Hello!
My name is Ben and I've spent the past 8 years as a freelance translator and interpreter in New York. Because of my academic background in Linguistics, I love to tutor both ESL and Japanese in my spare time.
After attending some middle school and university in Japan, I spent the bulk of my 20s working in publishing and PR in Tokyo. Back in New York, I use my Japanese skills on a daily basis for work and leisure. Because Japan has given so much to me, I love to both share this...
Hello!
My name is Ben and I've spent the past 8 years as a freelance translator and interpreter in New York. Because of my academic background in Linguistics, I love to tutor both ESL and Japanese in my spare time.
After attending some middle school and university in Japan, I spent the bulk of my 20s working in publishing and PR in Tokyo. Back in New York, I use my Japanese skills on a daily basis for work and leisure. Because Japan has given so much to me, I love to both share this enthusiasm with other potential Japanese students, as well as teach ESL to help others adapt to their new lives in the US.
My tutoring rate is $30/hr for English and $40/hr for Japanese. One hour with me equals about an hour of a college class. Most of my Japanese students can comfortably pass Levels 3-5 of the JLPT with 60-100 hours of study with me, and several pass JLPT2 after 100-120 hours with me.
Japanese: I love to use textbooks as a backbone for tutoring (primarily Genki, Minna no Nihongo, Situational Functional Japanese, and Tobira) while incorporating real-life materials like manga and magazine/newspaper articles.
ESL: I love the Betty Azar textbook series and heavily emphasize speaking practice and grammar while assigning written homework from textbooks. On average, my ESL students tend to improve their TOEIC scores by 10 points for each hour spent with me.
My first lesson is always free, and I'm always happy to answer any questions about language/linguistics via email. If you're interested, please feel free to reach out!
