, and with distinguishing between the short kit and long sheep vowels, but really her English is very fluent. Once she escapes the tyranny of the written word and becomes comfortable with phonetic spelling, she will find it much easier to pronounce certain words. What she does also need is more help with sentence stress and intonation.
Perfect! Elizabeth is a great teacher! Very professional and pleasant
Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Ksenia has an excellent command of English. We have worked on certain sounds that she has a little trouble with for example the goat vowel but really she mainly only needs help with sentence stress (chunking and placing the nuclear stress on the final new content word) and with intonation, in order to have a very good English sounding accent indeed
Perfect! I really enjoyed my lesson with Elizabeth. She is very professional and was able to quickly identify areas where I need improvement. I'm sure with Elizabeth's help I will soon make a progress in reducing my accent.
Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Very fluent already but good do with some help with suprasegmentals
Perfect! Her lesson was excellent. She was friendly and helpful.
She explained to me how to pronounce certain phonetics by showing me the tongue positions. now I feel more confident in speaking English. I will definitely keep having lessons from her.Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Should be a lot more confident in her English which is really very fluent. Her Japanese accent is not too strong, so people should not have any particular difficulty understanding her. But this student could do with a lot of speaking practice and discussions to build up confidence. Also, to minimise the Japanese accent, she needs to practice phoneme production, especially the vowel sounds and the alveolar consonants. Her intonation is good.
Sandra
Perfect! Elizabeth is an excellent teacher, I wish I had found her years ago! She is very professional, caring and her lessons are both interactive and interesting. Elizabeth's pronunciation is perfect, easy to understand and it's my ultimate goal to speak like her. I cannot wait to have more lessons and improve my spoken English. I highly recommend booking a lesson with Elizabeth, you won't be disappointed - she is a charming and talented teacher.
Sandra
Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Sandra speaks excellent English but needs help stressing key word and de-stressing function or little grammar words. Good phoneme production but needs help with the short 'i' in pin, also needs to practise linking words together, but great, a very fluent speaker!
Perfect! Elizabeth has been helping my daughter to improve her accent which shows some trace that we lived abroad for several years during her early years. Elizabeth is highly experienced and was able to rapidly identify where my daughter needed to modify her speech. My daughter enjoys her lessons and I've already noticed an improvement with her accent. I'm very happy we chose Elizabeth and I would recommend her without hesitation.
Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Robin's daughter already has a native command of English but speaks with a slightly non standard British accent. For RP which is non rhotic she needs to avoid making the 'r' sound before consonants and at the end of words, and to link words that end in a consonant to any following words that begin with a vowel. She also needs to make her sounds as in 'ship' a little shorter and sharper and produce a bit more stress on key words. Function words such as some, of, for, and and to need weakening and she should contract and destress some words or syllables a little more. She is concentrated, enthusiastic and appreciative, so it was a delightful first lesson
Perfect! Elizabeth is a very patient, well experienced and knowledgable tutor. She spotted my weaknesses and I could get some work done from day one. I highly recommend her services.
Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Marjorie speaks excellent English with a slight London accent but she does have trouble with certain vowel sounds and consonants needs to learn to link words together. She is really enthusiastic, though, and should do well.
Perfect! Elizabeth is a superb voice coach and I would recommend her to anyone! In a single lesson she taught me a few tricks which straightened out some of my strange vowel sounds immediately. She is very friendly and pleasant to talk to, and she really goes the extra mile in making sure that her students have the tuition that they need, tailored to their own requirements.
First-rate tuition, and a friendly and conscientious teacher.Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Peter is a native speaker. His pronunciation is excellent. If he wishes to speak with a more classical RP accent I would recommend consulting an actor's voice coach. Very nice student.
Perfect! Elizabeth is a real professional in her field, she knows her job really well. During our lessons she analyses my speech and accent mistakes, creating a strategy to get rid of them. Also she is an easy going person, which helps with our scheduling. I do feel that I’m in good hands and I have great trust in Elizabeth’s vast experience. It’s a pleasure to be taught by such great teacher.
Ekaterina.Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Very fluent speaker, joy to teach, tends to get a little too discouraged when phonemes corrected but as she is very fluent and therefore used to pronouncing in a certain way, it will take a bit of time - patience and practice!
Perfect! Very dedicated tutor with a lot of energy and patience - lessons with Elizabeth are never boring!
Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Very fluent, needs help with certain phonemes eg mouth and price vowel and with sentence stress
Mai
Perfect! Elizabeth is always extremely generous with her time. Whatever questions I have, whether hard or straightforward, she handles it intelligently and diligently. This positive attitude inspires me to engage with the lessons and improve my level much faster. She is polite, courteous, respectful and charming at all times and in all situations, without being obsequious. Elizabeth's teaching is eloquent, clear, persuasive, engaging, always captures others' interest, and fires listeners' imagination. She is comfortable in any situation, even when speaking unprepared and without notes.
