Teacher name: Sofia 

I have always wanted to teach. I started doing some tutoring when I was at University, in the afternoons I was helping kids with their homework or boosting their learning in some subjects.
When I finished my Degree as a Primary teacher I decided to focus in teaching Spanish as a foreign Language, as I wanted to travel and i love teaching I thought this would be a great idea. And it was, I came to England 3 years ago and since then I have been trying to develop my self as a Spanish teacher, I did a course with the University of Barcelona to specialized myself in teaching Spanish and since then I have been working as a Spanish Tutor on my own in London. Last October I moved to Leek, a town close to Stoke-on-trent with the aim of opening a Spanish School, but people in there was not very keen to learn languages, I was teaching to kids and adults in groups and to some of them one-to-one tuition.
About my teaching style, I like to make my lessons dynamic and based on real life, to make them feel that Spanish useful. I do not like memory learning, I think is very important to use as many senses as possible when learning, so I use communicative learning, with rol games, where the students guide their own learning process. It is important to make the language attractive to them, because if not they will quit, so I like to know their likes and prepare the lessons depending on it, with songs, texts, videos… Even when teaching grammar I try to make it fun, as i know this is not a “funny” part of learning a language, with songs to learn some verbs, prepositions,…
Also I prepare activities for them to work in pairs, or I bring a topic and we discuss it during the lesson to practice the speaking and listening and also learning new vocabulary.

What makes you a good teacher?

What makes me a great teacher is that I am passionate about it. I expect that all my students will achieve their objectives, and this my aim, to make their learning successful and enjoyable. Their improvements boost me to keep on teaching, and so far I love it. For all this, it is important to plan the lessons and set the objectives before, this is something I do and explain to the students at the beginning, so they know what will learn and it helps me to guide them. I like to be organized. As I like what I do, and I teach Spanish, my mother language, I like to immerse my students in the Spanish/Latin culture to make their learning more attractive and motivating. I like to have a good communication and relationship with all my students so they can feel comfortable during the lessons as some people feel “shy” to speak a foreign language.