Greetings

...... to all my past, present and (hopefully) future students. Those of you who have been with me, and those of you who are with me, as long as you LIKED me, I'm looking for your help to fill these pages with stories of your experience in my classroom. If you're happy to have your face on this website, or maybe just a few words, I'll be very happy to host you here.

If you are looking at this site in September/October 2025, you will probably have the impression that it's not 100% ready. You will of course be right. I'm still testing here, and taking long breaks because it's been a lot of work up until now! I am aware that that are still gaps in content and that the design still needs touching up in a few places. That will all be done by the end of the year. However, what I have now is already better than the temporary content which I've had for the last half-year, so as of September 7th, 2025, I declare this site officially online! 🥳🙌🏼🎆

For those of you who don't know anything about my teaching, there will of course be much more about that on here soon enough, along with links to useful learning materials, my future PODCASTS, and language-related articles on my blog.

Recommendations

I suppose that it would be very easy nowadays to generate fake humans, and make up a load of nonsense for this page; but I feel that that would be a much more tiresome kind of effort than maintaining a friendly relationship with former students who you might be able to ask in future to write a few kind words when you finally get around to having your own website. That’s where I am now, and so... if you do like what you see here, and maybe on my other sites, and if you decide to take lessons with me, you may in fact have the opportunity to meet one or two of these lovely people when I try to organise a big reunion one of these days.

Anna Tolga Tina Matteo Ania Zeynep Misha Hasan

I don’t like the idea of only having words from my old students about me. I think that it’s only right that I should reciprocate by writing something about them, and why our teacher-student relationship worked so well. I don’t think it’s right that either you or I should spend (or rather *waste) each other’s time talking to each other if the relationship isn’t going to work. That’s happened to me a few times, and let’s face it – life is too short for that. So it’s really best if you have a proper look at everything here, and decide clearly if this is going to work for you.

Resources

I made a small selection of resources free for people to use, because I think potential students will get some idea of my general teaching style from looking at them. However, it is hopefully obvious that no-one is free to claim these resources as their own.

IELTS resource snapshot #1 IELTS resource snapshot #2 IELTS resource snapshot #3 Irregular verbs resource snapshot #1 Irregular verbs resource snapshot #2 Irregular verbs resource snapshot #3 Verb tenses resource snapshot #1 Verb tenses resource snapshot #2

Lessons

This section will - eventually - contain a few sample lessons which I'll record, just to give people a clear idea of my teaching style. Please understand that teaching online is never the same as being in the same room with people, but anyway this is how we live so much of the time now and we have to get used to it. I think most of us understand that by now.

Resources

I decided to make these resources free for people to use, because I think potential students will get some idea of my general teaching style from looking at them, and also because they’re really not the kind of thing that I would really think of publishing at any time. Having said that you’re free to use them, I hope that it goes without saying that I will not be amused to find out that a fellow teacher has raided these resources and claimed them as their own. That would not be cool, of course, and if I find out such a thing please be sure that I’ll be coming after you.

Anyway, here it all is. Of course I have produced much more material than this over the years, but most of it is very specific to certain areas of grammar, or complementary to textbooks which I was using at the time, and there’s really not any point, as far as I can see, in putting any of that online. What you see here are a few very general useful bits and pieces which I’ve produced.

IELTS

I spent two or three years teaching IELTS pretty much non-stop at the last school where I worked in London (by the name of Kaplan), so I did find myself producing some general materials which I thought summed up a few things that some of the textbooks didn’t seem to have thought to do. The following link takes you to a PDF of some general notes that I made about things to think about when writing an answer to the notorious Part 1 of the IELTS writing exam, which is only 40% of 25% of the total mark, but which always seems to take up a lot more time than that! The idea of these notes was just to look at a few example questions, think about the language that would be useful there, and to generalise a bit from there. Bear in mind, please, that this text was written several years ago, and may not reflect any changes to the exam at the time you look at it. If that comes to my attention, I’ll get round to updating it some time The general idea of it should be about right, though.

