Keon

I am an Italian national who having grown up on different continents with ever-changing cultural and linguistic backgrounds to contend with, knows first-hand what challenges different cultures, and languages may bring.

I have been teaching Italian for the last 26 years of my life. I have had the opportunity to do so on three different continents and several countries. Here in England, I have worked for many companies and firms in the City, such as A&O, BT, Freshfields, Unicredito, USB, Walt Disney and many others. As well as people such as Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney, and their staff. I currently teach e-courses for Lendlease, and other students.
My experience extends to teaching Italian at both secondary and university level. It is varied as I have also taught several subjects in Italian. For example, I taught a long course on medieval poetry, Dantes Commedia, entirely in Italian. Part of the course was taught in person and part online when I returned to Italy from Australia. Both here in England, and in Australia, I have also taught translation to university students in addition to seminars on translation at the University of Sydney and at UCL.

Over the years I have developed my methodology. During my masters degree in translation at Imperial College London, I came across controlled languages. I have used them in my teaching ever since. Naturally, my approach has been adapted and is constantly evolving, but by and large, the use of controlled structures remains a valid tool. I say this with confidence because the results speak for themselves. I have had hundreds of students who have gone from not knowing Italian to being fluent in just a couple of years, and many more who have passed exams of all levels, GCSEs, A-Levels, CELI, CILS, and so on, with excellent results. Learners should acquire a sense of confidence, initiative, be able to make decisions, and so on. These qualities include problem-solving, adaptability, a sense of curiosity, and many others that should be developed using the target language. As such, the language becomes a facilitator that works on several cognitive planes. My approach combines inductive and deductive grammar, which has as its central focus in the spoken language presented to the student in a studied manner so as not to discourage him or her with a disproportionate volume of new linguistic elements. The latter are instead presented within a defined and easily accessible framework where terms are selected from a list of words in current use in the Italian language and only gradually increased according to the students abilities. Also the grammatical elements are carefully selected in order to favour their use and not to generate a feeling of inadequacy or linguistic rejection that so frequently occurs among those who are about to learn another language.