GENERAL I was born, and raised, and lived the majority of my life in the United States. I have 40 years of working experience in a variety of technical specialties. I was an engineering manager in several US aerospace companies. Later I worked 20 years as an independent engineering consultant. I have extensive proposal writing experience, contract writing experience and technical publication experience in English. I speak American English, German, Swiss German, and Spanish. I have lived and worked for extended periods in foreign countries where I needed to learn to actively use the languages I was studying. I now reside permanently in Guadalajara, Mexico TEACHING STYLE AND COURSE FEATURES My focus in on learning in context. This means a lot of listening, and a lot of active conversation. Learning in context helps new concepts become mental habits much sooner. After we cover grammar and its rules, course emphasis is more on extensive listening practice and conversational use, and less on the memorization of rules and exceptions. If you are a Spanish or German speaker, I also can help you out with understanding the many parallels in grammar between your native language and in English. TEACHING AND LEARNING BACKGROUND TEFL certificate from ITTO, International Teacher Training Organization, Guadalajara, MX I teach English at a small private school in Guadalajara. My YouTube Channel for teaching English is “Learning American English with Stirling” I also taught college level Algebra classes for one year at Missouri State University. IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT LEARNING IN CONTEXT If you can understand 70 to 80% of what you´re listening to, when you hear new phrases, new words, sometimes even grammar that you’re not sure about, your brain will help you to connect the rest. You won´t always have to use a dictionary to learn new words, and you even will better remember words that you have learned through listening in context. Listen to the same audio many times, and you will find find that every time, you´re going to understand more than you did the last time. What you do not understand is not important. Just be sure to listen to what you like. Be sure you can understand enough to know what the material is about. Finally, always listen while reading the subtitles in English. Some memorization is always needed to get started. Once you understand the basics, with my method you can stop studying the same rules of grammar over and over again, and you can stop making lists of words just to memorize them. Instead….listen! Your brain will do the job of planting the new information in your subconscious mind. Learning in context, creates a direct path in your brain between a new word and the concept that belongs to that word. This helps you to speak faster because your brain does not need to take the time to look up a translation. Instead, it brain goes directly from the concept, to the English word. MY OWN LEARNING EXPERIENCE Finally I want to tell you that the things that I emphasize, the things that I focus on in teaching English are based on my own successes. These are methods of learning a foreign language that I already have proven to myself as effective . Although I do not yet speak flawless Spanish, I reached a point of almost conversational fluency in Spanish in only a year and a half. I have never attended a single class in Spanish. I learned everything I know through self study and by following free teachers of Spanish online who use these same techniques. Being already a near native level speaker of German, I also reached a point of conversational fluency in Swiss German in only a couple of months, with the assistance of a personal teacher who literally immersed me in listening and speaking activities, one on one. If you have a real burning desire to want to speak great English, I can help you learn English this way. I look forward to hearing from you soon!