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Which best describes your current role?: ESL Teacher

Where have you worked?: Europe

Where would you like to work?: North America

Share more about yourself.: My name is Kateryna Haggerty. Over the past nine years I have been teaching English to speakers of other languages and have worked with children, students as well as adults. I am a graduate of CUNY Brooklyn College with a Master's degree in English. I had an honor of studying there as a Fulbright scholar. Moreover I received a Master's degree in Linguistics from Volyn State University in Ukraine.

In my teaching I believe in giving my students a sense of ownership of their learning as well as constant awareness of what they are doing and why. Being educated in the European school system, known for its high standards for teaching and learning, I strongly believe in striving to excel and setting challenging goals for my students. Since I, myself, speak four languages, I know very well the challenges English students face and can efficiently help them overcome these challenges through thorough planning and basing all new knowledge on prior competence.

For the past four years I have worked with a language center called ABC, located in the Ukrainian city of Kiev. Within this program I taught English to Ukrainian adults who were working with various multinational companies. I started out there as a teacher and after 1 year of hard work I was promoted to the Deputy Director of Studies. In this role, apart from everyday teaching, I was involved in developing learning programs, coaching teachers and conducting methodological workshops for teachers. Besides developing teaching curricula for General and Business English courses, I developed and implemented preparation courses for Cambridge Tests such as TOEFL, IELTS, FCE, CAE, CPE, ILEC. Not only did I teach these courses myself but I also coached our teachers through a series of seminars. Since most of our clients were multinational corporations that worked in various spheres of industry we often had to adapt our language instruction to industry specific requirements of our clients. Being a Deputy Director I developed and taught a number of industry specific courses, such as Legal English, English for Accounting, Financial English, English for Insurance, just to mention a few.

This international experience made me aware of different kinds of learners and taught me to find ways to each and every one of them. Being an immigrant myself I understand what is the most important for my students - receiving fast results, retaining new language knowledge, overcoming the language barrier and integrating into the society. Therefore, I would base my teaching to specifically address these needs. In my classroom I would model communicative situations my students can encounter in their everyday life like: making an appointment, opening a bank account, making reservations, preparing for an interview etc.

Over the years, I have found that my academic and professional background has greatly assisted me in becoming a successful teacher.

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