Learn english in the United Kingdom with Nicola

United Kingdom
Londres
English
From 650 € / week
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Meet your host family: Nicola in United Kingdom

Stay in Sydenham, London with Nicola's Family

I worked as a geo-environmental engineer before becoming a full-time mum to my three children. My family moved to Germany when I was 10, and so I learned German in my teens and enjoyed visiting Germany in the (boarding) school holidays, and I spent my gap year working in Germany before I went to study Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. I am passionate about offering my home and teaching abilities to a student wanting to improve their English in a family homestay and full immersion environment, whatever their age!

I have learnt a lot about education while raising my family. I even home-educated two of my children for two years. Recently, I have been working as a teaching assistant in local primary schools and volunteering at my daughter's democratic school, where I help in the forest school and with reading practice. I very much enjoy working with young people and I prefer teaching one-on-one or in small groups, rather than as a class teacher. In fact, I plan to train as a Montessori teacher, studying part-time over the next few years.

My husband, Michael, is a Chartered (Electrical) Engineer who works as a consulting engineer in the building industry and is currently working at The Palace of Westminster (Parliament). He works from home for the majority of the week. Our eldest 20-year-old son, Zak, is undertaking a 4-year degree apprenticeship program with Dyson and so no longer lives at home. Our second son (17y), Eddie, has left school and is undertaking a 3-year apprenticeship locally in vehicle maintenance to follow his passion of restoring and maintaining classic cars. Eddie also loves music and plays electric guitar. Our daughter, Luci (14y), is dyslexic and attends a pioneering new school called 'The New School'! She loves to draw, create art and cook, and she plays in a netball team weekly with her friends. Luci is learning German with an online tutor because languages are not offered at her school.

  • Houseold:
  • NICOLA (Mother )
  • Michael (Father )
  • Lucia (Child • 14 ans)
  • Edward (Child • 16 ans)
Max number of hosts at the same time:
2 people
  • Reception:
  • 10-18 years old (girl - boy)
  • 18-25 years old (girl - boy)
  • Adults (woman - man)
  • Seniors (woman - man)
  • Couples
  • Groups and families

In general, the homestay shall be booked in blocks of 1 week, with arrivals happening on a Sunday (after 12 noon), and departures happening on a Saturday (by 4 pm). In certain circumstances, it might be possible to vary the above and change the arrival and departure days. This can be discussed, and a suitable price reduction or increase can be agreed upon between us.

Please consider booking additional activities and services to make the most of your homestay experience. A nice balance between at-home 1:1 lessons and/or general activities and cultural trips in the local area and/or London will ensure the student does not get bored or miss their family too much!

You will never be sharing the guest bedroom with a person you don’t know. The homestays are either for a single student, or 2 booked together (either as friends or family members, and assuming that they are mature enough to commit to not speaking in native language to one another).

The guest room is located on the top floor and has a bunk bed (providing 2 single beds), so we can accommodate 2 students (as friends or family members). The guest bedroom has views towards Crystal Palace and central London and is just over 3m by 3m in size. It is next to our son Eddie’s bedroom and the 2nd bathroom (containing a shower over a bath). We have a moderately sized front and back garden with grass and we are situated on a relatively quiet residential street at the top of a small hill.

The house is located in Sydenham, which lies in southeast London, and we are well-connected to all of London by buses and a various train stations. There plenty of small independent shops and cafes along the high street, and there are several attractive London parks nearby, such as Mayow Park, Wells Park, Crystal Palace Park, Dulwich Park, Beckenham Place Park, as well as the tranquil Sydenham Hill Woods. The Horniman Museum & Gardens in Forest Hill is a family-friendly, free-to-enter attraction, within walking distance from our home. This much loved attraction offers various anthropology, natural history, and musical instrument galleries, and features a butterfly house, a small aquarium and beautiful, expansive gardens to explore.

Proposed activities:

Your English immersion experience :
A typical day with us

On a work or school day the children leave the house between 7.30-8am, but my husband is usually working from home. If the language student is having lessons with me, then we would normally undertake these starting at 9am, after breakfast. I give 1 hour lessons in the guest bedroom at the large desk, and we break in between each lesson, and also for a home-made lunch. If outings to London or the local area have been booked we usually undertake these in the afternoons, so that I can cook and serve a family dinner every evening between about 6 and 8pm, depending upon everyone's schedules. I tend to cook broadly vegetarian meals, but not all family members are vegetarian so we do sometimes serve meat and we all eat fish.

