Meet Dr. Jacob Price, Spanish Teacher and newly minted PhD!

By Jacob Price

Tuesday, October 8th 2019

¡Hola! My name is Jacob and I’ll be your instructor for Kickstart Spanish on Lessonface.

I have a BA and MA in Hispanic literatures and cultures and recently earned my PhD in Spanish Literatures and Cultures from Rutgers University this year. I have worked with students from ages 10-60 and enjoy teaching them all.

I’m extremely excited to have this course and I’m really looking forward to meeting you all as participants in the course. The purpose of this is to get comfortable speaking Spanish.

One of my students at the end of the semester said, "Wow Jacob, your voice in English sounds so weird. I've never really heard you speak in English." This is my favorite compliment! That's how I run the show.

That being said, I certainly use "teacher talk" with younger or newer learners, with plenty of hand gestures to ease students into a full immersive style. I prefer to minimize grammar and vocabulary lessons and focuses more on implementing and teaching strategies to use the language in conversation.

This way we can be flexible in discussing topics that are meaningful and relevant to the student in order to maintain high motivation to learn the target language.

I successfully teach Spanish while talking about anything and everything, from fantasy novels to videogames to poetry, movies, current events and environmentalism in Latin America.

There are two different sections of this course: one for teenagers, and one for everybody and in these courses and what we’ll be doing is talking in Spanish!

I know this might seem a little daunting and this might be what has been holding you back from learning Spanish and digging into it but with my 7+ years of university-level Spanish teaching experience, I know how to get a class going and we’re going to have a ton of fun talking about yourselves, meeting new people and how to get to know others in a very comfortable and relaxed environment.

Yes, I’ll be speaking in Spanish the whole time. But! Don’t let that be a drawback. Let that be an opportunity for you to be totally immersed in learning— and don’t worry, I talk slow! It’ll be okay and you’ll come out of this course feeling really good about what you can say and you’ll be clear in your response and in your speech.

One thing that we’ll be going over for sure is pronunciation and you’ll be walking out of this class confident that you can speak, be understood, and understand who you’ll be talking with. So, join now- I’m really excited to have you and I’m really looking forward to the three weeks we’ll be spending together.