I am a Spanish teacher and Language Department head at a private school in Boston with two master's degrees in Hispanic studies and Spanish literatures and cultures. I have been teaching for 10 years, both at the undergraduate and high school & middle school levels and have tried all sorts of teaching methods. I have found that the quickest and most efficient way of teaching a new language is through comprehensible input. My approach is heavily conversational, which gets you speaking from day...
I am a Spanish teacher and Language Department head at a private school in Boston with two master's degrees in Hispanic studies and Spanish literatures and cultures. I have been teaching for 10 years, both at the undergraduate and high school & middle school levels and have tried all sorts of teaching methods. I have found that the quickest and most efficient way of teaching a new language is through comprehensible input. My approach is heavily conversational, which gets you speaking from day one. I use comprehensible input stories and students learn basic communicative skills in an inductive way. I also use basic American Sign Language to build our vocabulary and avoid reverting back to English when communicating. Accompanying language with movement helps you remember the vocabulary better than translating back into your native language. With my method, language is naturally acquired, not studied.
Learning a language is not only about understanding information and producing texts, language is also about learning the culture that surrounds it. Knowing grammar rules won't serve you if you don't know how to use them in real-life situations. That is why learning the language in context is the best way to connect the mechanics with the message. My method is not traditional, and proven to get you speaking and communicating from the start.
