Rebecca

I grew up in Essex and completed my secondary education at St John Payne school. Here I achieved A* grades at A-Level in English Literature, Maths, French, Spanish, and Critical Thinking as well as an A* for my EPQ on Historical Linguistics. I then pursued my passion for languages as a student of French & Spanish at Hertford College, Oxford, where I took a particular interest in the study of modern French and Spanish-language Latin American literature.

As part of my degree I spent a year abroad working in Normandy (France) and Vigo (Spain). The new and exciting experiences I had during this time opened my eyes to unique ways of seeing the world and so immediately after graduating from university I took up a position as a Professional Tutor with Keystone, keen to share the rewards of original ways of thinking with students through tutoring.

After an incredibly rewarding 2 years as a Professional Tutor, I moved to Madrid in 2019 and completed a Masters Degree in Literary Translation into Spanish. I moved back to the UK in June 2021 and continue to tutor on a purely online basis.

My personal tutoring philosophy hinges on active learning. To this end, I aim to guide students in reaching solutions themselves rather than spoon-feeding them answers and ideas. In my experience, this results in more profound understanding and far greater long-term learning and is well worth the initial extra effort in order to establish a solid fundamental grasp of the topic at hand.

This also allows for specific areas of difficulty to come to light so that they can be targeted directly in highly-tailored tutoring sessions which take the student’s individual learning style and goals into account. No two students are the same, and personalising my tutoring approach accordingly proves to be far more successful and rewarding.

I believe in the power of positive reinforcement and always aim to instil in my students the idea that learning and studying are not chores which must be completed by rote, but rather opportunities to discover something new, be it facts about the world, new skills, or even new perspectives on familiar topics.

Football is also a huge part of my life and more often than not I can be found on the pitch. If I’m not playing, I’m probably going to see women’s matches or doing painstaking research for my Fantasy Football team.

I also work as a translator and, in my spare time, love to bake any and all kinds of bread and am currently teaching myself Norwegian.