About Me:
My name is Toby, and I come from Austria. I'm born in the countryside but live in Vienna at the moment.
My biggest hobby is traveling and getting to know people, their lifestyles, their languages, ... I traveled a lot, especially in eastern Europe where I also learned Serbocroatian. My favorite mode of transportation is hitchhiking, because it is so easy to get in contact with people. It is also how I learned some Turkish. I also traveled to India, Tanzania, Kenya and some countries in Western Europe.
Besides traveling I love Sports. I do a lot of Acro Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga.
I also play guitar and enjoy listening to Jazz, Reggae, Blues, Folk, World music, ...
About my qualification:
In general, languages fascinate me a lot, and I cannot stop learning new languages and alphabets. I love literature, as well, so I decided to do a BA in German Studies in 2013. During my studies, I got increasingly interested in teaching German and I started to volunteer once a week as a German teacher for refugees. After another two years, I completed a course on teaching German as a foreign language and attained a certificate. At the same time, I got employed by Diakonie Flüchtlingswerk and taught there for one year and some more month at another company called Ibis Acam. Both teaching experiences were very enriching. Now I also want to teach people of different backgrounds.
About my teaching style:
What my lessons will look like does highly depend on your expectations and aims. I have a lot of material for practice in speaking, listening, writing, and reading. Most of them are authentic materials which means they are not artificial but are really used that way in German-speaking countries. Do not be afraid of that. There are easy ways how to work with these materials right from the beginning without getting overstrained. It will rather improve your abilities to handle new languages in general.
It is very important to me that you have most of the speaking time. We will use German also as our main language of communication.