Crosby

I so often see students learn the papers but neglect to immerse into the language itself, so I would of course help your exam technique and with homework to get you that grade, but my lessons certainly wouldn't revolve around papers (frankly, neither does an oral exam).

I prefer to use videos and casual texts that we will discuss and ground into the real world to make your language use as practical and fluid as possible. I want to see immersion into the language by constant exposure to it, just the way I and so many others who landed in a foreign language environment learned it.

Textbooks teach you vocabulary and grammar, sure, but without applying it only through feeling and sense, fluency will be slower to reach, even if you know it all, as what happens in your head is constant frantic translation from your native tongue, wasting time and effort (e.g. ?? -> ?? -> Apple). Rather, I would like to see you notice an object and immediately process it in your target lanaguage, saving the effort and speaking more fluently (e.g. ?? -> Apple), which you are going to need for faster more fluid conversation, and writing faster.

I understand that it is daunting and sometimes embarrassing or frightening to try to speak a language you don't yet know, preferring to get fluent through silent learning before trying your hand. However, from my experience of teaching and learning Spanish myself, gaining fluency without interacting in the language is almost impossible. You must overcome the fear of getting it wrong, so that you can learn to get it right, hopefully, without even thinking about it.