Who is Adriaan?
If ABBA’s Agnetha was a dancer before she could walk, TILLIT’s founder Adriaan D’Haens was a linguist before he could talk. His lifelong passion for effective language education has earned him degrees from Ghent and Oxford University and led him to teach at schools, colleges and universities worldwide.
A taste for language
Hailing from trilingual Belgium, Adriaan has always seen languages as the centre of his personal and professional life. Previous to his dedicated focus on language education, he enjoyed a stint in journalism, writing the Benelux edition of the Michelin Guide — however, he soon hungered for the kind of fulfilment that only the world of education could bring.
Adriaan’s interest in language-learning underpinned his studies at Ghent University where he acquired an MA in literature and linguistics as well as a teacher training certification, and wrote his award-nominated master’s thesis on the topic of Dutch word order and the pitfalls it poses for English speakers learning Dutch. He went on to obtain an MSc in Education from Oxford University, as part of which he designed and evaluated a remedial writing programme. He also holds a qualification in instructional coaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is currently in the final stage of qualifying as an EPI teacher.
Putting it into practice
Taking his knowledge beyond the academic sphere, Adriaan has taught Dutch and English at numerous educational institutions in Belgium and abroad. He has shared his educational expertise with international conference audiences, as well as national and international organisations — including as an assessment developer for the International Baccalaureate and as a member of a think tank for the Flemish Ministry of Education.
His fascination for multilingual, idiosyncratic contexts led him to take on a position as a language teaching expert in the Dutch Caribbean in 2019, where he was responsible for supporting and strengthening the teaching of Dutch as a Foreign Language and the professional development for the schools of two islands.
It all led to TILLIT
Throughout his journey as an educator, Adriaan came to realize that the crux of effective language learning is the proficiency of the teacher, the quality of the learning resources, and the framework that supports them. He also met talented people with the right credentials to make a positive contribution to these dimensions along the way.
All this sparked the idea to create TILLIT language academy: a reliable partner for educators looking to increase impact in language learning.
