Experience Summary
I have an MBA focusing on empowerment of small business and a BA in Romance Languages. I have been studying/teaching Spanish for over 20 years and French for over 10 years. Professionally, I have been hired as a trilingual in customer service and for consecutive and simultaneous interpretation in a variety of medical and legal proceedings in Spanish for the last 5 years.
Teaching Style
Q: We've been studying Spanish/French at home for the past year. Would we really benefit that much more from a class environment?
A: Absolutely! Language cannot be truly learned in a vacuum. Language is dynamic, and so should be learned and practiced continuously in an interactive environment.
Most people say their main goal in learning a foreign language is to be able to speak it. That is why we use the power of the internet, weekly phone conversation practice, and in-class discussions to constantly improve our students' ear for the language, pronunciation, listening, and speaking abilities.
Grammar is also taught in a complementary fashion to the English grammar learned in other classes. So, students benefit from a greater understanding of their first language in the process of learning a second.
Without real-time interaction with fellow learners, speaking correction, personalized grading, critiques, and encouragement many of the at-home, online, or book-only methods out there fall short of a well-rounded foreign language education.
My Hobbies
Salsa, Bachata, Merengue, Cha Cha dance
Travel (Goal: Every country where I speak the language!)
Learning Haitian Kreyol in hopes of engaging with a whole new set of people soon
