Personal Description:

I am a MA in Anthropology with a minor in Linguistics. I trained in Spanish on-location in California doing work with immigrants to the region, as well as in Mexico. I have also been published in a book about language instruction.

Tutoring Experience:

I have tutored in private settings for over seven years now. I have had wide success with my students. Some of whom went from pre-beginner to conversational within a 6 or 7 month period.

Tutoring Approach:

I believe that language exists in context. As such, teaching grammar in segregated chunks from one another is not as effective as teaching language as a whole. As such, I try to cover the grammar within a 6-9 week period, and then focus heavily on conversation, reading, and sentence construction. I teach a little about linguistic theory in order to grasp some of the more abstract thinking processes required for effective second-language acquisition. I'm confident that within 6 months (depending on a 4 hours/week schedule) that we will be conversing in Spanish about our day to day activities.