Essay Writing with Analita M.

I am a native, English-speaking teacher, certified in both Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL/ESL), and English Language Arts (ELA-writing and literature). My combined teaching experience is 20 years, and I have been teaching both here in the USA and abroad (Japan and Colombia, South America). I have been working in ESL for 13 years, and before doing this I taught English writing and literature at a public, magnet, high school for gifted and talented students in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey called Dr. Ronald McNair Academic High School. These students typically graduate to some of the most well-respected learning institutions in the world, such as Harvard and Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (MIT) in Massachusetts. My ESL teaching experience includes having worked with all ages, English levels and with quite a few nationalities. For example, in Japan, I worked with kindergartners to senior-level executives at the Toshiba headquarters in Kitakami City, Iwate-ken. And in Bogota, Colombia, I taught Spanish-speaking, business professionals how to acquire the levels of English necessary for their careers. Some of the industries they come from include accounting, oil and gas, hospitality and tourism and government. Before working with these adults in Bogota, I worked at an international, bi-lingual school for 1 year, called Anglo-Colombiano, teaching English writing and literature to high school students. At this school, too, the students graduate to the same level of schools as McNair students, in addition to other similar schools found in Canada and Europe. When I teach ESL, I use the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach, because it is highly interactive and facilitates student communication. In other words it demands that students get a lot of practice in all of the 4 English language skills. In conjunction with CLT, I guide my students towards the use of purposeful, authentic language that is used in daily communication, whether it be for academic or professional purposes (task-based language teaching and learning). In addition to teaching the 4 English language skills, I also prepare students to sit the IELTS's exams -- both the academic and the general training. Some of my students live throughout the United States and others live outside of the country. I am also a member of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL), based in Faversham, Kent, England, and of TESOL International, based in Alexandria, Virginia, USA.