teaching spanish to businesspeople

Teaching Spanish To Engineers

May 18, 2007 By Jenny Ryan 3 Comments

Yesterday in class I taught the Spanish words for the days of the week and the months of the year. Then, in order to give the students a chance to use the new vocabulary, I did some oral drills.

Me (in Spanish): “What are the months of the summer?”

The answer I was looking for: “June, July, and August.”

The Answer I Got From An Engineer: “Well, summer doesn’t officially start until June 21st, when the month is almost over. So in order to get 3 full months included in the season you will need to apply the ANSI Standard Of Rounding Up. So the answer would be July, August, and September.”

The Difference Between Teenagers And Adults

February 2, 2007 By Jenny Ryan 9 Comments

1. Me: sitting down to tutor a high school student.

Me: “OK, please get out your Spanish book.”

My student: “Oh. I was supposed to bring my book?”

Me: “THUNK.” (The sound of my head hitting the table in despair.)

2. Me: getting ready to teach a class of businesspeople.

Manager: “[Student 1] and [Student 2] can’t be here today because they are on a business trip. So they were wondering if you’d mind teaching this class on a conference call, because they don’t want to miss anything.”

Me: unable to respond, due to the tears of joy running down my face.

Spanish Meets The Real World

January 20, 2007 By Jenny Ryan 4 Comments

Recently I began teaching a Beginning Spanish class to a group of businessmen. This week’s lesson introduced the numbers from 0-20, and in order to help them practice this new vocabulary I had them do some math problems. I thought this would be very helpful, practical information for them since many of the students work as purchasing agents.

“+ is mÃ¡s, and – is menos,” I explained.

Immediately one of the students, who was also the Chief Financial Officer, piped up:

“You don’t need to know mÃ¡s,” he informed the other students, many of whom report directly to him. “You only need to worry about menos.”