Career
My name is Anna Pileci and I am a native English speaker language consultant. I have been working in Italy for 35 years, in different areas of teaching such as Business, General English, Trinity and Cambridge certifications and since 2018 in the world of the blind through online and in-person courses for children and adults.
During my years as an English teacher I have worked in many international companies gaining work experience that can be applied to any kind of content and requirement to create targeted Business English courses.
My experience with blind and visually impaired students started in 2018, when I taught a 30-hour course at the Institute of the Blind in Milan. The aim was to improve English skills for potential guides at the “Dialogue in the Dark” museum in Milan with customized content to describe the various objects, situations and activities that take place there in order to become part of the international team of guides.
The aim of this group was to improve their confidence in spoken English through interactive activities such as role-play and sensory games to introduce conversational question-and-answer activities.
In October 2020, I started an English club for 13-17 year olds at the Institute for the Blind in Milan. The aim was to increase their knowledge and confidence in the English language in all skills, speaking, listening, reading and writing and to prepare them for a B1-level exam. This activity ended during COVID and I started online courses for children in the summer called Art and Discovery for my project, e2b project.
During this project, I created a comfortable atmosphere in which children of different English levels and ages could learn through interactive activities such as describing, listening and physically creating objects and even cooking in real time.
The spin-off of this course in 2020-2021 was the collaboration with CCT centres in Umbria, Apulia and Tuscany to create online mini-courses for children aged 8-12 and 12-18. I created all the necessary digital file content specifically for blind and visually impaired students. I collaborated with the Girobussola APS association in Bologna to create tactile material that was sent directly to students nationwide.
From September 2020 to March 2022, I collaborated with UICI Milano by creating online courses for different levels of knowledge and needs of individuals working in many different business sectors, but mainly for customer care workers, dealing with the daily needs of customers or the public.
These courses have been very successful and I now teach people from all over Italy, which is not only inspiring but a virtual meeting place where everyone can feel comfortable and learn English. The lessons are in a very informal style using digital files, audio, video, podcasts to create opportunities for discussion and teamwork, where everyone is treated equally despite their different disabilities.
In contrast to these courses, I worked at the Institute of the Blind, Milan from November 2019 to March 2021 with a more formal imprint, training 10 students with two different levels of English to achieve a better understanding and fluency in vocabulary to work as customer care workers in international companies; one of the sponsors of this course being DHL.
I created all the content for the 150-hour course and produced documents in line with student levels and customer care work. The skills were not only focused on listening and speaking, but also on reading and writing, working together with my IT colleagues in the institute to promote real-life activities during a working day.
In September 2022, I collaborated with UICI Toscana on a summer campus for children aged 8 to 14. Although a high percentage of the participants had various learning difficulties, the children improved their English, thanks to the creative activities and tactile material I produced. So after only 10 days, English became part of the campus and even the jokes were made in English. An incredible and very rewarding experience.
Today, I continue to hold online and in-person courses for adults and young people at various levels, interests and skills for both business and general interest.
My goal is to create a greater understanding of how people with disabilities can work efficiently in our society by giving them a skill, English, that most people I work with in companies find equally difficult.
Difficult is just a word, approach and mindset are best to create success in an activity that everyone believes is out of their reach. English to Be was created with the idea that only by listening and creating a method in line with each participant can a person increase their fluency and become more confident in English