TEFL Tutor – Alex Semakin
Welcome to i-to-i’s Online TEFL! My name’s Alex, and I graduated with honours from Perm State Pedagogical (TEFL) University in Perm, Russia back in 1995.
I have worked as an interpreter in the past but chose teaching for my career because I found it to be in greater demand and more creative than translation. In Russia, teaching is very female-dominated (99% of language teachers here are women) and consequently I was viewed as quite an oddity at first, but then began to steadily build my reputation.
In 1996 and 1997 I helped to organize several seminars for local teachers. It was then that I became fascinated by the 'Communicative' approach to TEFL, which contrasted so sharply with the traditional Soviet grammar translation style.
Since then, I have been teaching English at two Lyceums (high schools affiliated with universities). The curriculum is highly intensive; 10 hours of English a week for each group, and the students are extremely creative. A lack of classroom materials also pushes my own creativity to the limit.
Over the last few years, I have also tried my hand at a number of other roles: preparation courses for the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language); teaching classes of young children; and also teaching private students whose goals are as wide as their levels of proficiency. Many of my former students now study in major Universities of Russia, the USA, Norway and the Netherlands.
I had a pause in my TEFL career back in 1998-99 when I was enrolled in the Creative Writing Program at the American University in Washington, DC. It was in the US that I also tried my hand at Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language and discovered that teaching your own language is a greater challenge than teaching a language you’ve had to learn yourself.
I am married with two children – a daughter, age 10, and a son who was born in March 2002.
