Weekend Extended English Conversation - IM2

Delia Diaz has taught English and Spanish for twenty years, and French for seven years. She has a doctorate in Education, specializing in English as a Second Language (ESL), a master’s degree in Applied Linguistics with a specialization in ESL and Spanish, and a bachelor's degree in Language Arts with a French major and Russian minor.

When teaching languages, her approach is to teach reading, writing, listening & speaking, and grammar together, in the same lesson, so students understand the target language in its entirety. She has students practice speaking the target language as much as possible during the lessons, so she can correct mistakes, and also enjoys including lessons about culture so students can become comfortable with the language and compare it to their own native tongues.

Diaz’s overall goal is to have her students enjoy learning the target language without getting bored. She encourages them to befriend the language they are learning using their metacognitive thinking, i.e., to think about what they are thinking. This maximizes their familiarity with and enjoyment of the language.