Spanish with Aura Cristina

Hi. I am the graduated Aura Cristina Somarriba Álvares from León, Nicaragua. Since I was I child I wanted to become a teacher and my English teacher in school inspired me even more to become a teacher so I decided to follow that path. I like to teach and I do it as a vocation because I love my field of work.

I studied Science of Education with Spanish as a focus and I took a course in Literature and Communication at the National Autonomous University of León (UNAN), Nicaragua. I graduated in 2001 and since then I have been working as a Spanish teacher. I have worked both in private and public schools with Nicaragua high-school students, but from the year 2004 I have been working with students of different nationalities that comes to Nicaragua to study Spanish as a foreign language. At the moment I am also finishing my Masters of Spanish as a foreign language at UNAN - Managua

I started working for Kulturstudier in 2005. It has been a great experience of exchanging cultural-, social- and political aspects between different cultures. But my favourite part of teaching to Kulturstudier-students is to see how they develop their Spanish-skills and how they use those skills in their everyday life here in Nicaragua. I also enjoy doing different assignments in class with them so we can learn together and develop the language.

If I were to describe a “typical day” for the students in León. They would go to school by daytime, interacting with Nicaraguan students, and exploring the many options León has to offer after school. Many of the students for example sign up for salsa-classes, and that way they can also learn about the language and the Nicaraguan culture outside of the classroom.
To study Spanish in León, Nicaragua is a great opportunity, besides the heat of the city, León is a nice town with it’s whole-hearted and welcoming people. Besides I think it is beneficial to study a language in a place where that language is spoken, it will help with the understanding of the language, and it will be more interesting to learn with the surrounding context of the language and the culture. Other that being beneficial for your Spanish learning León and Nicaragua has so many other things to offer, volcanoes, beaches, museums, lagoons and more.