In their free time and at the weekends, the student is free to explore the surrounding area and visit central London by themselves (if old enough), or accompanied by me as an outing, whichever they prefer.

On Monday evenings I sing in a choir at a local church and on Saturday mornings I often do Parkrun (a free timed 5km run) in Crystal Palace Park. The student is most welcome to join me at these two activities if they would be interested. Other free activities available for the student to choose from are walking our dog (if confident to do so), playing on our electric piano or our guitar, doing some arts and crafts at the kitchen table or borrowing a board game or pack of cards to play solo. We have a large TV in the lounge with Netflix available and a selection of DVDs to choose from.

  • Room shared with Eddie and Luci
  • Pets and animals:
    Medium sized dog, a Boston Terrier (11y)
  • Nearest public transport stop:
    Sydenham station (or bus stops) 4 min walk.

Paid options organized by the family

Examples of ‘at-home’ general activities: cooking or baking together, conversation and debates, board games and/or card games, games in the garden, planning and discussing outings/theatre trips, watching a film together with subtitles, etc.

Examples of ‘general activities’ in the local area (to include all associated expenses): shopping trips locally, visit to a local park or nature reserve, a cinema or local theatre trip, visiting the Horniman Museum and Gardens, going swimming or indoor climbing, ice skating, a local festival or community event, cycle hire or rowing/paddle boat hire in a park, bowling, etc.

Examples of ‘Major London attractions’ (with high entrance fees): The London Eye, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, St Paul’s Cathedral, The Palace of Westminster, Madame Tussauds, The London Aquarium, The Tower of London, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Thames River Boat trip, Open-top tourist bus trip, Greenwich Observatory, Royal Naval College in Greenwich, Eltham Palace, London cinema, theatre/dance show or concert (if ticket price is high), etc.

Examples of London tourist attraction outings (with free or low cost entrance fees): The British Museum, The V&A, Natural History Museum, Science Museum, Design Museum, Tate Modern, National Gallery, Covent Garden, Camden Market, The Queen’s House and National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, walking tours in London, The Design Museum, shopping on Oxford Street, London cinema, theatre/dance show or concert, etc.

Please note that for London outings the journey time to the different venues and attractions are generally somewhere between 40 and 60 minutes each way. We would normally travel by public transport, although we do have a car to use if public transport options are not so good.

Please note that the price for providing a special diet (besides vegetarian) or hosting a student with special needs (such as dyslexia, ADHD, a speech or sight impediment, etc.) will be a weekly price.

For the case of a younger or particularly nervous child, and because we have bunk beds in the guest room, it is possible to book a return transfer (to an airport or St Pancras Station), but actually for the parent to bring the child in person to the house and stay the first night with them (with full board provided to the parent also). The return transfer shall be made by me accompanying the child to the airport or St Pancras Station.
Although I am not a certified English language teacher, I hold a Master’s Degree in Engineering, am a native speaker of English, and I am currently self-studying online for the 150 hours Advanced TEFL Course by TEFL UK.

In the summer and autumn of 2024, I hosted 4 French teenagers (aged between 15 and 18 years) for a combined total of 8 weeks of homestay experiences with cultural trips and at-home language lessons (totalling 100 hours of 1:1 language lessons). I make use of grammar and/or vocabulary textbooks, my own children’s books and London guidebooks, as well as a subscription to the onestopenglish.com website for English teachers. All my students have rated highly their London homestay experience and have been very pleased with the progress they have made in a few short weeks.

If the student wishes to book an in-person language course in London independently, then they may do so, knowing that the journey time is likely to be between 40 and 60 minutes to a central London language school, and that they will need to pay for public transport independently, also.
We live close by to the Sydenham Tennis Club, and can arrange for some 1:1 tennis coaching sessions on the outdoor courts there.
  • Language lessons
  • Lessons at home
  • Paid activities
  • 5 hours of 'at home' general activities
  • 5h of general activities in local area
  • Major London attraction (with high entrance fee)
  • London tourist outing (free or low cost entrance)
  • London West End musical or show
  • Theme park trip (Chessington/Thorpe Park/Legoland) - all day
  • Special diet per week (except vegetarian)
  • holiday period of Christmas or New Year
  • Special needs /wk e.g. dyslexia, ADHD
  • Sport Camps
  • Tennis
  • Airport or station pick-up
  • Heathrow, Gatwick or City Airport.
  • St Pancras Train Station

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     +33 7 49 08 56 74