Annette

Certified Tutor

I am a native German speaker and a qualified linguist with a masters in translation and interpreting (English, German and French) from Bradford University and more than twenty years of professional experience. I have been working mainly as a translator for different international organisations, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the International Railways Union (UIC). These positions helped me to acquire specialist scientific and technical knowledge and allowed me to live in exciting places such as Paris. I had the chance to work with scientists and engineers who were very passionate about their specialist fields, and learned a lot from them.
I am now based in Reading, UK and enjoy combining my free-lance translation work with teaching languages, as tutoring gives me an opportunity to work with people sometimes translating can be a bit lonely! Recently, I have been working mainly with GCSE- and A-level students, preparing them for oral exams. This is where one-to-to lessons are really useful my students get to speak a lot in our lessons and I can tailor my support individually. I very much enjoy watching them making progress, improving their pronunciation and becoming more confident when expressing themselves in French and German. I am also happy to teach advanced students who would like to improve their spoken German or French, or beginners. Right now, I am teaching beginner German to a small group of adults. German is not an easy language and you do need some grammar to master it. But an intellectual challenge can be fun, too, and we often laugh a lot in our lessons. I use many different materials (texts, online courses, pictures, videos etc.) to create diverse lessons and lively interactions with my students.