Services

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assessment / tutoring / essay correcting / Writing Course / online teaching / application process / dissertations / proofreading

Tuition fees on this page are given in Pounds Sterling (GBP) and New Taiwan Dollars (ntd). Payments can be made to my UK bank account (Lloyds Bank) or to my Taiwan bank (First Bank).

Unfortunately PayPal add a huge commission for transactions, so if you want to use PayPal to pay in Pounds Sterling, I’ll add 5% to the prices below.

Assessment

If you need a quick assessment of your level, I can give you a mock speaking test and let you know where you stand. We can do it in less than half an hour over Skype

New Taiwan Dollars (ntd) : 500 

British Pound (£) : 13

I’ll send you a report which will include a breakdown of your score.

Most students do this as part of their first lesson in the course. But if you want me to do this prior to paying for a whole course, that will be fine.

Tutoring

One-on-one and small groups. Why hire a tutor?

One student: Two hours. Including correcting of homework and help with writing  outside lesson time.

New Taiwan Dollars (ntd) : 1900 

British Pound (£) : 50

Two students: Two hours. Including correcting of homework and help with writing  outside lesson time.

New Taiwan Dollars (ntd) : 2300

British Pound (£) : 60

The reason for the higher rate is the correction of homework etc, which is doubled for 2 students — but of course each student will actually be paying less as one person in a two-person class.

I specialise in preparing students for the IELTS exam, but of course my services are available to anyone who wants to improve his or her English in whatever way.

I will assess your needs, whether they be for IELTS or not, and then tailor the tuition accordingly.

The benefits of one-on-one tutoring are enormous. You practice and learn instantly in an English speaking environment with a native speaker of English.

I will teach you how to study before anything else. And I am not a talking teacher!

Most students have limited financial resources and prefer to spend class time learning how to deal with the IELTS speaking module. A typical lesson will be spent going through practice questions for Part 1 and Part 2 and 3, forming answers to get the grade you need. After class you can write up the answers and e-mail them to me to be corrected, which I will do free of any extra charge. I will return something like this.

Competitive tuition fees.

Check my Terms for further details.

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Recommendations

Before you decide, check out my ex-students who want to recommend me to you. The list of recommendations here have been copied from my old blog over at Hello UK

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Materials

I provide all students I tutor with the following:

Class Material. Before each class I will send you details of the upcoming class and how to prepare. The material is topic-based, so each class will focus on a topic, such as movies, crime and punishment, computers and the Internet, and so on. The material will include: vocabulary lists, reading exercises, listening exercises, essay questions, and so on.

Extensive topic based Speaking Module Part 1 Question List. Superior to the one shown here

Extensive topic based Speaking Module Part 2 Question List. Superior to the one shown here

Extensive topic based Vocabulary Lists. Many of the listed words are shown in context.

Various other IELTS material, including: e-books, mp3 files, essay examples, etc

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Essay Correcting / Writing Course 

I can provide a service to suit your needs. Some students simply require their essays to be corrected others need a more structured writing course:

Essay Correcting

E-mail over your practice essays and I’ll correct them for you and show you where you are going wrong. Feedback depends on the service you choose. If you require advice on writing and how to improve, the Writing Course will be the best choice.

Most editing work is done at about nt$1.50 to nt$2.00 per word. I can offer a similar price and in addition to the editing, I’ll provide some advice you need on how to increase your score.

Essay Correcting: Advanced Service

This service offers tuition. So I won’t only correct your essays, but I’ll also offer feedback on ways to improve and I’ll rewrite sections of the essays using your ideas to show better ways to present those ideas.

Task 1 essay (ntd) $ 275 or £ 7:00
Task 2 essay (ntd) $ 375 or £ 9:50

A Task 1 essay (150 words) can be corrected and improved for nt $ 275. You’ll get back a corrected essay, graded according to the official grading standards, with comments on Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy — something like this. (Microsoft Word document, so you’ll have to download it).

A Task 2 essay (250 words) can be corrected and improved for nt$ 375. You’ll get back a corrected essay, graded according to the official grading standards, with comments on  Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy — something like this. (Microsoft Word document, so you’ll have to download it).

Essay Correcting : Basic Service

Simple essay correcting is a different service from the Advanced Service. It is more basic and doesn’t provide any real tuition — just the correction and a quick grading. It’s an editing service and is not really tuition. You’ll get back something like this. If you want more feedback, advice on how to improve, and rewrites, please choose the Advanced Service or the Writing Course.

Task 1 essay $ 225 or £ 5:60
Task 2 essay $ 325 or £ 8:20

Writing Course

This is for students who need more instruction than mere correcting of essays. I’ll show you how to write essays and then give you more feedback as you practice. I’ll tell you where you are going wrong and how to improve.

Email correspondence-based learning with added Skype time.

I’ll provide you with material concerning both Task 1 and Task 2 essays, including examples and question lists.

I will correct and give advice on five Task 1 essays and five Task 2 essays.

I will provide extensive corrections and comments attached to each essay with all the advice and information you need to improve. You’ll get back corrected essays, graded according to the official grading standards for Task 1 and Task 2, with comments on  Task Achievement/Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. I’ll rewrite whole sections if necessary in order to show you how to improve. I’ll even rewrite the whole essay if needed. You’ll get back something like this (Microsoft Word document, so you’ll have to download it)

Two 30-minute Skype sessions during which we discuss the essays you have written and any problems you are having.

Tuition = nt$ 5500 or £ 130

Course details here.

Extra Task 1 essays at nt$275 each and Extra Task 2 essays at nt$375 each.

So it’s up to you which service you choose. The Writing Course is harder because there is more to go through; but it will ground you more and give you a better foundation.

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On-line Teaching

All you need is Skype. Although face to face tutoring is preferable, this method can be very immediate and useful.

– One student: Two hours nt$ 1900 or £ 50 (including correcting of homework and help with writing outside lesson time)

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Application Process

Telephone interviews. I can help you prepare for those terrifying telephone interviews that you sometimes have to do.

Autobiographies. Sometimes the school wants you to write such a thing to introduce yourself . . . I can help.

Study plans. Do you have to submit a study plan? Mail it over to me first .

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Dissertations

When you finally get to the UK or Australia, or elsewhere, you’ll have to continue your academic writing. If you need help, please contact me.

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Proofreading

The fee depends on what you want me to do and how long it takes.

For simple proofreading with corrections for a fairly well-written original piece of writing, I charge 1.0 nt dollar per original word. So that’s almost the same as the IELTS essay correcting, which is $300 for Task 2 essay (most people write over 250 words)

If I include rewrites, I charge more for the IELTS essays ($ 350 for Task 2) And that’s the same with other material. If you want me to rewrite it to sound like it was written by a native speaker, I will have to charge more, because it takes much longer. So I charge $1.2 dollars per original word. But If it doesn’t take so long, and I don’t need to rewrite everything, I might sometimes reduce that price.

I will time everything I do and show you the spreadsheet on Google documents.

I aim to earn about $900 per hour, which is what I charge for teaching. Sometimes, if there is a lot of back and forth with several versions, I will just charge a rate of $900 per hour. But I will work as quickly as I can and stop the clock even for coffee breaks. I have done this with several students recently. One of them is writing a rather complicated dissertation for a university in England and the other is studying a Master’s degree in Australia for which she must write many different kinds of coursework. I record all my work on a Google spreadsheet so that we can both follow what I am doing exactly. The system works very well.