First Week as a New HLI Teacher with Leigh from East Sussex, UK

One of our newly recruited tutors Leigh Limbrick in East Sussex, UK, recently hosted his first Home Language International student. Leigh is an experienced EFL Teacher and also an avid musician, who now focuses on providing home-stay tuition. He thoroughly enjoyed hosting his first student.

This is how Leigh described his first week as a Home Language International host and tutor:

The first week went really well with our French student Max who stayed with us at our home in East Sussex. Max is an elementary student, and considering the challenges he faced in trying to speak English, did very well indeed. He is a polite, well-mannered boy, and as you can imagine, this made the week go smoothly.

He arrived on the Sunday, and was very tired after travelling all day, so went to bed early as he got to the house late in the evening. Our routine each day would be to have breakfast at 8 am, study for a couple of hours, have lunch and then go out and visit somewhere in the car. We’d then come home for dinner, relax in the evenings and watch movies. The trip out in the car would either be to go sightseeing, a trip into Brighton, or for a swim at the local pool.

I kept the lessons as simple as I could due to the fact that he is an elementary student, helping him with areas of grammar he knew before, while gently introducing some new language. He would write down any new vocabulary and areas of the language learned, so that he could refer to what he had written during conversations and mealtimes, and throughout his stay.

A couple of highlights of the week were visits to The Brighton Museum, and also Brighton Pavilion. He wasn’t so interested in shopping, so we walked along the seafront with our dog Biscuit, who he loved. 

Leigh and his family did a great job with Max who rated his stay as very satisfying and made good progress in English. They are really happy to welcome new students to stay and learn with them and are looking forward to a busy summer season.

Thanks a lot, Leigh, for taking such good care of Max!