Experience

Dara Oken has a passion for helping professionals reach their highest communication potential. She received her Masters of Education in ESL degree from the University of Minnesota. She has over 10 years experience teaching English to adults from places including India, Japan, Columbia, Malaysia, Spain, Egypt, Mali, and many more. She has a clear command of the process of adult language acquisition, and has experience with many teaching and learning approaches in the areas of:

• communicative skills - pronunciation, speaking fluency, and active listening
• language foundation – grammar and vocabulary development

 

Dara has over 4 years experience as a pronunciation coach. She is certified in the Compton P-ESL accent reduction training program. She has coached more than 60 international business professionals, and her clients have had strong outcomes, averaging 70-80% improvement.

 

 

Testimonials

 

If I could give Dara 10 stars, I definitely would do it. This is the best pronunciation program training I have had in my life. I am an international medical graduate from Vietnam, and have been in the U.S. for 8 years. I knew that I had problems with my accent, since people couldn’t understand when I talked. I went through more than 5 accent reduction programs in California, but I didn’t improve much. I saw Dara’s program online, and decided to take it, even though the cost was a little high for me. I made this decision because I wanted to take the USMLE Step 2 Clinical Skills Exam. Now, when I look back, I think I made a great decision. During the exam, I felt 90% more confident than before. However, I should be humble until the test results come back. Then, I can write more about this outstanding program.

-M. Nguyen

 

Dara helped me improve my verbal pronunciation in a 3-month program. She has been a superb instructor, very personable and professional. The critical errors in my speech have been cut down to 38 from 98 by the end of the program. And I can clearly see the significant improvement of my communication skills during work. Attending this program is a correct choice I made and I really appreciate the efforts and help Dara put in to make it successful. She is very experienced with people who have different challenges and she is very patient to customize the training plans for each and every student. I would highly recommend Dara for any international professionals looking to improve their communication skills and advance their career.

–Z. Zhang

 

Dara is a very dedicated English teacher and creates plans individually for students with their unique pronouncing errors; students follow the plans to practice and correct the errors quickly. When I came to join her class, I had 115 critical errors in English pronunciation through an independent assessment. After her weekly-classes, approximately 20 hours in total, I had the 115 critical errors reduced to 24. I strongly recommend non-English speakers taking Dara’s class to speak in English more effectively.  

–J. Zheng

 

Dara was my instructor to improve my language and speech. She did a wonderful job doing so. She is detail oriented and her feedback was precise and effective. She has good experience and knowledge to find out the concerns and wastes no time improvising it.

-N. Shah

 

Dara was my teacher during my 3-month online course I took this year. She was very professional, always made the class interesting. During the 3 months we tackled all my problematic areas and I myself felt/heard my improvements. She never made me feel uncomfortable which may be a problem when learning foreign accents. I really enjoyed working with her.

–H. Horavova

 

Dara was our instructor as a part of the accent reduction course sponsored by our company. She is extremely professional, personable and provided excellent feedback to reduce our accents. Most importantly, she is a great listener and took genuine interest to help professionals overcome their speaking challenges. Great job ! 

-A. Awati