About
I spent fifteen years deciding what a band is worth.
Who I am
I'm Richmond, a Canadian who has taught English for twenty years and worked with exam candidates for eighteen of them.
For fifteen of those years I was an IELTS examiner. That's the part that matters most to you, and it's worth being precise about what it means: I wasn't studying the marking criteria from the outside. I was applying them, repeatedly, to real candidates, for fifteen years. I know how a script gets read, where the band boundaries actually sit, and how often the difference between two bands is something small, fixable, and completely invisible to the person who wrote it.
I've taught IELTS and CELPIP throughout that time, to students in 40 countries, at every level and every kind of deadline — three months, three weeks, and occasionally three days.
How I work
- I find the problem fast.
- Most students who are stuck aren't weak everywhere. They're losing marks in one or two specific places. Finding those quickly is most of the job.
- I tell you plainly.
- You'll know what's costing you marks, why, and what to do about it. Not “work on your grammar.” The actual thing.
- I give you a structure.
- A plan built around your test date and your gap, not a generic syllabus. If your date is unrealistic, I'll say so. You'd rather hear it from me than from your score report.
- I'll push you, and I'll encourage you.
- Most people arrive at a language exam carrying some fear, and that fear is usually costing them more marks than their English is. Removing it is part of the job.
Why CELPIP and IELTS General
Both convert to CLB levels, and CLB is what your immigration application actually runs on. Most teachers specialise in one test. I teach both — which means I can also answer the question people ask me first: which one should I take?
That question is worth more than it looks. Two CLB levels can swing your CRS score by well over a hundred points — CLB 9 across all four abilities is what unlocks the maximum skill-transferability bonuses tied to your education and work experience, and going higher adds no more.
What I'm not
I'm not an app and I'm not an AI marking service. Several of those now exist and some are useful. What none of them can do is look at your Task 2 and tell you that the reason you've been stuck at CLB 7 for a year is a habit carried over from your first language that nobody has ever named for you.
That's the part I do.
What students say
I've been teaching online since 2018 and have well over a hundred student reviews. What comes up most often is that I find weaknesses quickly, that lessons are prepared and structured, and that people stop being afraid of the exam.