Elizabeth's English has a flair for creative, original and impactful style. She encourages me to adapt my English style for the purpose. She also helps me to notice some of my frequent mistakes with grammar, spelling or style. Elizabeth has always succeeded in explaining ideas clearly. I also find Elizabeth easy to understand. Perhaps that's because she listens carefully to what her students are saying, understands, and then responds appropriately. Overall, I wholeheartedly recommend her.Mai
Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Excellent, highly motivated, good phoneme production but with occasional lapses when speaking fast
Perfect! Elizabeth is a great tutor and I strongly recommend her to anyone who wants to improve their pronunciation and accent in British English. She teaches modern RP which seems to be an optimal way to study British English. There are several things that I've appreciated the most in my classes with Elizabeth.
1. Methodology and preparation. Elizabeth is a professional, she uses diverse materials and techniques and helps you achieve progress quickly
2. Personal approach. Elizabeth listens to her students very carefully and understands the individual issues and goals
3. Context and objectivity. Elizabeth always explains why there might be several correct pronunciation options and when and where you are more likely to hear each of them
4. Finally and most importantly for me, empathy and kindness. Elizabeth is an amazingly kind and generous person and every class with her makes you feel happier and more confident.Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Very fluent, certain vowel sounds need working on and speed of utterance needs reducing a little for greater clarity
JC
Perfect! Elizabeth has been tutoring me in accent reduction classes which take place weekly. The quality of her work and value received is beyond my expectations. She is a true professional with years of experience in teaching. After just four weeks of attending her online classes, I have learned things about the English language and my application (or misapplication) of it that I didn't learn in fifteen years of using it.I recommend everyone to try and see for themselves. Elizabeth's classes are one of the best investments in self-development I have made in years.I am a self-employed career coach and management consultant. Lately, I recognised the need to improve my English skills to tackle clients at the executive level. Elizabeth's classes helped with it in no time and I am glad I came across her on the site. She is a native English speaker and language teacher who knows her stuff.
JC
Elizabeth's response
- Elizabeth's response : Lovely hard working and appreciative. Needed help with prosody and certain vowel sounds
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Recommendations
Recommendations come from relatives, friends and acquaintances of the teacher
8
Such a cheerful and lovely lady. Elizabeth goes the extra mile to help me achieve my goal.
Carlos
Elizabeth is super clear and she recognised my accent struggles instantly. She has endless patience when I struggle to pronounce something and she knows different tricks to make my speech sound clearer. She has a lot of material to bring to class and goes above and beyond to assist with those tricky sounds.
Carlos
Elizabeth is a real professional in her field, she knows her job really well. During our lessons she analyses my speech and accent mistakes, creating a strategy to get rid of them. Also she is an easy going person, which helps with our scheduling. I do feel that I’m in good hands and I have great trust in Elizabeth’s vast experience. It’s a pleasure to be taught by such great teacher.
Ekaterina.
Davide
I met Elizabeth when I arrived in London in 2017 and she has been my English teacher since then. She is an excellent teacher and a person who can really improve your skills. She helped me with the IELTS exam preparation.
She is a patient teacher who knows many teaching techniques to adapt to individuals.
I strongly recommend Elizabeth because she can really make the difference in your English learning journey.Davide
I have been attending Elizabeth’s lessons for a few years now and I can’t say enough how much I truly recommend her to anyone who needs any sort of help with their English.
Elizabeth is incredible, she always have so many new contents and visual materials to guide her lessons, so every lesson is always different. She never gets tired to constantly correct you while you speak, whether your phrase is not properly constructed or your words are not correctly pronounced. It is a constant learning from her, no matter how good you think your English might be.
During the latest years I have focused on learning received pronunciation that has helped me enormously in smoothing my Italian accent but also in boosting my confidence in public speaking. It’s hard to get rid of some long time pronunciation mistakes, but thanks to Elizabeth I became aware of so many of these and I now always know how to promptly correct my pronunciation while speaking to make myself understood.
Thanks Elizabeth for your help, not to say for the lovely friendship that is born during these past years! :)Elizabeth is a wonderful teacher! She not just helped me reduce my Hungarian accent with fun exercises but I also learnt lots of idioms and slangs so now I can understand my British colleges better. As a Software Developer communication was always my week point but thanks to the lessons now I talk with more confidence. So I can wholeheartedly recommend Elizabeth if you want to grow as a professional and need a kind and patient teacher.
