The short version 

Karenne is a certified TESOL trainer of English and currently works as a freelancer in Stuttgart, Germany.  She is sole proprietor of Kalinago English.  At the moment she is working with students in the financial/banking, energy, engineering and IT sectors.

She is the author of SimplyConversations^TM and also presents teacher training workshops on using technology in the classroom.  Karenne recently completed a course to become an intercultural trainer through LTS.

The medium-length version, in my own words

I was born in Grenada and grew up in Antigua, (islands in the Caribbean).  High school was in Michigan, USA. 

At 18, I left for England and worked for a wine importer whilst studying Wine for four years at the same time – up to diploma level (Wine&Spirit Education Trust), as well as doing a course in Freelance Journalism (City University). I had my first article published when I was 19  for a popular international magazine of the time (Harpers&Queen).

A job offer for a vineyard in Oz in '93 appealed and I excitedly left London with a stop-over in Thailand – however this led to the abandonment of any normal kind of life – the travel bug bit, and hard.   

After landing in Perth I changed my mind about working and I traversed the Australian continent as a backpacker, picking up great seasonal jobs including deckhand/hostess/cook on a 64ft ketch, The Madison.

Later on, I visited Uluru then flew to Indonesia where I hitched, ferried and bused my way through volcanoes and jungle, met and chatted with people who couldn't speak my language on beaches in Java and Malaysia, then ended up back in Thailand where I was robbed badly. 

Although I had barely enough money to survive on and definitely not enough to get back to Europe, I managed to scrap together some funds to hop on a plane going to Hong Kong where the only work available was secretarial or barwork. 

But it was this unfortunate series of events that led me to the one job I could really fall in love with: I became an English language teacher.

Whilst in HK I taught and worked as the Director of a charity, Summerbridge Hong Kong (which recruited teens and young adults to teach underprivileged youngsters) and I wrote various short stories and articles.

Returned to the UK in 1997 after the handover and did the Trinity College TESOL certificate and left again, this time for South America.

In Ecuador, in 2002, I  became DOS (Director of Studies) of the English department at EIL, the Experiment in International Living.  EIL is a subsidiary of World Learning, an excellent non-profit global organization with a strong focus on the community and 75 years of intercultural experience.

I also trained teachers (Ecuadorian and native EFL teachers) on behalf of the Fulbright/US Dept. of State, Libridic/Merriam-Webster dictionaries and the British School.

Today I live in Stuttgart, Germany which I absolutely love - it's a beautiful city, so organized and efficient.  The people are wonderful, friendly and interesting. Actually they never really understand why I'm so comfortable here - but well, it's a very calm existence after all the adventures and I feel relaxed enough to enter this new adventure: my own website.

I work here as a freelance teacher and I also present teacher training workshops (Using New Media & Technology, SimplySpeaking are the latest).  I'm also a qualified TELC oral examiner B1/B2 and recently trained to become an intercultural trainer through LTS.

Aside from making the materials and filling in the content on this website, I've just finished working on a project with a language institute, Didactica, in Esslingen rewriting their audio materials (Superlearning) and in 2007 I worked on a German animation short film, CityAnimals, as their English script consultant.

My hobbies include writing (screenplays as well as ESL materials and I run a writers’ group), reading (non-fiction mostly), surfing the internet (falling down the Alice-in-Wonderland tunnel holes of time), creating collages, walking (completed the Camino de Santiago Sept 2007), hanging out with friends, drinking Chai tea soya lattes and I’m also occasionally involved in political, environmental and various charity-oriented activities.

My teaching philosophy is:    Give students what they need, disguised as what they want.

My life philosophy is:           Learn as much as you can. Be good and give back as much as you get.

The really really long version

If you would like a copy of my curriculum vitae, references and/or feedback from my teacher training sessions, please don't hesitate to contact me.


Also, I'm on Xing - so don't hesitate to network with me there.