I'm Richard. I'm English, and I live in Poprad.

I moved here from England in 2025. Peak English is what I do now: an hour of real English conversation with an adult who already understands plenty of English and freezes the moment they have to produce it.

What I did before this

For fifteen years I built and sold businesses online: newsletters, software, content sites. Some worked, some didn't, and several were sold to someone else at the end of it.

That matters more than it sounds, and it is the whole reason this is not a language school. Fifteen years of that work is fifteen years of being the British person on the other end of the call. I have been the customer your sales team is nervous about. I have read the email that was grammatically perfect and still made me decide not to reply. I know what makes someone trust you in the first thirty seconds of a phone call, and it is almost never your grammar.

Why a café, and why never Zoom

You are never going to have to speak English in a classroom for the rest of your life. Every conversation you are actually worried about happens in a café, an office, a hotel lobby or on a phone, with noise, interruptions and no time to check a word. So that is where we practise, and the coffee is part of the price.

I don't teach over Zoom, and I'm not going to start. If you want to practise into a webcam there are thousands of people who will sell you that, and they are cheaper than me. A table, a coffee and no mute button is a different thing, and it is the thing that works.

My Slovak

Basic, and I'm taking lessons. Sitting across a table that turns out to be the point rather than a problem: you can't fall back into Slovak when it gets difficult, because I won't follow you there. Most people in Poprad understand far more English than they think. What they have never done is spend a whole hour with no escape route.

For arranging times and anything administrative, we manage fine.

On the radio

I've been on Radio Tatras International talking about Peak English and about arriving in Poprad from England. It is not a regular slot and there is no schedule to look up, so if you heard it and wanted the details, this page is them.

What Peak English is not

It is not a language school in the regulated Slovak sense, and I don't describe it as one. There are no levels, no coursebook and no certificate at the end. I don't prepare people for official exams, and if that is what you need, an institution that runs them is a better use of your money than I am. I don't teach children or teenagers.

What is left is narrow on purpose: adults who need English for work and life, practising out loud, with someone who grew up speaking it.

Where this is going

Peak English is a business rather than my personal diary, which is why it carries a brand name and not my surname. In time there will be other people teaching under it, working from a written method rather than from whatever I happen to remember. For a company signing an agreement, that matters: the arrangement should not depend on one man staying well and staying in town.

Today, though, it is me. If you book, you are sitting with me.