General English

This is all grammar. Maybe one of these days I’ll create something about vocabulary, phrasal verbs, idioms or collocations, but I think that that is all covered in many places. There are lots of perfectly fine books that you can find on all those subjects. I’m just filling in some gaps here, which I have never seen covered in grammar books, or in the grammar section of textbooks.

Firstly, every single English language textbook (from intermediate level onwards at least) has a page – normally at the back – with a list of irregular verbs. They’re always listed in alphabetical order, which is fine of course as a quick reference; but what if you want to learn those irregular forms in some kind of systematic way? My idea here was to put the irregular verbs into groups that are similar to each other. For example: sing/sang/sung, begin/began/begun, sink/sank/sunk, etc. – these all share an obvious enough pattern, where the vowel changes from “i” to “a” to “u”. That’s a simple one, but some of them are a bit more subtle, and require a bit more thought. Of course this won’t be the magic bullet which will enable you to learn the irregular verbs and use them perfectly. The only way to do that, like everything else, is to read, write, speak and listen to them in context, along with all the other things that you need to learn. But maybe this can help some of you to understand the patterns a little bit more.

There are two versions available here. One of them is simpler and more accessible for people at lower levels, and the other has a bit more detail, and is therefore suitable for those at a higher level.

The other thing that I’ve always found to be missing in the textbooks was some kind of schematisation of those English tenses. Like every other native speaker, I had no idea that there are TWELVE tenses, and once I had got my own head around them all, and the quirks of their usage, I started setting them out in a grid, the way you see in these two PDFs.

What I’ve done here is to place the simple time (the tense, in the simplest sense) – past, present and future – on the horizontal axis of the grid. On the other (vertical) axis, I put the confusing stuff – the aspect. There are four of these – simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous. In each box of the grid there are examples of the different possible usages of the verb in that particular tense. There are quite a few options for some of them! Of course this means that the content is very dense, and for sure in the case of the first sheet, showing all the active forms of the verb, you’ll want to print it out in A3 and not A4 (if you plan to do so). Here it is:

The second table here is the equivalent, but with passive forms. The basic rule is that the passive is only used with eight of the twelve, and for the remaining four we would normally find a different way to express ourselves. However, that doesn’t mean you will never ever see or hear those four used in the passive. For example, I recently heard someone that I used to know talking on the radio, and she used a present perfect continuous passive form. Of course it sounded pretty ugly, and it’s not really recommended, but the fact that you can hear a native speaker using it means that it does indeed exist. Also, as stated in the PDF, if you exchange the auxiliary “be” with “get”, it really is possible to create a passive form in those remaining four tenses. It doesn’t exactly have the same nuance, admittedly, but I didn’t have space to go into nuances!

Recommendations

Everyone here - apart from one very special and unusual case - is someone that I've had in my classroom or someone that I've taught privately. I've chosen to list them chronologically, just because that makes it easier to present some kind of a narrative.

Anna

Anna 🇧🇷

I studied with Chris many years ago, in London. He was the best teacher I ever had: gentle, qualified, friendly and funny. It was amazing when I entered the classroom and, as soon as he knew I was Brazilian, he looked at me and said: "Saudade". Yes, Chris, knew a little bit about my country and my language. Later, I realized that he loves culture, politics, history, art and he knows a lot about everything he loves. We became friends and I’m still learning a lot with him.

Saudades, Chris

Should I take the opportunity to teach people what saudade means? If you've learned even a tiny bit of Portuguese you probably know it. It's all about nostalgia, longing and affection, but for sure it's more complicated than that. I don't remember greeting Anna with that word, but I suppose I could say saudade for that memory. Anna was in the class when I taught advanced English for the first time. Of course that's kind of a difficult gig, because you feel the pressure to know everything, so I was quite nervous. Anna was the member of that class who made it OK 👍🏼

Tolga

Tolga 🇹🇷

Working with Chris abi has truly been a special experience for me. Feeling that he is always there for me, understanding my situation, and supporting me with patience gave me a lot of strength. Even in the moments I struggled, he never let me give up. With his passion for education and the value he gives to his students, having someone like him by my side is a great blessing. Learning became not just a duty, but a journey we enjoyed together.

