Hi my name is Grace.

I've lived and studied most of my live in North America but as Dutch is my official language, I was required for university applications, scholarship legibility and other procedures to take the TOEFL which I easily passed every time. This caught the attention of my fellow colleagues who were struggling and I found myself teaching focus groups soon. As I grew more experienced I created local conversational groups for professionals.

Over the past decade I have pursued my bachelors and postgraduate degree completely in Spanish after studying Spanish at an academic level in Mexico. During my college years I started giving classes to peers from other countries that needed Spanish as a foreign language.

With Dutch being a rare language around here, I was frequently required to personally guide and translate between English-Spanish-Dutch for visiting Dutch speaking investigators during international congresses. The need for knowledge of Dutch was also clear so I started teaching basic Dutch to students and scientists who were due to visit the Netherlands.

English:

Diploma in conversational English (2004)

Both iBT and paper based TOEFL teaching experience.

Conversation groups in English for university teachers, students and investigators since 2011.

Over 2 years training bilingual English-Spanish customer service agents for an international telecom company (2011-2013).

Spanish:

Academic Spanish diploma (2005)

Bachelor’s degree in science completely in Spanish “cum laude”

Spanish classes for foreign exchange students since 2009

Dutch:

English-Dutch translation of official government letters

English-Dutch-Spanish Congress translator since 2009

Basic Dutch for students to visit the Netherlands

The approach depends on the student and his or her needs, be it academic, conversational, for a test etc.

As I get to know my students more personally, I try to discover as quickly as possible their preferred way of learning thus allowing me to establish a specific teaching method. Although I follow theory material found on the web as a guide I like to make it interactive through practical examples found in everyday life through movies, commercials, news, music as homework.

In order to map student development I like to apply short tests and always provide constructive feedback.