Dustin Cardenas

Online English lessons (A1-C2) from a CELTA certified multilingual American living in Munich.

My Language Teaching Philosophy

Interesting and engaging activities help us learn faster.
Simple and repetitive memorization techniques that don’t have real English context require more energy, effort, time and work. They also makes learning less fun. There will always be the need to remember new things, but when we learn and have fun with purpose we have something else to focus on rather than just memorizing.

Practice is better than study
Speaking gives us the opportunity to see if we are easily understood. It also gives us real English experiences with context. We should use both to adjust and focus our learning efforts.

“Perfection” is not a good goal, understanding is.
About 3.5X more people speak English as a second language than as a first language. Even speakers of English as a first language have disagreements about the “correct” meaning, spelling, pronunciation and usage of English. If we focus only on speaking “right,” we get anxious and stop speaking entirely because we are afraid of making mistakes. What matters most is that we speak and are understood by the person we are communicating with.

I focus on practice.
The best way to learn and retain a language is to actually use it. What this means is we need to practice all four of the language skills; Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing. Practicing what you’ve learned greatly improves your ability to remember and use English in varying situations.