Mushroom Education has developed as a result of the work of two educators with a professional and personal interest in English and Chinese education.
We hope you share our enthusiasm for English-Chinese bilingual education and warmly welcome you to our website.
This is a wide ranging project, from bilingual children’s books to postgraduate English proofreading services, but is both interesting and rewarding.
Introducing our Founders
Dr. M. A. Terrett, usually known as Mat, grew up in England but has spent 20 years in China teaching English to Chinese students. His doctoral research explored teaching English academic writing to Chinese students. Through this research he developed an interest in the use of corpora in English writing instruction and the use of visuals in academic writing. He is also keen on exploring the impact of going digital and is very interested in using technology in the classroom and beyond. He has taught English for Academic Purposes in various guises and institutions since 2005, both in China and the UK. This has led to some interesting Academic Proofreading work which has received very good feedback to date. Mat has also worked as an English language examiner for some very high stakes international examinations.
“I am an artist, educator and IT dabbler who always has lots of creative and educational projects on the go.”
Since the birth of his first child, he has been keenly interested in the concept of bilingual English-Mandarin children’s books, which ultimately led to the publication of The Magic People series and the Ping Pang and Rover books. This Mushroom Education project pulls these different interests into one place and is, to some extent, an updated and more focused version of Mat’s first website that he built to support his wife’s tutoring business in Shanghai (2010-2014) – Laura’s ELT.
马特博士在英国长大，但是花了13年的时间在中国教授中国学生学习英语。他的博士研究方向就是针对中国学生的英语教学。他一直在一些非常权威的国际考试中（如雅思，IB等）担任英语语言考官。
Most recently, Dr T has been working in an IB school and built an RPG and blogging area for his MYP students.
So, where did Mat’s mushroom logo come from?
Well, when he was an artist, he used to sneak mushrooms and gnomes into his paintings for a joke, and it just kind of stuck.
Laura Chen
Laura completed her Masters in English Language in 2008 and started working at the Sino-British College in Shanghai as an English Teaching Assistant. She was rapidly promoted to Teaching Fellow in English for Academic Purposes and pioneered a Chinese teaching programme for non-Chinese students in that institution. Her previous private tutoring business in Shanghai was the inspiration for our first English education website – Laura’s ELT. She has subsequently taught English for Academic Purposes at the University of Bristol and the University of Bath in the UK, and developed an Academic English programme for undergraduate students studying Digital Design on a University of Bradford course in Qingdao, China. Her work has led to numerous requests for additional tutoring help, which has resulted in our Academic Proofreading Service and IELTS Writing Feedback Service.
Laura has also provided the Chinese input to realise our concept of bilingual English-Mandarin children’s books, which ultimately led to the publication of The Magic People series and the Ping Pang and Rover books.
Most recently, Laura has been teaching in XJTLU in Suzhou and researching learner autonomy (p.12) and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL).