Posts tagged english tutor

Wisekangaroo is pleased to announce a new partnership with Nu School USA.

Starting today Wisekangaroo will be offering the Nu School Enterprises’ best selling program – The Speech Team Connection, which is designed to be musically interactive. This four-booklet grammar series, which teaches from beginner to college level, has been developed into a complete line of multimedia products.

Nu Schools Multimedia products, available through Wisekangaroo will transform the way kids and adults learn English. Students will have the flexibility to study on their own times using the state of the art multimedia lessons that include a mix of musical videos, interactive online quizzes and text.

Atul Pandey, Founder and CEO of Wisekangaroo.com said “This partnership significantly enhances Wisekangaroo.com’s offering as a unique and innovative English coaching school. The Speech Team Connection series will wow students, parents and teachers alike and will encourage students to learn English in a new and interesting way.”

The first of the four grammar series is being released today. The Beginner Level multimedia Grammar product is now available on Wisekangaroo.com. Ms. Graves, the creator of this series has devoted the past eight years of her life to developing this uniquely innovative teaching tool. This project is dedicated to her mother, Essonia Rhodes Graves (R.I.P).

A premier Australian Brand, Wisekangaroo is an online English language coaching school that offers a revolutionary new approach to English language learning by allowing students to study conveniently from anywhere, anytime, be it home or office and to avoid long commute times, high tuition costs, and outdated books and CD-ROMs. Wisekangaroo was created in Sydney with a mission to reshape the global English language learning industry by harnessing the skills, experience and knowledge of the best English language teachers in the world and making it accessible to everyone from anywhere and at all times. Wisekangaroo serves a large and rapidly growing global market of non-native English speakers in becoming more fluent and confident in speaking English. Through live one-on-one instruction with native English speaking teachers provided over the Internet, Wisekangaroo empowers students on their customized path to English fluency as per their specific learning needs. For more information on English language courses please visit our website www.wisekangaroo.com.

Twitter is a great resource for free English help and provides lots of great ways to improve your English effortlessly. As a non-native English speaker, learning English is difficult, but if you use every resource available to you, you will succeed.

Here are five of the best Twitter accounts for improving your English:

1. @LearnEnglish_BC is a great resource from the British Council. They create online games for you to practice your English and most of the articles on their website have questions attached so that you can check how good your reading is. Also, you can listen to someone reading the articles to practice your listening.
2. @BBCle is a fantastic resource from the BBC. They take big news articles from the BBC website and help you understand some of the harder words. Sometimes in English, people say things that might not make sense if you translated them like ‘belted out’. These are called idioms and this account is really good at explaining these to you.
3. @English247 tweet quite regularly! They have lots of word games you can play and they boost your vocabulary by posting themed lists of new words for you.
4. @CambridgeWords is a resource for English language learners from the Cambridge Dictionary. Cambridge Words posts a new word everyday and uses it in a sentence. If you don’t understand the word, you can click on the definition to find out. This is really useful for people who already have quite good English, but want to boost their vocabulary and learn some more unusual words!
5. @ieltsessentials is an excellent resource for IELTS test takers. IELTSEssentials is tailored to you as a test taker. You’ll find all the information you need to help you book a test, prepare and take the IELTS test.

And don’t forget to follow @Wisekangaroo on Twitter, too!

Every week we shine the spotlight on one of our star tutors. Today we meet Kate Unsworth, an English Language Tutor on Wisekangaroo. Kate lives in Sydney and loves working with students who need some help with English.

How did you get started with tutoring?

I first started teaching English at an orphanage in Cambodia 6 years ago. I taught both children and adults, and loved watching the delight on their faces as they learned to express themselves in English. I then taught English in a classroom to groups of adults at an English Language Academy in the city. Teaching in a classroom is lots of fun, but it doesn’t fit into my hectic lifestyle anymore (I have two children under 5 yrs). So I decided it would be a great idea to teach online from home. 

What do you enjoy about tutoring online on Wisekangaroo?

Online tutoring on Wisekangaroo works so well because I can share my knowledge without anyone having to travel. You can even make a cup of tea during the lesson! Or sit on the beach or in your favourite cafe. Teaching online may seem unusual at first but it actually works like any lesson. You can send the students information to read, play cds for them to listen too, and of course talk and laugh.

What are your favourite subjects to work with? 

I currently have a couple of students planning to sit their IELTS exam, so that’s a more specialised area. However I enjoy teaching all areas in English and at all levels, and find the rules of grammar fascinating. I also like introducing original material to my lessons, and can sit with a big bowl of fruits on the table whilst conducting a lesson on vocabulary for food!

What advice would you give to other tutors?

• I wish I could speak English fluently with my school friends.
• I wish I could communicate confidently in English with my co-workers.
• I wish I could express my thoughts clearly in English.