Mrs Elizabeth is always kind, patient, helpful and truly care about her profession and student. I am taking English classes from her since few months now and I have improved a lot. She understood my need and she taught me accordingly.she is very punctual and gives lot of good study materials for practice. It is very helpful for students like me whose first language is not English.i am from India and work as an IT professional, If she is with me I can master in this language.
Elizabeth has helped me in the process of overcoming my fear of being misunderstood because of my accent. I work in IT and she helped me with words that I use on daily basis as well as with general conversations. I think she is excellent at what she does, you can really tell that she loves her job and cares of her students. Highly professional and absolutely knowledgeable, I would highly recommend her.
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Rates
packages
- 5h: £250
- 10h: £500
webcam
- £50/h
Details
I charge £60 for an hour and a half (£50 for an hour) as I find this lesson length represents the best value both in terms of cost and in terms of the demands made on a student's attention span. I am very generous with my time both inside and outside the actual lesson, analysing a student's ongoing needs and creating exactly the right material to help them advance. In addition I am happy to offer a short 'pre-lesson' for free just so the student can gauge whether s/he likes my methods and to enable me to plan ahead. Please be aware, however, I do require 24 hours notice of any cancellation, whereupon I will do my best to offer an alternative date and time.
Video
Find out more about Elizabeth
01
1) Do you speak this language fluently because of your origins or because a teacher inspired you to learn?
I was born in India of English parents- longer ago than I care to remember- but British English is my native tongue and all my schooling was in the UK.
My accent is RP or Received Pronunciation, but I am very aware of the influences of other English dialects and changes in English pronunciation that are taking place quite rapidly now and I point these out to my students. Young people these days, for instance, tend to pronounce the old RP back vowels in a more forward position, producing a somewhat different sound.02
2) Can you name a living, historical or fictional character that you think is the emblematic representative of the language's culture?
Maybe Robin Hood. The Brits like underdogs who triumph over their enemies, and his character took from the rich to give to the poor. He's a bit like Superman for the olden days and probably had some basis in reality.
03
3) Is there a typical word, phrase, tradition or behaviour in the language that you particularly like?
The British can be very polite. This is reflected in their language where they use the past continuous and conditional, for instance, to ask for assistance: "I was wondering if you could help me?"
04
4) Why does speaking this language matter to you?
It matters to me that others are helped to speak this language clearly and efficiently, as English is definitely becoming the lingua franca or common language of the world and I am exceedingly keen that people should learn to understand one another better.
05
5) What is the main difficulty in learning this language and what can help the process of learning?
One of the main difficulties in learning English pronunciation-- and I am sorry, there are several - is the diabolical spelling! Children are fine, they trust their ears. But adults come to me having learned English as often as not from the written page. They trust their eyes. Thus, when they see words such as though, through, enough, bough, cough, dough and thorough - all pronounced differently- they can be confused. But there are only 26 letters in the Roman alphabet, whereas British English, if we include that little ubiquitous vowel sound, the schwa, has 45 sounds. So, the same letter combination often has to stand for different sounds. Conversely, too, 'pour, pore, poor and paw' all represent exactly the same sound. (Modern young people tend to rhyme 'poor' with 'more', ie replace the more traditional diphthong with a monophthong). Hence, I tell my adult students to trust their ears rather than their eyes and introduce them to the phonetic alphabet where each sound is represented by just one symbol. Sorted!
06
6) Provide a valuable anecdote related to your language learning or your days at school.
Often the best way to learn a language is having to teach it. I only had basic Italian but, as no other member of staff knew any Italian at all, I was roped into teaching Italian grammar and writing to one individual child during my time as a grammar school teacher. The child had Italian parents. We learned together. This leads me on to my next point. You need to need the language. Faced with the prospect of having to deliver a presentation on your current project, for instance, you are really going to be motivated to improve your pronunciation fast- and to put in that extra bit of time doing your homework.
07
7) How has travel or a specific trip helped you to increase your skill and knowledge of the language?
It's a long time since I travelled anywhere - the last time, I think, was to fetch my daughter back in a wheelchair from hospital in Belgium, where she had had an emergency gall bladder operation. The trip did not help my English, of course, but it did improve my French. As I said above, one needs to need the language.
08
8) What makes you a Superprof in language?
Interest, passion, the satisfaction of seeing people improve and gain confidence in themselves and their language ability, of seeing them become who they really are in this other language too. And, as I said, I don't travel much now but, by handing on what I know, by helping people speak either clear and grammatically correct British English, if they are going to live here, or English as a lingua franca (I do both), I connect with people all over the world and I really enjoy meeting them! Lingua franca teachers, by the way, are not so worried about the correct pronunciation of 'th' or remembering the third person singular 's' - and the rhotic 'r' sound of General American is positively encouraged. When teaching Received Pronunciation, however, I am a lot more pedantic!
