Exclusive interview with Hannah Murphy, OISE Oxford's Director of Studies

It's Monday morning at 9:40am and Hannah has already been at work for two hours. After a busy morning of organising the new students into their groups, she manages to find a few minutes to speak with us.

Good morning Hannah, thank you very much for taking the time talk to me today. I would like to start by asking how you organise the students into their Quatorial groups?

There are several factors that I have to consider when organising each Quatorial group, which we always separate into Business Quatorials and General Quatorials. The first is the level of the student. We want all of our students to be in a learning environment that is going to help them to achieve their individual objectives but that is also challenging for them. Working in a group with students of a similar level allows our teachers to ensure that all four students are learning new material and being suitably challenged. I also try to ensure that the Quatorials have a variety of nationalities as this helps develop students' listening skills and also leads to interesting discussions and comparisons of different work environments and cultures. I also look at the students age, profession and objectives to ensure they will be working with other students who are from a similar peer group.

I see, and what about the individual tutorial classes, how do you choose which tutor would be best suited to the student? 

We are very lucky here at OISE Oxford to have a large number of tutors who specialise in different areas. These include a lawyer to teach legal English, an IELTS examiner to work with IELTS students, a financial expert to work with our business students and many many more. This allows me to ensure that each student is working with a tutor who has a vast amount of knowledge in the subject area the student wishes to study. Our tutors all work closely with each other to ensure that if a student has more than one tutor there is a clear plan of which areas they will focus on in each lesson. I never have any difficulty matching students and tutorial teachers as I am so confident in the abilities of the tutors on our team.

At OISE Oxford the students are of all ages and come from a variety of different profession and academic backgrounds. Which common characteristics, if any, does an OISE Oxford student share?

I think the characteristic most of our students have in common is their determination and their motivation. Our courses are intensive and so we only attract students who are extremely focused on achieving their aims. All of our students are also extremely communicative and social which creates a wonderful atmosphere in the school. They are all individuals who are hard working and successful and it's a privilege to work with them on a daily basis.