I am a 33-year-old linguist and language-lover from the DC area.

NOTE: I teach a minimum of four (4) contact hours per student per week.

I first began teaching languages when I was still in college. I began studying Spanish at age 10 and completed AP Spanish and earned the Spanish Award upon graduating. I went on to study advanced Spanish at the University of Maryland, where I also studied German and Arabic.

After graduating with degrees in Philosophy and Linguistics, I continued advanced Arabic studies at the American University in Cairo - specifically, Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic. Since then, I have taught those varieties of Arabic along with Gulf Arabic and Quran / Classical Arabic. I also have a course published on Udemy called Arabic of the Quran from Beginner to Advanced.

I have lived in Bangkok, Thailand for 7 years, where I translate business documents from Thai to English.

I have lived in Italy for the last year. My Italian is quite good and I expect to begin teaching Italian soon.

I hold a BA in Linguistics from the University of Maryland, College Park. It has afforded me keen insight into second-language acquisition and phonology and I find that, far from being merely academic, Linguistics has been a great boon to my practical ability to teach languages.

Beyond that, I studied German and Arabic to the advanced levels at UMD. I studied intensive Arabic at Georgetown University and after graduating from UMD, I continued my Arabic studies at the American University in Cairo. There, I earned a certificate in advanced Arabic.

I have now lived in Thailand for over 7 years, where I became fluent in Thai. I translate business documents from Thai to English when I've got the time and the need for extra loot. I have lived in Italy for the last year and will soon begin teaching Italian, too.

I take a multi-pronged and integrated approach to teaching. What does that mean? By multi-pronged, I mean I teach the language from every angle - accent, vocabulary, phrasing, sentence patterns and syntax. My students and I tackle the language from all angles to get a full view of the language. By integrated, I mean I make considerable use of contemporary media to teach the language. Audio and video are a big part of how I teach because visual cues and context are incredibly useful tools for memory retention. In addition, I encourage good old-fashioned flash cards, or better yet, flash card programs like Anki, which use a spaced repetition algorithm for maximum memory retention.

An often overlooked approach, which I also take, is to encourage outside reading in one's native language about the target language. Reading articles and even academic papers about the target language in English can quickly open new doors and make learning easier.

I also encourage considerable outside reading in English about the culture of the target language. Learning a language, especially as you get farther away from one's own language family, is in large part the study of another culture. You simply can't understand just how profoundly one's culture influences their language until you study. And that's a beautiful thing.