Before becoming a certified and accredited Neurolanguage coach®* I was a CELTA trained teacher of English as a foreign language. I taught in 7 different countries, from Russia to Mexico to Angola, in various language institutions. I have more than 15 years of teaching and coaching experience, and 9 years of online teaching experience and I have worked as an IELTS, FCE and CAE examiner. I also spent 2 years as the Assistant Director of Studies at International House, Cape Town.

 

As an English teacher, I was becoming more and more frustrated with the accepted methodologies used in the English teaching world. It depressed me to see so many disciplined students spending hours and hours of their time on ineffective learning activities only to see them give up in frustration because they failed to achieve their language goals. All that time and money wasted.

 

I started to notice that my most successful students didn't want to follow this methodology and instead they directed their learning and lessons in the ways they wanted. I eventually realised that highly successful students have four things is common:

 

1. They are independent learners

2. They regularly set small achievable goals

3. They do a little bit of English every day

4. They focus on skills, rather than grammar and vocabulary (this means reading, listening and watching authentic English material, rather than using course books and grammar books)

 

In fact, with my most successful students I was never really a teacher, I felt more like a language consultant! These students directed the lessons, they chose what we would focus on and what activities we would do. They came to me with their questions and doubts regarding grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary etc, we cleared up confusion and spent the rest of the lesson focusing on their speaking, reading or writing skills in ways that they wanted. This is what eventually lead me to Neurolanguage Coaching. It was so satisfying to finally find a system that aligns with my ideology of language learning and teaching and is based on the latest developments in Neuroscience.

​

*registered US and European trademark in the name of Rachel Marie Paling