I'm an ESL/EFL tutor based in New Zealand, and the creator of Basic English Lessons. I hold a Master of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from the University of Canterbury, where I graduated with distinction, and was selected as a Manaaki New Zealand Scholarship Scholar (2024) — a fully-funded scholarship awarded by the New Zealand Government to support postgraduate study. My focus is language education, and turning what I learn from it into lessons real beginners can actually use.
Graduated with distinction, with a focus on practical, learner-centred instruction.
Selected for the Manaaki New Zealand Scholarship — a fully-funded award from the New Zealand Government supporting postgraduate study.
Hands-on classroom teaching experience combined with an active interest in language-education research.
Most of the English learners I've taught didn't struggle because they lacked grammar rules — they had plenty of those from textbooks. What they were missing was practice with real, natural conversation: the kind of English people actually use to greet a coworker, order food, or make small talk at the bus stop.
As a Master of TESOL graduate from the University of Canterbury (graduating with distinction) and a Manaaki New Zealand Scholarship Scholar (2024), I've spent time studying how people actually acquire a second language — and one thing keeps showing up: learners build confidence fastest when they can listen, read, and repeat real dialogue, not memorize isolated rules.
Basic English Lessons is my attempt to put that into practice. Every lesson on this site follows the same simple idea: give beginner and elementary learners short, realistic conversations with audio and full transcripts, so they can hear how English actually sounds — and start speaking it themselves.
Start with a free lesson, or take the level test to find your starting point.
Basic English Lessons