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About Birkenhead English

I believe that every student deserves good, clear, up to date advice for their TOEFL or IELTS preparation. I give my personal attention to every student who works with me and I do all that I can to help them succeed. That’s it. That’s my goal!

Birkenhead English is NOT a language school with layers of administrators and different teachers. It’s just me and my students.

I get to know my students. I learn about their strengths, weaknesses, backgrounds and personal challenges. From this, I help them to prepare for their exam with the tools and confidence to achieve their target scores.

Coming Soon...

In this video, I explain my approach to teaching TOEFL, and how my personalized support means you'll be ready to conquer TOEFL sooner.

About your Lessons

  • Your lessons are personalized
  • I use Zoom and allow you to record your lessons. That means you can review them as many times as you want to.
  • I share carefully prepared resources and organize everything to help you study effectively.
  • I allocate homework after every lesson and give lots of ideas for self-study.
  • I review everything you share with me and I give incredibly detailed feedback.
  • My combination of skills building, exam style practice, review and reinforcement will help you to achieve your target scores.

Learn more about TOEFL Lessons with Birkenhead English

  • I've been teaching English for 16 years, and I've taught in schools, colleges and workplaces. I've worked with big classes, small groups and individuals. Now, I teach exclusively online.
  • I've taught thousands of hours of lessons and helped hundreds of TOEFL and IELTS students achieve their target scores through my teaching methods
  • I have a Cert TESL teaching qualification from Algonquin College, and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Carleton University, both in Ottawa, Canada. I specialized in vocabulary research for my MA thesis.
  • I received the Award of Excellence in TESL from Algonquin College for my teaching performance.
  • While I studied for my MA, I was a classroom teaching assistant and I worked in the university's writing centre. I know a lot about academic writing.
  • I regularly practice exam questions (especially speaking!) and share my responses with my students.
  • I've created my own studying resources which I share exclusively with my students in lessons.
  • My TOEFL exam score was 120/120.

My Teaching Qualifications and Background

More About Me

  • English is my native language and I speak French and some German.
  • I live in rural Ontario, Canada where I like to spend as much time outdoors as I can.
  • My passions are gardening and cooking the food that I grow.
  • I'm creating a natural-style garden on my land and doing all that I can to help local wildlife.
  • I also enjoy exploring, especially hiking and cycling.
  • I'm a qualified accountant and I worked in the finance departments of large UK companies for many years.
  • My accounting training taught me to be focused, organized and have excellent attention to detail. These are all important qualities for an exams preparation teacher
  • I have a BSc degree in geology. I love talking about geology and can explain all the reading passages about it!

It's a big decision to choose a teacher to help you prepare for an important exam. You'll be spending a lot of time with that person so you need be comfortable working with them. You should feel that you can build a relationship with them, and be able to trust them.

Of course you should check your potential teacher's experience and qualifications, but quite often you'll know if a teacher is the right fit for you by considering their personality.

You can learn a lot about someone's personality by reading other people's descriptions of them.

From the first day you have given me confidence with your words, "I know how to help you, I know how to do it" and that is priceless for me.

I think that a coach that gives confidence to students is very important in this process because it's a long way. It's hard and some days are better than others, but people need someone else who helps them, who encourages them and gives them confidence to move forward.

Every time that I was down, you appeared on my screen with your big smile, saying that everything will be okay and you know how to fix that problem. And that gave me a lot of confidence.


One of the things that makes me happy about you is that you think about your students. I feel that you are all the time thinking of your students and worried about what is happening with them. Honestly I've never felt this with an online tutor, or with any of the professors I've had in my entire life.

For the first time in my years studying for this exam, I've not thought whether it is worth it to continue or pay more money. Yes, it's worth it!! I feel like I'm learning and I'm improving because your patience and your way of teaching is helping me to take the English language to another level.

Querenia, pharmacist

I took the TOEFL exam nine times in total. From attempts six to nine, I was just failing by one or two points and it was so frustrating.  

