Welcome

Thank you for visiting my site and your interest in improving your English speaking skills.

I’m Chris Chirico. I’m am originally from America but have lived in Czechia for twenty years. My linguistic journey started back in the mid 90’s when I became a resident volunteer at The Ohio School for the Deaf and began an intense immersive study in ASL Interpreting at Columbus State. After graduating, I began studying at Ohio State University where I worked as an Educational Sign Language interpreter working with Deaf students. While there, I had the opportunity to start traveling in the summers, and made my first trip to Europe in 2001 where I discovered the Czech language. I was fascinated by its complexity and uniqueness, and after returning home, I enrolled in the newly offered Czech class through the Slavic language department.

I returned to Czech Republic in the summers, and stayed in Ustí nad Labem to improve my Czech. I made friends and connections with a language agency that helped me get my first visa. I moved to Ustí in the Fall of 2005, and have lived in the country ever since.

Teaching Method

Because of my background as an interpreter and the fact that I have studied Czech for so long, my methods are a bit different than traditional ESL classes that just follow a grammar book.

Our time together in lessons will be spent having real conversations about topics and themes that are relevant to you. Thus, building a vocabulary that is useful to you and giving you the confidence to speak more fluently in English.

During our conversations, I correct mistakes and improve your understanding of grammar and sentence structures by comparing Czech to English while highlighting the similarities and differences in our languages.

We address the most common errors made by Czech speakers of English as well as going deeper into understanding English verb tenses and preposition use by giving clear explanations based on this comparative approach.

Here are examples of some of the pages from a Czech/English comparison workbook I have been creating. It originally was my way of documenting what I’ve learned about Czech and can be used as a comparative grammar guide.

My personal understanding of Czech case grammar and sentence structures allows us to create a more solid understanding of how to start thinking in English.

If you would like to meet to discuss lessons, we can set up a meeting to go over a lesson plan that works for you.