• Undergrad:

  University of Kansas

• Grad 1:

  Masters, Indiana University, Bloomington

• Grad 2:

  Enrolled, Indiana University, Bloomington

• Tutors Out Of:

  Bloomington, IN

• Travel Radius:

  20 miles

• Tutoring Certifications:

  American history - English - ESL/ESOL - German - government & politics - literature - proofreading - reading - writing

• Tutor's Fee Per Hour:

  $45.00 * with a 10% discount after purchasing $360

Hi!

My name is Ira Allen, and I'm a freelance writer, editor and tutor. Currently, I'm living in Paris, but I'll be moving in mid-February back to Austin, TX. Alongside tutoring, I do a variety of freelance projects both here and online. These range from translation (German->English, for university presses and private clients alike) to editing (academic copy-editing through developmental fiction editing) to journalism (writing for the Canadian Medical Association Journal).

I do have an MA in English and the various career things that go with that, and I've also spent several years doing both light journalism and technical writing. Truth be told, though, editing and tutoring have been my real mainstays over the years. I like sitting down with people (actually together, or over the phone, or online) and thinking together about how to coax a more effective message out of a piece of writing (or how to read more effectively).

As a teacher of writing, literature, and U.S. government and history at universities in the States and Germany, I've had the opportunity to develop a wide range of professional knowledge, but the reason I love tutoring is that--at the end of the day--it's not really about me and my knowledge (though this ad obviously is :-)).

In my experience of it, tutoring is about thinking together, working through difficult ideas or thorny problems in a collaborative kind of way.

So, if you're looking for a thinking partner (who knows his stuff, but also knows that there's more to the picture than that), I hope you'll get in touch!

Best,

Ira

Email this tutor in Bloomington, IN!

• ESL/ESOL

  I've taught ESL/EFL to a wide range of students in France and Germany, working with the Amerikanisches Sprachinstitut in Stuttgart, Germany and the Kiwi Conversation Club in Paris, France. The lessons I've offered have covered a broad spectrum of content: everything from Technical English for factory apprentices in their late teens to Business English for marketing professional for the Stuttgart region. Additionally, I have several years experience as a university instructor of Composition, Literature and Cultural Studies, one year of that at the Universitaet Stuttgart in Germany. I've also been fortunate to have the experience of working one-on-one with many non-native writers of English at the excellent writing center at the University of Kansas (where I did my BA) and Indiana University (where I did my MA and am a doctoral candidate). Having grown up myself in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia) and having also lived abroad as an adult, I try to be particularly sensitive to the challenges--and, yes, the joys!--of learning a foreign language in a sometimes unfamiliar cultural environment. I look forward to helping more learners of English negotiate this maddening, beautiful, quirky, useful language! :-)

• proofreading

  Having worked for a number of years as a professional editor and proofreader for a range of private and institutional clients, I am comfortable working with writing at all levels. Different levels of proofreading and editing, of course, come at different proces.