"After my Linguistics degree, I worked in another English school for three years before coming here in 2004. What I like about this school is the opportunities it gives you for growth and development. Embassy CES pays for all sorts of training for its staff: in my case this meant not only part-sponsoring my DELTA (Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults) which I passed last year, but also paying for the Portuguese lessons I’m following at the moment. What this gives me is the chance to see things from a student’s perspective, and this helps me so much in designing my own lessons and making sure they are right for my students. For example, it’s easy to think as a teacher: "I've taught that, so the students must know it" – when in fact what you realise when you’re learning a new piece of language yourself is that you need lots of practice, and you need to see the language item presented in different ways, in different contexts – before you can really say you understand it and can use it.

Another way in which Embassy CES has developed me as a teacher is in the provision of an interactive whiteboard. I’ve been using this for several months now and my students absolutely love it – they really focus on the lesson, and it makes classes much more efficient and effective. This is such a great piece of technology in language learning and we’re hoping the company will continue to invest in these cutting-edge tools to enhance the student experience. I actually did a training session for my colleagues a few weeks ago on interactive whiteboards and they’re all keen to start using them in their lessons."