1. Start talking in English: Do you know why most non English speakers struggle to speak English fluently? Because they don’t speak in English as much as their English speaking peers. It’s as simple as that! The more you speak in English, the better you will get at it. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. If you do feel like you are speaking incorrectly don’t get conscious. Just laugh it off and keep talking. Remember practice makes permanent!
2. Hire an English tutor: It is often very difficult to learn a new language on your own. English is a complicated language and having someone explain all the little grammar rules and pronunciations can be very helpful. Having a tutor will help you work on all aspects of English in a more structured manner. It is easy to find good English tutors these days. Just go on Google and search for an English tutor in your area. You could even checkout websites like Wisekangaroo that offer Online English tutors so that you can learn from the comfort of your own home without having to waste time in travelling. Wisekangaroo has an amazing online virtual classroom that lets users talk via video and audio chat. It even has a whiteboard where students and tutors can draw pictures and scribble together.
3. Join a Meetup Group: Search on Meetup.com to look for meetup groups in your local area for English language. Choose a meetup that has a good number of members (usually more than 50). Check to see if the group meets  regularly and look at the number of members who attended the last meetup. You can even message the organizer to introduce yourself before you attend the meetup so that you don’t feel awkward when you attend the meetup the first time. Interacting with more speakers who are at the same level of English as you will give you more confidence.
4. Start a Twitter account: Do you already have a Twitter account? If not start one today! If you already have a Twitter account start tweeting in English. Write as often as you want and as much as you want. The fact that your tweets are public and can be read by anyone will make you work harder on your written communication skills. You can even start a proper blog to write bigger posts. If you post regularly you will be able to notice a gradual improvement in your sentence construction and vocabulary when you read your posts after a few weeks.
5. Ask questions and discuss on Online English Forums: There are a large number of Online English forums where you can ask questions and discuss about English. Most users on these forums are very helpful and you will usually receive an answer within a few hours of posting a question.  
6. Take an English language test: Most of us take things more seriously when the stakes are higher. Enrol for an English language test such as IELTS (International English Language Testing System) or OET (Occupational English Test). Apart from making you work harder at learning English it will also serve as a recognition of your English language skills for employers and educational institutes.
7. Read Interesting English books and magazines: Course books and office documents can be boring to read and often the language used in them is not useful for conversations. Try to read interesting novels that have lots of conversations between characters. Start with comics or magazines that have short articles. If you feel comfortable move to bigger novels. Read news articles daily on English news websites such as SMH and CNN. This will also help you in your conversations with friends or colleagues as you can use the sentences from the news articles when discussing the latest events with them.
8. Watch English Movies and Serials: Another motivating and easy way to improve your English is to hear the way native English speakers talk in different circumstances. The best way to do this is by watching English movies and serials. If initially you cannot understand what is being said, switch on the subtitles. Gradually you will be able to follow what is being said without the subtitles. Try to say the dialogues out aloud in the same accent as the actors in the movies and serials. This will help you improve your accent. 
9. Start thinking in English: In order to truly gain expertise in English, you need to train your subconscious mind to help you speak better. Most non-native English speakers think in their own native language and so the natural response of their subconscious mind is to prompt them with non English words during a conversation. Start ”thinking” in English. With practice your mind will start feeding you words and phrases in English instead of translating in real-time from your native language to English while having a conversation.
10. Finally keep it interesting and have fun: Our brains work best if the activity that we are doing is interesting and fun. Always try to have fun while learning. Sing Karaoke in English. Maybe even make a version of Gangnam Style in English and post it on You Tube.

Atul Pandey
Founder Wisekangaroo

Click Here To Book A FREE 1 Hour Online English Lesson On Wisekangaroo NOW!

According to the Australian Tutoring Association, tutoring is a $6 Billion industry in Australia alone. Children start attending tuition classes when they are as young as 10 years old. Most parents spend on an average between $51 - $90 a week on tutoring.

I recently visited one of the most sought after tuition centers in the Upper North Shore and spoke to the owner about why do parents admit their students to their center. She mentioned something amazing. She said

Even though the “Selective Exam” test papers have been getting tougher and tougher for the past 3 years, the cut-off grades have been going higher and higher. It simply means that students are working harder than ever before and that there is no scope for any mistake.

There is a lot of pressure on kids to perform well in their exams these days. From a very young age schools classify their students into “Extensions” and “OCs” .. just another term for the creme de la creme.

Families where both parents work are left with no choice but to choose the best tutors to coach their kids. However choosing a tutor itself is a tough job. With so many tutoring services out there how do you select the one that suits your child’s learning style?

We at Wisekangaroo want to understand the most challenging problems that parents face when looking for a tutor for their children. We want to build an online tutoring marketplace that makes selecting a tutor a breeze, suites your child’s learning style, is safe, convenient and inexpensive. On Wisekangaroo, you can find Maths tutors, Science tutors, English tutors and tutors for most foreign languages. 

Please fill out our “Parent Tutor Survey” to help us understand how best we can server the needs of YOUR KIDS and YOU.   

Atul Pandey

(Founder Wisekangaroo)