1st lesson free
Isla
- Rate £19
- Response 1h
£19/hr
Contact
1st lesson free
- ESOL
- English speaking
- English Vocabulary
- English writing
- Business English
Empathetic English Tutor 4 Years Experience 140+ Students Taught Pronunciation Phonology Accent Reduction Listening Skills Conversation Fluency All Welcome
- ESOL
- English speaking
- English Vocabulary
- English writing
- Business English
Lesson location
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At Isla's house: Southampton
- Online
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at your home or in a public place : will travel up to 40 km from Southampton
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About Isla
I am an English language tutor with 4 years of experience and a Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics with a specialism in phonology and second language acquisition. I have taught over 140 students with particular success with learners from East Asian, South Asian, and Eastern European backgrounds who find English phonology especially challenging. My linguistics background means I can explain exactly why a particular sound is difficult for a particular language background rather than offering generic advice, and students consistently tell me this specificity makes my teaching feel personally designed for them. I have a secondary qualification in teaching English for Academic Purposes, and I provide support for doctoral students writing in English as an additional language alongside more general language development work.
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About the lesson
- All Levels
- English
All languages in which the lesson is available :
English
My approach to English teaching is centred on phonological awareness, because I have observed across four years that most communication difficulties — being misunderstood, struggling to understand native speakers, feeling self-conscious in professional settings — have their roots in phonology rather than grammar or vocabulary. I begin every student relationship with a systematic phonological audit using the International Phonetic Alphabet as a diagnostic tool, not as a subject to be studied, so I can identify precisely which sounds are causing difficulty and design targeted remediation. Connected speech features — assimilation, elision, linking, weak forms, and sentence stress — are taught explicitly because they are almost never covered in formal English education but are responsible for the comprehension gap most learners experience with fast native speech. My listening training programme uses materials at four levels simultaneously: the student's current independent level, their instructional level, challenging authentic material, and extensive easy listening for fluency consolidation. Grammar instruction in my lessons is always error-driven — I address the specific grammatical patterns that appear in each student's own writing and speaking rather than working through a grammar syllabus sequentially. Conversational confidence is built using a strategy I call deliberate risk — I push students to use new language forms in lower-stakes contexts before they need them in high-stakes ones, building a track record of successful communication that gradually makes the high-stakes contexts feel manageable. For students with very specific professional English needs — lawyers, doctors, engineers, academics — I research the discourse conventions of their field before lessons so I can provide genuinely relevant instruction. I use shadowing exercises — repeating authentic native speech simultaneously as a shadow rather than after a pause — because the research evidence for its effectiveness is compelling and students almost always find it transformative for their pronunciation. Feedback in my lessons is always formative rather than corrective — I build on what students produce rather than replacing it. My measure of success is a student who no longer thinks about English when they are using it.
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Rates
Rate
- £19
Pack prices
- 5h: £95
- 10h: £190
online
- £19/h
free lessons
The first free lesson with Isla will allow you to get to know each other and clearly specify your needs for your next lessons.
- 1hr
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