An interview with:

Carolina Cortes Cruz

Spanish teacher

What do you like the most about teaching Spanish?

What I like the most about teaching is that there are a lot of interesting things I have also learnt from my students in all these years teaching Spanish. I can say I have also learnt about my mother tongue and culture thanks to them.

— In my personal experience, it is interesting to observe how most of my students make the same errors. I think mistakes are wonderful because we can always learn from them. Sometimes, I am surprised because I have never been aware of these common mistakes before starting to teach. For example, some of my students confuse "hambre"(hungry) with "hombro" (shoul

When did you start teaching Spanish?

I started in 2001 while I was still studying Modern Languages at the university.

In your experience, what are the most common reasons for wanting to learn Spanish?

Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world. It is the official language in 21 countries: Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Spain and Equatorial Guinea. Spanish is spoken by more than 390 million native speakers.

Learning Spanish can open up new opportunities for you as you can communicate when travelling to Latin America, Spain or Equatorial Guinea. Spanish can also help you if you want to establish new businesses in Spa

How difficult is it to learn Spanish, compared to other languages?

I think grammar is one of the hardest things because there are some structures that do not exist in other languages. I love to use the communicative approach to teach grammar. After having increased the vocabulary of my students, I give them the context and a specific topic where they can use what they have learned. This creates a safe environment that lets my students feel confident as they are working with the vocabulary we had learned in previous lessons and also it lets the student communicate with confidence using the new grammar structure.

For me learning a new language is like knitti

How is Colombian Spanish different from that of other countries?

According to RAE (the Spanish Royal Academy), Colombian Spanish is one of the most beautiful because we respect grammar rules and also foreigners say that our accent is easy to understand.