You helped me with writing and speaking. We studied writing first, for 2 months, then we switched to speaking and we practiced both skills together.

You taught me step by step. You found my mistakes and gave me feedback. I didn't know about my mistakes before but you gave me feedback so that I wouldn't repeat them.

I listened to your steps and I tried to do everything you told me. I love the way you teach and I wish I'd met you before!

When I studied with other teachers it was like, "Okay, just let me correct this one for you and that's it". They didn't give me the strategies of how to study. But you told me in the beginning, "Hasnaa, we will change the way you study". Well, it was worth it.

Hasnaa, pharmacist

What I love about you, well, I have a list that's never ending…I really like you because you're personable and you worry about your students.  

You are so clear and patient and you thought about my needs.

Not just in the time that we were together but you would keep on thinking. You weren't just, "OK, she paid me for an hour now, that's it, she's on her own." No, you were with me all the way until the very end and you don't find that every day.You've got to be so proud of yourself, seriously because you help people with their lives. You're not just a tutor.  

I could meet you in a video chat before deciding about lessons.

I love that you take time to get to know your students and understand their needs. That's wonderful.  

I love how organized you are, how prepared and how very professional.

I was never anxious thinking, "Oh my gosh, what's it going to happen?" I knew every lesson, at our time, you would be there. And we students need that because we have a lot of stress already going on.  

You helped me to make a study plan.

It made everything a lot clearer for me because I was losing interest. I was down and I didn't want to study anymore but, with my study plan, I had goals that I could accomplish every day.  

You taught me to take breaks.

That was important. Before I sat and studied non-stop maybe for 4 hours without getting up but you taught me that my brain needs a break. So, I started doing that and I realized when I came back, I was fresh again and could focus.

You really helped me with study resources.

I would spend hours trying to find things but you sent me a few links that I was able to go straight to and read all I needed.

That's why it's worth investing in a tutor like you because you have the tools. If I said, "I'm struggling with this", you would have a document with explanations and practice, and I didn't have to go all over the internet to find just one little thing. So, you have all the resources together for everything.

Hilda, bilingual teacher

I wish I had taken lessons with you earlier. It's important to have professional help. I had other people who were helping me before but teaching English is one thing, teaching for the TOEFL exam is completely another thing. I would 100% recommend you.

You understood my weak points and you took them very seriously from the beginning and yes you have been my salvation because I was trying to do it by myself but I needed a professional hand.

Irma, nurse

When I hear you speak about writing, you make it seem like it's fun! Speaking with you was eye-opening and very inspiring.

For the first time, someone has told me exactly what I'm supposed to do. I tried your technique and it worked. For the first time at the exam, the writing part was fun.

I imagined you were there writing with me. I built the paragraph the way you explained it and no one is better than you at explaining it.

I just hate writing, it's in my bones, but with remembering your words about what to do, I felt okay.

I have no idea how to explain it but you made a difference, a big difference.

Meriet, pharmacist

My other teachers didn't dig into the real problem like you did. You told me my real struggles with pronunciation and vocabulary.

You told me what kinds of things I needed to work on and I was very surprised about that and I feel like I was walking with a blindfold on my eyes.

Jeressy, bilingual teacher

I really enjoyed lessons with Jane. She's so nice and a very kind person - so patient.

She tries to speak as clearly as possible in English and that helped me a lot. She's an excellent teacher. You can learn a lot in just a lesson.

Diego, Engineer

Thank you for your help and everything that you've done for me because you helped me to pass this TOEFL. I finally did it and it was because of your help. Thank you so much for this journey.Javad, Pharmacist

Working with Jane was really great and it helped me a lot. She provided support by giving me advice on how to improve myself and giving me access to exercises.

Her insight into the test itself and how to tackle the different tasks made me feel well prepared and less nervous.

Philipp, MSc student

Interested in Lessons?

CONTACT ME

Ask me any questions you have about TOEFL and IELTS lessons.

I also offer a free, 30 minute video consultation for all students who are seriously interested in lessons. Contact me to find out more.