Our staff

Educational and professional background

Mr Nektarios George Tefanis, B.A (Hons), Cert in Special Education, Grad. Dip in TESOL, M.A in TESOL

Mr Nektarios George Tefanis is the general manager and head teacher of the Tefanis Language Schools and has over 20 years experience in English Language Teaching both in EFL and ESL.

Mr Tefanis’s parents moved to Australia in 1954 so Mr Tefanis heralds from a Greek-Australian background where English is his mother tongue.

Mr Tefanis has a very strong professional teacher profile as he has completed all his professional educational training in Australian Universities. A strong believer in on-going professional development, Mr Tefanis initially completed his Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia in 1995. As part of his Honours degree, Mr Tefanis completed a 20,000 word academic thesis which tackled the historical-political philosophy of Immanuel Kant and was titled “Nature, Freedom and the Teleology of history.”

In 1996, Mr Tefanis moved to Greece to complete his military training and served in the Greek Infantry as a sergeant.

From 1996-1998, Mr Tefanis also attempted a three year pre-doctoral preparatory course in Political Philosophy at the University of Athens under the tutelage of the late Professor of philosophy Cosmas Psychopaidis from which he subsequently withdrew in 1998 to pursue a career in English Language Teaching.

In 2003, and for a period of 3 months, Mr Tefanis was practically trained at the University of Technology Sydney, (at Randwick TAFE) as part of the practical teaching component of his Graduate Diploma in TESOL and Masters in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) which Mr Tefanis obtained from the University of Technology in 2004.

In October 2012, as part of an M.A in Special Education, Mr Tefanis was also intensely trained for a month at MUSEC (Macquarie University Special Education Centre) in Sydney in behavioural management protocols in special education. Subsequently, these protocols have been fully implemented in all of the Tefanis Language Schools as part of the importance placed by the Tefanis Language Schools on a positive teaching approach to English Language Education.

In August 2015, for a period of 2 weeks with his wife Nektaria Xenos, Mr Tefanis completed a refresher course in TESOL in London, England at International House London (in Holborn) which specializes in professional ELT training courses across Europe.

 

Mrs Nektaria Xenou – Tefanis, Certificate in TESOL

Mrs Nektaria Xenou Tefanis is the assistant manager at the Tefanis Language Schools and Head Teacher and has over 20 years experience in English Language Teaching in Greece.

Mrs Xenou’s parents moved to Cape Town, South Africa in 1987 where she completed her primary and secondary education.

Upon returning to Greece and throughout her stay in Greece, Mrs Xenou-Tefanis has attended numerous training courses, seminars and workshops in Teaching English as a Foreign Language.

Some of the notable courses attended by Mrs Xenou-Tefanis were a four-week course on Dyslexia and Foreign Language Teaching held by Lancaster University and a two-week refresher course in TESOL at International House London in London as well as a distance learning course on Blended Learning held by the University of Leeds.

Mrs Xenou-Tefanis has been teaching students of all ages, including adults, starting from Junior A to Proficiency level for over 20 years.

In April 2003, Mrs Xenou-Tefanis trained as an Oral Examiner for the EDEXCEL / PTE General and in 2014 she trained as a NOCN Oral Examiner.

Mrs Xenou-Tefanis has been an oral examiner since 2003.