I should clarify something here! Tolga was never actually in my class at the school, Oxford House College, where I was teaching and he was studying. I was teaching a friend of his, and thereby I met Tolga. Apparently he liked me so much that despite the lack of official teacher-student relationship, it kind of ended up that way. I suppose I must have taught him a few things in the pub on Friday nights, when we would take beer🍻 (that's a little joke between him and me - ask me to explain if you're interested), and certainly I've been very patiently teaching him in our frequent online conversations since then!

Ania

Ania 🇵🇱

I had the pleasure of being Chris’s student a few years ago in London. He was the best teacher I’ve ever had. Before that, I had been learning English in Poland for several – maybe even over ten – years, and during all that time I didn’t learn as much as I did in just one year with Chris.

Chris had a way of speaking that made me always understand him and feel understood, even when he used words I didn’t know. You could talk to him about absolutely anything, and he always had something interesting to say. He was able to quickly and clearly notice and correct mistakes in a very approachable way.

What’s more, the atmosphere during lessons was relaxed and friendly. The exercises were engaging and fun.

His passion for the English language was evident in every class, and the way he taught made learning not only effective but also genuinely enjoyable. It was never boring – every lesson was interesting, well-structured, and engaging.

The level was very high, yet it never felt overwhelming or too difficult.

Wow, dziękuję Aniu 🙏🏼

As I just reminded Ania, it's more than just "a few" years ago now. So long that neither of us can remember exactly which year that was. 2014 or 2015, but I don't really know, honestly. The main thing that I remember from that period is that I was permatired (a neologism coined by a colleague - "permanently tired"), because I was teaching in the mornings, starting at 9, and not getting home until about 10pm, as I was teaching Ania's evening class until 8:30. For that reason I'm kind of amazed that I was communicating so much "passion", as she says!

I did actually visit Ania a year or so later, in Warsaw, and of course it would be great to repeat that (but only AFTER this website is finished!). I just told her my mad idea about cycling from Warsaw to Tallinn. It's a long way, but pretty flat, so maaaaaybe I'll do it one day, as long as Vladimir Vladimirovich doesn't attack the Suwałki Gap first!

Zeynep

Zeynep 🇹🇷

I was lucky to have Chris as my English teacher right after moving to a new country with no knowledge of the language. He made learning fun and genuinely cared about us — not just our studies, but our lives too. He was interested in our culture and music, which made lessons feel personal and kept us engaged. He even wrote a letter to my dad to let him know how I was doing as a student, which meant a lot to me and my family. Thanks to his support, I not only enjoyed learning English Language in his class, but also felt at home with the culture. He had a huge impact on how I see both life in the UK and the English language. itself, and I’ll always be grateful for the warmth and encouragement he gave during such an important time in my life.

Soon after she sent me this text, Zeynep told me that she was refreshing the screen to see what I was going to write in reply. Here we go...

Barış Manço - Nane, Limon Kabuğu

I'm a big fan of Turkish music in general, and since it's on several of my playlists, I've been hearing this song at quite regular intervals since Zeynep introduced me to it. The translation of the title is "Mint, Lemon Rind", and as far as I remember from what Zeynep told me, it's a pretty simple song about making a strong cup (or, rather, a *glass 🇹🇷) of tea for someone with a cold. I don't really know why Zeynep told me about this song - I suppose maybe one of us had a cold, but can't remember that detail. More than anything I guess she was probably just feeling nostalgic about home. She told me about how her mum used to play that song when she was making her some strong tea to clear her head from a heavy cold. Part of the reason that I'm so fond of this particular song myself is that the version which I found on Spotify is a live performance to a Japanese audience. For the first two or three minutes, in order to get the famously shy Japanese to join in with the song, Manço does a very cute and funny Turku-go One Point Lesson (very very Japanese English - a quick and simple lesson in Turkish). So while Zeynep was feeling nostalgic for home, I also got taken back to the country where I had spent three very formative years, sometimes very lonely but always very influential upon me nonetheless.

