Hello, I’m Aridane and I’ve designed the 'ponte a hablar' experience.
My goal is to help you make a good impression with people who read your writing or listen to you when you approach them in Spanish.
And my real and ultimate goal is to allow you to make the most of opportunities you otherwise wouldn’t have access to.
For me, speaking Spanish well
doesn’t necessarily mean having the same accent as a native speaker, a super rich vocabulary or speaking mega fast.
That’s useless, if you still cause a bad impression with literal translations from your own language, and useless because there are so many different 'Spanish' accents!
I don’t want that to happen to you. That’s why, I emphasize correcting these kind of mistakes in my classes.
My objective is to help you make a good impression and earn the respect of your reader or the person you’re speaking with.
I’ll tell you a story:
I love a challenge, and none is too great for me!
Once I have a task, I am fully committed to it, no matter how challenging. That’s true for all aspects of my work.
And once you are my student, I am fully committed to your progress.
I always teach, sometimes without even realizing, I must have inherited that.
I love to break down structures that seem too complex and present them as simple so you can learn right away, enjoy, and see how easy it really is.
My motto is:
As early as in childhood our mind works in an inherently logical way
and we can benefit from that to speed up our learning process.
I’ll be with you every step of the way until you achieve your goal,
you just need to be willing to take that first step. Sounds easy, right? Well, it is.
MY STORY
I love languages. I love to break them down to study them. And I’ve always been that way.
It’s something I don’t usually tell everyone, but when the other kids were counting the days until the start of the summer so they could play outside, I was counting the days for a different purpose: I wanted to have spare time so I could study other languages. I loved studying those almost magical structures. A while later I discovered the world of translations with Latin and Greek, and I was even translating fragments of the Iliad and Odyssey! Of course I was the first of my class... but there’s nothing like feeling passion for something.
I know what you’re thinking, this girl was a “bookworm”, and yes I was! The good thing is that now you can benefit from that
MY PROFESSIONAL STORY
I’m a philologist, with a degree in Anglo-Germanic Philology from the University of Barcelona. As soon as I finished my studies, having also completed two postgraduate programs at the UB (Certificate of Pedagogical Aptitude and Teaching of Spanish as a Second Language) I started working as a non native English teacher in private and public schools and in companies such as Deutsche Bank, Corte Inglés and SAP, first in Barcelona and later in Mannheim and Hamburg.
I was a Spanish and English teacher at the University of Mannheim (Germany).
I have accumulated over 10 years of experience in international businesses (SunMicrosystems, Oracle) and I’m also a translator and proofreader and the founder of 'ponte a hablar en inglés'.
All of that ended up helping in the creation of this program, specially designed to help you.
Because I’ve gone through all those phases, and because I speak 5 languages, I ended up developing my own learning method based on my own experience. From my own experience I know the typical mistakes in translations. I know where to expect them, how to avoid them, and the vocabulary and dynamics of international business. I know I can help you get where you want to be.
Also, recently, and in order to be able to help my students even more in this process, I trained as a Mentor at the Asociación Española de Mentoring y Coaching (AMCES), obtaining the final title of 'Mentora Diplomada'. Because learning and perfecting a language is much more than applying rules, you need to be encouraged constantly and you need to know you can do this.
Added bonus:
Nowadays, when I am not working in my batcave (I'm also a Marvel fan), you'll find me walking my dog, reading a good history novel or even, why not, also watching some Netflix. And eventhough I am passionate about my work, my family comes always first. I lived in the beautiful city of Hamburg for about 10 years and now I live again in my dear home town Barcelona. If I started talking about all the sports I've ever practised we would never end, so let's say that martial arts, dancing and yoga have been an important part of my life 😉