"Language and language learning has been a deep interest of mine nearly my entire life. My interest became a passion while I was in college and has served as one of my guiding principals since then. I have had many unique opportunities to teach both Spanish and ESL in the U.S. and abroad. I have also worked a lot with Spanish-speaking peoples and students of English throughout the years.

In college, I worked as a tutor in Spanish for a year and a half. I worked primarily with beginning and intermediate students of Spanish to help them try to grasp the grammar and vocabulary concepts they were studying. This work as a tutor served as a great foundation for increasing my own knowledge of the language. And, it also gave me good insight as to what the struggles are for students who undertake the task of learning a second language.

After college, I had a broad variety of language instruction experiences. In 1998, I taught ESL for an academic year a high school in Prague, Czech Republic. I also taught ESL for nearly three months in 2000 at an language academy in Morelia, Mexico. The next year I started my graduate studies in Spanish at the University of Tennessee where I worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. Once I finished my studies there, I began teaching Spanish as a lecturer at UTK. I taught there for three years and then moved on to teach Spanish at Carson-Newman College four years. I currently work part-time as a Certified Medical Interpreter.

During my time as a student and instructor I was able to put together a great number of language resources. I believe that language should be used and to that end I always try to provide my student tools and resources that will help them achieve their language-learning goals. I like to empower my students to do something with the language whether that is through listening comprehension, reading comprehension, speaking or writing. Providing students with strategies for reading, writing, speaking, and listening is also a key component of my instruction because i" less...