About Heather – your host and teacher
Work experience:
Heather is a qualified TESOL teacher and has worked in many different areas of English teaching whilst working overseas in Freiburg, Germany and in Oxford for almost 10 years. Previously, Heather had a corporate career in Marketing and Public Relations and perhaps, because of this, she is focussed to deliver lessons that are tailored to students’ needs. She is extremely creative in her teaching – seeking out a wonderful variety of resources and authentic materials to make the lessons as enjoyable and effective as possible.
Substantial and professional teaching experience
Heather has worked for a variety of private tutorial and English language schools and organisations including International House, Peking University HSBC Business School, Oxford International Study Centre, Oxford Prospects Programme (delivered in Oxford University) and UKEDA. Whilst in Oxford, Heather has become specialised in teaching IELTS and also teaches Common entrance, IGCSE English as well as Cambridge examinations and consequently, her students have come from all over the world and have varied considerably in terms of ability and ranged in age from 4 to 74!
Business teaching from a teacher with business experience!
As regards Business English, Heather has had an extremely interesting marketing career in a variety of industries including manufacturing, travel, tourism and leisure, specialist food and beverage and she also worked for an international auction house in London. She has worked as Head of Marketing and on a consultancy basis so understands the complexity and intricacies of the business world and can offer much added value to the teaching of Business English. This has led her to teach in international companies, both in England and overseas as well teaching English for specific needs – for example, Heather has worked with Business directors of international companies and senior academics in formulating and delivering important presentations in English to international audiences.
Indeed, Heather creates lessons for all students to enjoy and succeed, whatever their level and ability!
Personal interests:
Heather’s interests are varied and she enjoys the theatre and cinema, food and cooking (eating food moreso than cooking food!), architecture and history.
More recently, she has become an avid collector of beautiful antique and hand-painted English teacups and her collection led her to take an interest in the social history of the English afternoon tradition. As a consequence Heather now offers an extremely amusing talk on this longstanding tradition which is made even more interesting by the audience seeing her unique collection and holding antique teacups that date back to the days of Jane Austen!
Finally, Heather loves snorkelling (but never in England), walking, swimming and skiing but her real passion is travelling overseas and in doing so, meeting people of different cultures – and indeed, this is one of the many reasons she enjoys being an English language teacher in the very cosmopolitan iconic city of Oxford!