FAQs
- What should the customer know about your pricing (e.g., discounts, fees)?
The first meeting is always free. This gives me a chance to learn how best to work with the client, and the client a chance to learn if we are a good fit.
- What is your typical process for working with a new customer?
I often ask for a writing sample to be emailed to me before our first meeting. I edit this with the student, correcting grammar, punctuation, and spelling as we go and teaching the principles needed. I also provide writing tips to make the passages read better. I teach only the things the student does not already know. Then I choose a book that will challenge, but not overwhelm the student for him/her to read to me online from my Nook book. I coach the student in good reading and pronunciation and find the words the student doesn’t understand. These go into the vocabulary list I keep for each student. I teach short cuts to increasing vocabulary, and short cuts to writing essays. I prepare each lesson specific to each student for optimum progress.
- What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?
I never gained a college degree, but I’ve been a life long student. My mother taught me to read at age three, and even before that, even my first halting words had to be correctly pronounced. I spoke complete, grammatical sentences before I could walk; I read novels by age five. In my thirties I taught myself to speed read and to read Middle English. My method for learning any new subject used to be to go to the library and skim through about twenty books on the subject and take home half a dozen to read. Now I have the internet and can learn new subjects even more quickly. In various jobs I’ve written, edited, done public speaking and trained others to do it, created newsletters, flyers, and business cards, tutored friends and children in reading, writing, speaking, and grammar. I have been offered the editorship of a newspaper with no references and without applying, simply because I speak correctly. I have edited a novel. On the side, I have been taught how to teach, starting when I taught ballroom dancing. My last job was training and coaching people and I had from 40 to 50 of them to work with all the time. I know English. I know how to teach. I can help you.