Dr. Sharon is one of the best teachers I have ever had. She truly tricks your brain into learning the language you are studying by seamlessly integrating the words into your daily life. She makes learning the language a multi-dimensional experience, as opposed to a one-dimensional, pen-to-paper flash in the pan. While most teachers sit you down and make you eat your figurative vegetables, Sharon offers a full-bodied digest. Her one-on-one class is enjoyable, fun and relevant. Sharon sneaks grammar into every lesson under the guise of personal, emotional application. She’s taught me the best way to learn linguistic rules is to dress them up in personal narrative and active conversation. She also uses props. By this I mean, if we are talking about a fork, you better believe that Dr. Sharon will have you using a real life tenedor.
In high school, my experience with language was largely unimpactful, distressful even because the language teachers made me feel like foreign language was a currency for getting into college. Making mistakes was scholastically unimpressive and therefore reduced my aptitude to a letter grade. Dr. Sharon stresses that language is a fully cultural, physical and emotional expression, thats mastery is incremental and signified by more than just “getting the answer correct”. In Sharon’s lesson, mistakes are badges of honor— the only means to knowledge. As a result of this, I feel no shame in Sharon’s class, which is quite possibly THE most important ingredient in studying a new language. Sharon speaks almost entirely in Spanish in our lesson, which sounds intimidating, but I quickly came to appreciate it, feeling like both a spectator of a foreign language and a participant grounded in a normal, friendly, everyday, native conversation. She takes you seriously. She’s not afraid to both encompass you with the language and stick you in the middle of it. She never underestimates your ability to hear and, in turn, apply. And this vote of confidence goes a long way.
She teaches language consumption in moderation, not as a brain binge. My entire house is covered in yellow sticky notes with Spanish words because she’s teaching me that it’s a long game of real, tangible integration. If you start making drastic lifestyle changes too quickly, they may not last and are almost guaranteed to fail. If you sneak your vegetables into your pupusa overtime, you might train yourself to eat them.
Olivia
