I was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and began my ESL career teaching newly arrived Canadians while finishing my studies at university. I moved to Dubai in the summer of 2005 and had the opportunity to teach with some wonderful international universities on the Knowledge Village campus. With the University of Wollongong Dubai (Australian), I conducted courses in IELTS essay writing. At St Petersburg State University Dubai (Russian), I taught essay writing, grammar, conversation and pronunciation courses. And at SZABIST Technical Institute (Pakistani), I taught technical English writing.
My online IELTS endeavours started after some of my Wollongong students encouraged me to post my lessons on YouTube to allow them to review outside class hours. After doing so, I instantly started receiving emails from IELTS test takers around the world, a sign there was a lack of quality IELTS material on the internet. My YouTube channel grew organically in the years to come, and it has been a wonderfully rewarding trip since then.
After a terrific three years in Dubai, I relocated to Shanghai and continued to teach IELTS Writing both in a classroom setting and online. I also began working as a corporate language instructor, which involved solving a lot of real world language challenges for teams of non-native English users at some of the world’s largest companies. I had the pleasure of working on site with teams from companies like Microsoft (sales team), Nokia (communications logistics), NEC (shipping and trade teams), and Glaxo Smith Klein (research team), among many others.In mid 2012, I got married (yes!) and moved with my wife to Doha. I started The IELTS Network, a platform that helps bring the online IELTS community together, and an IELTS related podcast, which hypothesises that the most effective IELTS testing strategies come from successful candidates.
Contact me at The IELTS Network (ieltsnetwork.com), Facebook (facebook.com/ieltsnetwork), Twitter (twitter.com/ieltsnetwork) or via email. Good luck with your IELTS!
