Hello!
My name is Marina Gonzalez, I am 24 years old and I am a Spanish native speaker born in the beautiful island of Tenerife, Spain. I hold a BA in Translation and Interpreting (Spanish/English/German/French) and a MSc in Interpreting (Spanish/English), which means that I have had many foreign language classes throughout my academic life but also, that I perfectly know my mother tongue.
When I was 15, I live a year in Ireland, where I fully discovered my love for English and I spent another year in Switzerland (when I was 20) where my passion for German flourished as well. I love travelling and languages and I think being able to communicate with as many people in the world as possible is such a rewarding skill.
Although I have more experience in receiving language classes than giving them, I have taught Spanish to some of my fellow students and taken part in Tandems. Usually, in these classes I like to implement a collaborative approach, where the teacher and the student work together and interact as much as possible to gain the knowledge. This is normally carried out in a certain way: the teacher briefly explains the theory (grammar or vocabulary), then provides a written exercise for the student, where they work together to put the things learnt in paper, and then provides a spoken exercise, where mostly the student can put what has been learnt into practice. This style of teaching allows the student to, not only practice the four competences required to learn a language (listening, writing, reading and speaking), but also makes him/her less nervous and shy, because the teacher is helping all along instead of leaving the students to work for themselves. Once this is done in class, students would usually receive written exercises as homework, and the next class would always start by reviewing what was learnt in the previous lesson. Of course, the lessons can vary regarding the activities carried out: one day it could be like mentioned above, but another day the dynamics of the class might change by making use of other materials such as multimedia resources (videos, songs, audios, newspapers, etc.) or reading a piece of literature (adapted to the level of the students) and commenting on it. This is mainly used to avoid monotony and encourage students to actively participate in the class rather than listening to what the teacher says all the time.
I am very happy and excited to be able to teach Spanish to whoever wants to learn and all you can expect from me is enthusiasm, commitment, passion and love for teaching languages so ¡Vamos a aprender!