My name is Sybilla. I was born in Germany, but left my home country aged 25 to live and work in France. There, I taught German and English in different language schools to adults as well as to children. After 7 years in this lovely country, my destiny took me to the UK, where I have lived and worked for the last 24 years. I used to teach German and French at a local Rudolf Steiner school which closed in 2019, and I also had several private students, most of whom I lost at the start of lockdown. They decided not to carry on for now because of the virus and wanting to avoid personal contact. We tried moving online, but this doesn’t suit everybody. I had a few groups with younger kids as well, but working online with children who are used to playing, singing, hiding and seeking and having fun with the various props I used to bring to the classroom just didn’t feel right.

While teaching at the school, I had already worked as a translator online for several years. So I made this my main line of work during lockdown and beyond.

And all that time I thought that I would like to get back into teaching – but not in a British state school. So I decided to extend my offer to an international community and go online. But there are so many teachers out there already who teach online, especially German, French, and English. The market seems pretty saturated. Or is it?

Perhaps I should offer something that is a little different.

I love drama, acting, playing with language, and bringing it to life in different situations. An avid language learner myself, I have been experimenting with various ways of trying to remember new words and phrases in context, learning short sentences by heart by saying them, whispering them, shouting them, singing them. How many different ways of saying “Good morning Mr Smith!” can you think of? Are you happy to see the guy or not? Do you feel lively, cheerful, energetic, or tired, grumpy, and fed-up when you greet him? – Oh no, not him again! – Put on your best smile, sound cheerful even though you know it’s fake, etc. That is fun, and before you know it, you remember the sentence.

So I decided to use this approach as one of my teaching methods, and I created materials that I can base this type of exercises on: little dialogues for different situations that are flexible enough to adapt to a variety of circumstances and moods. No conversation will be exactly like the previous one. Creativity is key, and we want to have fun! Depending on the student, these role plays can be simply interesting and varied or completely wacky and unpredictable. The main thing is that we explore lots of nuances of expression to repeat the phrases without getting bored with them too quickly, and by and by, as a side effect, so-to-speak, you learn lots of useful vocabulary and structures in the new language. Ah yes, and your pronunciation improves as well.

But don’t worry, if you are more the introverted type, and all of this sounds too uncomfortable for you. We can also work with more traditional methods and practice speaking, listening, reading and writing adapted to your own level in the language and your needs and goals you want to achieve.