Hi Everybody!

[Tracy]

Hi,

My name is Tracy, and I am a beginner here at Spanishpod101. I love languages, and was able to live in Germany for a year during college after studying german for 2 years. I love the cultural insights language studies offer, not to mention the possibility of connecting with people in a new way. I live on the central coast of California, and I work part time in a cardiology clinic with lots of great women from Mexico. I'd love to be able to speak with them a little, and also I want to be able to be more gracious with my spanish speaking patients. I also work part time at a great little B&B in Carmel and we have guests from Latin America who I will have fun speaking with a little bit. I am excited to get started and I really love the fun casual but very informative approach used here. Last time I studied language it was a pretty stiff affair - lame dialogues, outdated stuff....this feels really fresh and I am loving all of the cultural commentary.

Bye for now!

Tracy

[Joseph]

¡Buen día, Tracy!

Let me be the first to welcome you. ¡Muy bienvenida! It's great to have you "entre nosotros" (among us). It sounds like you're really going to have a lot of opportunities to apply what you learn here. And, in my opinion, that's one of the most important factors of language learning.

Here at SpanishPod101, we try to create an atmosphere that encourages students to lose their inhibitions by offering content that is relavant to life. Obviously, in order to do this, we need to learn certain structures, and so we need to get into grammar, sometimes, pretty deeply; but, we try to do so in such a way that our students can see the end goal, that they know why they're learning what they're learning. We feel that it is hard to stay motivated and sharp when this end goal is not in sight.

One way that we continue to provide relavant content is by taking suggestions from our students. There is a thread in the Forum called "Lesson Suggestions". There, you can let us know which lesson topics you would like to learn (i.e. patient relations in a doctor's office), what kind of grammar topics you need help with (i.e. expressions of possibility) and at which level you would like to learn these (i.e. Beginner).

The most recent Beginner Lessons on Literature and the Upper Intermediate Lessons on how to negotiate a contract were submited to us from students. So, this should give you an idea of how customized your studies with us can really be. All you have to do is let us know!

Also, if you have any questions on a lesson, just drop us a comment, no matter if that lesson was published yesterday or months a go. We check all of the comments regularly and usually respond within hours.

In any case, thanks for being part of our community and I look forward to assisting you in your learning process.

Saludos cordiales,
Joseph