About Us

Adrienne Cruz
Director, Annapolis Language School

My background in Spanish is long and varied.  After three years of high-school Spanish, I lived in Madrid, Spain for a year at the age of sixteen.  Returning to Annapolis fluent presented a new challenge:  how was I going to MAINTAIN my fluency?

A few years later I changed my major at the University of Delaware to Spanish in order to be able to live in Costa Rica for a semester.  I had maintained my Spanish by befriending foreign students from Guatemala, Colombia, Spain, Mexico and Puerto Rico and living their culture day after day.  I learned to dance Salsa and Merengue.  I spoke so much Spanish those years that my foreign friends told me that my Spanish was better than theirs!!  Grammatically speaking, they were probably right.  I had FINALLY mastered the dreaded Subjunctive!  (It only took me four years of fluently speaking Spanish for it to finally “click”.)

Immediately after graduation, I became a High School Spanish teacher.  For four years I taught full-time.  In the meantime, I decided to get my Master’s in Spanish and Pedagogy (how to teach a Foreign Language).  While there, a lot of emphasis was placed on PROFICIENCY and THE NATURAL APPROACH and TPR.  I walked away a better teacher because of that experience.

I continued to teach Spanish, moving on to the College Level after moving to Chicago with my Puerto Rican husband (another opportunity to practice my Spanish – yeah!).  For the next decade, I taught every Spanish class available at a half-dozen colleges in Chicago, San Diego and Annapolis AND I raised four children.

All told, I have over 16 years experience teaching Spanish to High School students, College students, children and adults.  All these years I have taught using the traditional methodology:  textbooks, grammar explanations and verb conjugations.  In 2005 I attended an ACTFL conference where Blaine Ray led a workshop on TPRS®, Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling.  My eyes were opened --- wide!  Finally I had stumbled upon a DIFFERENT method of teaching Foreign Languages.

This method combines TPR (Total Physical Response) with Storytelling and Easy Readings in a fun and natural way.  I practiced the method on my high school students and my own children (who were 8, 3 and 3 at the time).  All of them LOVED IT!  Unfortunately, I couldn’t change the curriculum at the high school, so I was forced to put it aside.

Three years later, I have decided that teaching Spanish to adults who just want to SPEAK the language is a priority.  Though I still teach almost full-time at the college level, I am so excited to be bringing this technique to the Annapolis area.

For anyone who has ever said that they “just can’t learn a foreign language”, I can finally disagree whole-heartedly.  This method mimics the natural way we all learned our native tongue.  And we ALL learned to speak at least that language!
                                                                      

Senorita Kayla

Senorita Patty