Mr Brittain
My name is Mr Brittain and I am a teacher of French, Japanese and Spanish. I am also an A level French examiner, specialising in the speaking element of the examination. I live with my family in Belfast and I have over 30 years of experience in teaching, 23 of those as Head of Modern Languages in a post-primary school. Within my role as Head of Department, I was closely involved with pupils experiencing academic difficulties and I greatly enjoy working with individual pupils in order that they achieve their full potential.
I have taught English in France for two years and in Japan for a year. In order to complement my online teaching of French, I have published four vocabulary books, which use lexical links with English and a splash of humour in order to facilitate learning.
I am passionate about transferring my linguistic skills to my pupils and am a firm believer in the power of language acquisition to boost confidence and develop a learner’s self-esteem.
Outside of the classroom, I enjoy developing my linguistic skills in other foreign languages and I have GCSEs in German and Polish as well as British Sign Language, level 1. I am also a big fan of poetry and I count W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost and W.H. Auden among my hero poets. I published my own anthology, ‘A Collection of Thoughts’ in January 2023.
During my free time, I enjoy collecting beach glass and pebbles, polishing them and setting them to create jewellery. I am also a long-suffering fan of West Ham United and enjoy going to watch my team play when I can. Furthermore, as a wheelchair user, following a spinal injury when I was 18, I greatly enjoy using my hand-cycle to go on road trips with my wife and children, the latest of which was on the Liverpool-Leeds canal in the summer of 2023.
I measure pupil success on an individual basis. I have high, yet reasonable expectations and I consider it a privilege to work with students in order to help them achieve their full potential.