English information
Welcome to Taalbureau Busstra!
Healthy ageing
In a world that is ageing rapidly, it is becoming increasingly important to find solutions to prevent cognitive decline and, instead, to age healthily. Research has shown that staying cognitively active through learning a new skill can aid in delaying the onset of degenerative diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. Learning a new language is one such complex skill that can retain normal cognitive function for longer.
Teaching older adults
For Dutch people, English is a very common language that they encounter every day. However, older adults tend to have received little to no education in this language. Moreover, this population is often overlooked in terms of course design and teaching methods. That is why I have designed a course geared towards adults from the age of 50 to about 80 years old. I use a communicative method that consists of authentic input only, thereby mainly focusing on improving speaking proficiency. Given that there are few existing methods that are created for older adults specifically, I designed all course materials myself.
Experience
During my MA in Applied Linguistics – Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the University of Groningen (UG; the Netherlands) and my internship with Dr Merel Keijzer, I gained experience designing materials and teaching the population that I
now still teach. I am also a member of the Bilingualism and Aging Lab (BALAB) at the same university, but I should note that the courses I teach at Taalbureau Busstra are in no way affiliated with the UG and/or the BALAB.
Please watch the video below if you would like to learn more about me.
Tutoring
Apart from teaching beginner and intermediate ESL courses to small groups of older adults, I also tutor pupils in secondary education. Besides that, I help university students who struggle with giving presentations in English, writing English papers in academic English, or understanding their often entirely English curriculum.
Please contact me for any questions or enquiries at:
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: +31 6 11 37 91 77
Instagram: Taalbureau Busstra
Introduction video
Get to know me better in the video below!
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