OK here’s Katherine Burke’s bio:
I’m a freelance English teacher in Bangkok. I’m teaching part time. My background is as a freelance journalist and copywriter. I”m 41 and did the CELTA certificate in teaching English in 2011 in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand.
In January 2012 I was in Manzanillo in Mexico. I had an English-phobic private student whose textbook was way beyond her level. I couldn’t understand why she was at elementary level with v. poor listening understanding when she had received so many years of formal English classes already. I was learning Spanish myself freestyle from audios of real conversations (Notes in Spanish.com) – it didn’t make sense to me that my Spanish (which wasn’t that good) was more fluent than her English.
I Googled language learning theories to try to help her. That’s when I found CI, Stephen Krashen, the importance of the silent period, using TPR to learn in chunks, core lexis for pushing through to fluency, the benefits of free reading easy, interesting stories. I found TPRS and I got in touch with Ben who generously sent me a pdf of his books and advised me on how to get started with circling.
So here I am now. To be honest I still don’t know what I”m doing. The TPRS approach was developed for teaching in US high schools – obviously my situation is different. My only experience of “proper” teaching was 2 weeks at a posh convent school in Guadalajara, Mexico and I quit due to health problems . But, had I stayed, frankly those teenage girls were scary. Everything I have tried from these boards has been useful. it’s great seeing a scared grammar victim start to finally understand and enjoy English. Thank you for giving me this.