About the Author

I was born in Mexico City and hold a BS in Communications from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico. I have been teaching Spanish since 2001 to Elementary and Middle School students. I’m the author of several books for the different Spanish levels based upon the National Spanish Standards developed by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) and the most frequently used grammatical structures in the Spanish Language. My emphasis is to help the student achieve fluency through different comprehensible input strategies. I think that reading in the target language will develop long term acquisition of grammar and formal language, but oral communication is essential to achieve fluency, so my books are a combination of oral and reading strategies that will help tremendously student fluency.

 

The teachers' guides and workbooks have been developed to allow the flow of creativity of the student. The themes of the stories have been created to grab the student attention so they can use the grammatical structures to add comments about the story, increase discussion in class, create their own stories and ultimately use those structures to communicate on daily basis. My approach is to work on a natural transition through repetition and reading strategies in a manner that will help the student acquire the target language the same way they learned their first one. Nevertheless repetition and reading are an important piece of the puzzle students need a variety of activities and strategies that our books provide including music and games. The order of the vocabulary and tenses are designed to help the student learn better the concepts. I suggest teachers to include all the content of these materials throughout the school year, but should not feel limited to this curriculum. Teacher’s creativity is not only welcome but expected.

Thanks for the vote of confidence and enjoy your teaching!

Laura Anaya de Zuchovicki