Spanish for Beginners

Hola everyone, mi nombre es Ruth. I am a teacher. I don’t provide official Pasos resources, but as an experienced Spanish teacher I can support you as you learn español.

Course contents

“I want my Spanish course to mean something!”

There are great courses out there that teach you how to put sentences together in Spanish, focusing on a limited vocabulary and words that are similar in English. They are great, but some people want a course that gives them dialogue, that gives them examples of meaningful texts and conversations, which is what Pasos offers. It is tangible because you will have the coursebook that enables you to look back and to look ahead and know what you are going to learn. It is interesting because you will be able to imagine yourself engaging with people using the sentences, exclamations, questions and phrases that you learn here, and I will encourage you to have fun with that.

“What will I learn?”

Scan through the content of the course by looking at these collapsible menus. There are 14 units in Pasos. As a teacher who appreciates a well structured and thorough course, it will be a pleasure for me to guide you through each and every step of the way. You will see more details of the course contents when you look in the contents page of your Pasos textbook.

How does it work?

You can study without the course book and audio, but I think you will get much more from the video lessons if you buy the book and follow the practice in the book that I suggest. Either way, I am here for you every paso of the way!

The value you get from studying with me?

Teacher support is so useful when you decide to learn to speak Spanish. I will help you in the following ways and more.

• Understand the vocabulary, including what it means, how it sounds, what connections it has with other Spanish and English words, and how to remember it. Vocabulary is the foundation of learning a new language. When you get help to engage with that vocabulary you have a far better chance of being able to recall and use it when you need it.
• When you are on a journey somewhere it is nice to have someone with you who knows the direction and the distance to each waypoint. More than nice in fact! I will explain what you need to know as you need to know it. I will help you maintain real expectations and motivation. It takes time to learn un lenguaje so you need to keep making la decisión that YOU WANT TO SPEAK SPANISH. Take each step of the way with me, and WE WILL GET YOU THERE!
• The Pasos Course Pack includes the 278 page coursebook, 3 audio cds for the listening exercises, the answer key to check your accuracy, the transcript book to read along and get used to the pronunciation, as well as a DVD you can enjoy watching. It will take a year to complete this course, so it is great value for money. Get your copy here. There are many great advantages to this course. Lots of people like physical, paper resources. Learning around a theme a month is great for the human mind because we like a context that we can imagine. It is good for us to have a variety of input and plenty of different types of activities for active learning. In my opinion it is the teacher who pulls all this Spanish off the pages of the book and makes it real for you. All this, in combination with lessons delivered using the Spanish I know you can understand, and you will find it easy to stay on the path to being able to understand clear speech, read articles, enter into conversation, describe experiences and events and write simple texts.
• This is what I can help you to achieve.

About your teacher.

Ruth formalised her Spanish studies with a diploma from the Open University, which included time studying Spanish in Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. She became a fully qualified teacher in 2011 (13 years after starting to teach professionally!) She developed the use of Spanglish in the classroom as a tool to encourage students to use the target language, and has since written and published 3 books which model Spanglish as a method to learn confidence and fluency in Spanish.

When schools closed for the lockdown of 2020, Ruth’s YouTube project, 100 Days of Spanish began. Many people have enjoyed the 100 videos. It was through this project that she met Dan Hall, and began the Daily Word Builder series of videos to increase vocabulary and model fluency.

Ruth is also a gardener, a website developer (this one!), a sister, a daughter, and above all, a mother.