English teaching since 1985•Portland, Oregon•Active classroom practitioner
I coach professionals one-on-one and build custom English content for companies, schools, and platforms — grounded in 40 years of classroom practice.
Currently teaching daily at Portland English Language Academy
Whether you’re one learner or a whole platform, the approach is the same: content built from real teaching practice, produced with modern AI workflows, and verified by a practitioner who’s spent 40 years in the classroom.
Sessions built around your specific goals — the English of your profession, preparation for a new role, or becoming a more confident, fluent speaker. You set the agenda, and every session is individually prepared for what will be most useful to you right now.
Custom learning materials for corporations, language schools, and EdTech platforms — full course packages, unit series, or targeted materials for a specific learner population.
Every build is CEFR-calibrated and grounded in classroom practice, not theory. AI does the drafting; four decades of teaching judgment does the verification — so you get content that’s precise for your industry and actually works with your learners.
For most of my career, truly specialized English content wasn’t economically possible. A course for customer-facing engineers in semiconductor equipment, or procurement managers negotiating with overseas suppliers, would take months to write — so those teams got generic business English instead.
AI changes that math. It can draft content for any profession, any role, any scenario. What it can’t do is judge whether the content is right — whether the language matches how people in your industry actually communicate, and whether it’s pitched at a level your teams can genuinely use. That judgment is the work I do, on every line, with 40 years of classroom experience behind it.
And here’s what generic AI tools can’t offer: I can build directly from your materials — your documents, your style guides, your terminology, the way your company actually writes and speaks. Even a small sample of non-sensitive, public-facing material is enough to shape the result. It isn’t “business English” — it’s your company’s English, taught deliberately. New hires and global team members learn to communicate the way your best people already do.
Specialized to your industry. Matched to your culture. Verified by human teaching judgment at every step.
English courses and lesson builds grounded in real workplaces, real stories, and real learner needs. Each piece here started in the classroom, then was refined with AI-assisted workflows to make it sharper, faster to adapt, and easier to deploy.
“real input,
real support.”
For: experienced professionals and advanced learners who want challenging, authentic listening with teacher-designed support.
Curated Creative Commons audio and video transformed into scaffolded listening lessons — learners work with real-world input while still getting clear tasks, language focus, and follow-up speaking work.
Preview listening lesson →
For: international professionals and advanced learners who need to understand and talk about startup culture, funding, and product pitches.
A narrative-based unit set in an Austin startup that builds comprehension of pitch meetings, key jargon such as runway, burn rate, MVP, and traction, as well as the cultural norms of startup communication.
Preview chapter →“within
specification.”
For: customer-facing engineers and corporate liaisons in semiconductor equipment and ceramic components who work with global clients.
A three-part language toolkit — glossary, practice situations, and functional phrases — built around real semiconductor joint venture, quality, and commercial scenarios, so technical experts can explain issues and decisions clearly in English.
Explore course →“root cause,
corrective action.”
For: engineers and quality professionals in semiconductor ceramics who need to describe problems, defects, and corrective actions in English.
A case-study lesson on a quality control failure that develops technical vocabulary such as batch variability, tolerance threshold, root cause, and corrective action — with structured practice explaining what happened, why, and what happens next.
View sample lesson →
Kenneth Beare has been helping learners move from textbook English to the real language of the workplace since the mid-1980s. He has taught in Germany, Italy, New York City, and Portland, and is currently teaching daily at Portland English Language Academy — if you’re in Portland, you can study with Kenneth at PELA.
From 1997 to 2017, he ran one of the internet’s most widely read ESL resources through About.com and ThoughtCo, reaching millions of learners and teachers worldwide, and created content for clients including Global English/Pearson and Scala Group in Italy.
Every course and lesson build on this site grows out of that experience: teaching, publishing, and staying close to what learners actually need.
40 years
in the classroom, and counting
20 years
publishing at About.com & ThoughtCo, course development for Pearson/Global English and Scala Group s.r.L. and others
Millions
of learners and teachers reached
If you’re looking for one-on-one coaching, custom English content, or a tailored course build for your learners, I’d be glad to hear more about what you have in mind.
The best first step is a short message with a few details about your goals, your learners, or the kind of content you need — and I’ll get back to you soon.