My Story
Oxford, UK
I finished my A-Levels in 1996 and went to Oxford, England right after. I was already really good at languages and wanted to fully experience living in another country and dive deep into the English language. Having been able to live in England as a young adult has been one of the most gratifying experiences of my life to this day.
English and German Language Studies
I wanted to take my life to the next level by studying both languages at university. I wanted to explore both its cultural texts and more importantly its grammatical, phonetic and vocabulary developments. Taking these courses at the Schiller University of Jena/Germany created the extensive foundation of my knowledge for both languages that I still apply to this day.
Work-Life begins
In September 2000 I taught English to adults for the very first time. It didn't take long for me to realize that I really, really love teaching! My dad was a teacher, too and maybe I inherited his teaching gene? I quickly knew that teaching adults was my life-blood, because I love the interaction with my students and seeing the aha-moments on their happy faces.
After my studies I started working as an English teacher full-time. I worked for private individuals, small and big language institutes, many different companies as well as the university I studied at.
I help my students increase their vocabulary, fine-tuning their listening skills, improve their speaking skills, help them get better at writing so that their interaction with people from all around the world is easier and more successful.
CELTA Certificate (University of Cambridge)
In 2011 I decided to start teaching students from outside of Germany, which meant I needed to broaden my teaching skills. This course provided me with all the necessary tools to teach English to Non-German native speakers as well.
My Institute is Born!
The pandemic put a stop to my first 20 years of in-person teaching. All my classes were cancelled in March of 2020 and I was stuck in quarantine just like everybody else. But instead of sinking into the couch I thought: this is my chance to create my very own courses and founded my own language institute. And so “Okon Institute Global” was born.
In all my years of teaching I noticed that my students struggled with very similar problems and I wanted to create new courses that helped my students overcome those specific issues: I wanted to offer memory training, a course on “perfection and language learning”, a course for increasing the ability to focus, and on why you need to be motivated in order to learn a language. I wanted to offer a course on improving listening skills, increasing specific topics like socializing and last but not least my favourite: teaching grammar in the simplest way possible.
23 years of teaching experience and thousands of students later, I am now going my own way and I love every minute of it. Learning a language should be fun. If it’s not, it’s torture and it can destroy your confidence. It is incredibly important to me to make teaching English as fun as possible while showing my students the inner workings of the English language.
I cannot wait to see you in one of my classes!
🙂