Zeynep says that she had no knowledge of the language when she first got here, but I remember that she was like a sponge, absorbing the learning incredibly quickly. I've not seen many who learned so fast. Now of course she has now been settled for a substantial period in the UK. She's got a husband, a baby, AND a flourishing career. She can even understand SCOUSE😱 It's good to know that she's been successful with settling - never easy for anyone - and that she still goes back home from time to time for a sip of that special tea 😉🍵

Hasan

Hasan 🇹🇷

I studied with Chris about 8 years ago, but I still haven’t forgotten him. He was such a special and talented teacher. What touched me most was how passionate he was about teaching and how much he cared about his students. He always showed interest in our cultures and languages, and sometimes he would pick up little details from our own language and bring them into the lesson. That made learning not only enjoyable, but also very personal and meaningful. For me, Chris was more than just a teacher — he was someone who made the journey of learning unforgettable.

In 2016-17 I taught on and off in a small school in Leeds (that's in the North of England, if you don't know where that is). The school was owned by a Turkish guy, and guess what - most (well, at least half) of the students were Turkish. It was a funny little place, as it was also a kind of refuge for people who had fled Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's ever more authoritarian régime.

Hasan was one such case. He had been through, and was still going through some pretty crazy times when he arrived in Leeds. It's far too long a story to elaborate here, and anyway that's for him to tell, not me. Hasan contributed to one of my most iconic moments in a classroom. That's what he's referring to when he mentions the "little details from our own language". Turkish grammar is of course completely different from English, so it's very common to get into big grammatical tangles. And when Hasan one day was praising his landlady in Leeds, he said something like "She knows every country's people's food they like". I can't remember exactly, and maybe he can correct me about that, but anyway it took me a couple of seconds to understand what he meant. Every problem is an opportunity, though, right? For the next fifteen/twenty minutes we had plenty of nerdy fun correcting that sentence, and analysing the grammar. You can see the result of that here. It's not my most beautifully drawn grammar diagram, but it's easily one of those that I remember most fondly.

Soon after that I went back to London for another three years, but saw Hasan once in the meantime. The last time I saw him was towards the end of the Covid period, back together with his family, after a long separation (again, that's his story to tell :~). Unfortunately this was just before he was moving away to Birmingham, and I haven't see him since. Hopefully it won't be too long from the time of writing these words!

Matteo

Matteo 🇮🇹

Chris has been more than a teacher since the first time we met, during an IELTS course at Kaplan, before I began university in 2019. I immediately noticed that, during his lessons, I was able to learn a method for the IELTS exam and, alongside, something interesting about different topics. He clearly showed his passion for teaching which is why I decided to start taking private lessons with him.

BEST DECISION EVER!

I discovered not only a good teacher but a truly kind person who quickly became a real friend with a very British sense of humour. I definitely wasn't the best student (one year before I couldn't even say a full sentence in English, so it wasn't easy for me) but he never gave up on me and he gave me a really personalized approach to teaching, understanding my difficulties connected with my native language. He continues to do that in our daily chats, because being a teacher is part of his soul.

Grazie Goppai! It's true that Matteo needed a lot of input from me! I wasn't worried about his ability to tackle the subject matter of IELTS writing questions, especially not the diagrams. He's a trained architect, and he's got a well-rounded world-view for someone of his age. What I really needed to do was to force him to re-read his writing, and to check his grammar thoroughly. It took a while to hammer that home. Only he can tell you if the message has got through by now 🤪

Misha

Misha 🇷🇺

I worked with Chris for approximately a year. I needed a tutor who would help me to prepare for the IELTS, which was required by my PhD program. The hardest part for me was writing, and Chris helped me A LOT with it. He checked my essays and shared his valuable feedback. We also worked on my writing in general (not in the context of IELTS), and Chris prepared a lot of interesting and challenging topics for me, which I enjoyed a lot. I would not have been able to progress that much without him, and during the exam, I felt very confident. I got a 7.5 as an average score and was very happy with my result. Thanks to Chris, I was able to fulfil my dream, and I’m living in the United States and very confident in my English!

As Misha says, we were working together for about a year. It was during the Covid times, so of course it’s not surprising if I tell you that it was all online. He was in Moscow, while I was initially in London and then back in Yorkshire. The strange part is that his life got thrown upside down by the events of 24/02/22, and he’s been all around the world since then, but we still haven’t met in person. One day we will, hopefully, when he’s not so busy. We did start doing a few lessons again once he finally got to the USA. It was fun while it lasted, but his working life was - and still is, alas - far too crazy to keep going.

Misha is very smart to start with, but he also worked very hard to get to 7.5 in IELTS. I guess my role was mainly to explain to him what was expected of him in that sometimes quite quirky exam, and to help him to broaden his general knowledge and world view. You have to be ready to be asked about anything in IELTS, so that was quite important. His speaking and listening were never going to be a problem, so my main focus was on improving the quality of his writing, both in terms of grammar and intellectual discipline, plus the open-mindedness to whatever question, text or task might be thrown at him.

Tina

Tina 🇺🇦

I have studied English with Chris for two years, and it has been an amazing experience. I’m a teacher too and it was pleasant to see how he worked with students. He knows how to connect with all kinds of students — young or old, beginners or advanced. His lessons are always interesting and full of energy. I have felt motivated and supported every step of the way. Thank you for your patience and passion for teaching. You have made learning English a real joy! I can see real noticeable progress in my English. I appreciate it, you’ve been a great help! Endless thanks to you! Tina

This brings us up to date, at the time of creating this website. Early in 2023 I got a job teaching Ukrainian refugees at Dnipro, the old Ukrainian association/cultural centre in Manchester. That lasted through to the end of that year, and Tina was a member of the second of the two classes that I taught there. After that finished, Tina and a few of the ladies asked me to keep on teaching them online. That lasted for another half-year or so, through to the autumn of 2024, when I started teaching at a new alternative place called Sunflower Manchester, a recently formed charity, much more refugee-focused than the old established Dnipro. Tina was also part of that class at Sunflower.

As Tina mentioned, she's a teacher as well. For the last six months she's been teaching history to the kids at the Dnipro cultural centre, and she started teaching me about the history of Ukraine and the Soviet Union almost as soon as I started teaching her English. She's very good at it, because she talks about it in a completely objective and unemotional way. It's normal and completely understandable that many Ukrainians tend to oversimplify things ("Russia BAD, very very BAD"), but that doesn't help an outsider to understand things. Tina has explained a lot of things to me, so the appreciation is entirely mutual!

Tina also makes amazing elderflower kvass. At the time of writing these words, I've just finished off the second bottle that she gave me a few weeks ago. I need to get on a train to Manchester soon 😋

Lessons

I'll record some sample lessons soon, for you to get a clearer idea of whether you will like me and my teaching. There's nothing here yet, though. I will need to organise it with some people. That's why, until then, you're only seeing this fake Latin filler text.

(Yes - if you're geeky enough to have seen the "Lorem ipsum...." stuff, and to know why it's used, it's not real Latin after all. It's actually obvious if you look at it properly, and if you've only ever studied a tiiiiiinnnnnny bit of Latin. See how I can't help being a teacher? :~)

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Quam optio omnis voluptatibus delectus molestiae veniam aut laudantium ullam labore? Earum tempora possimus iure quisquam eligendi facere delectus velit natus id. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Quam optio omnis voluptatibus delectus molestiae veniam aut laudantium ullam labore? Earum tempora possimus iure quisquam eligendi facere delectus velit natus id. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Quam optio omnis voluptatibus delectus molestiae veniam aut laudantium ullam labore? Earum tempora possimus iure quisquam eligendi facere delectus velit natus id.