My lessons are always tailor-made. I want my students to feel engaged during the class and be assured that they are learning what they need at the pace they want.

Details

 Learn Spanish with Ian Wenzel-Garay MATS Graduate, University of Illinois at Chicago Before we discuss the mechanics of grammar or the details of scheduling, I want to share a fundamental belief about how language learning should feel. The thirty-four lesson grammar path that follows is your roadmap for how the Spanish language works, but the content we use to learn it—the vocabulary, the example sentences, the conversation topics—will be customized entirely to you. A bit about my approach and why it might work for you. With my background from the MATS program at UIC and my experience as a K-12 teacher, I bring more than just textbook grammar to the table. I understand the linguistics behind how English speakers acquire Spanish as a second language, and I have real-world experience with how the language lives and breathes in Mexico and beyond. What follows is a breakdown of two student profiles with different budgets, different time availabilities, and different goals. Each plan is optimized to make the most of our time together while being realistic about how much life allows you to do outside of our sessions. The Structure Plan This first plan is best for consistent tutoring but limited time for homework. You cannot study for two hours every day. For a budget of approximately one hundred forty dollars per month, you take one session each week. Your daily study load would be light, just fifteen to twenty minutes, three to four times a week. Your tool stack would include me as your weekly checkpoint and drilling session, a daily app like Duolingo or Babbel, and an AI helper like ChatGPT for quick clarifications. Your rhythm would look something like this. From Monday through Thursday, you spend just fifteen minutes on your app. You might ask ChatGPT to explain the preterite tense. On Saturday, we meet for an hour. The Sprint This plan is best for the person with a deadline. You will need serious time. You should finish the thirty four lesson grammar path in two to three months. For a budget of approximately two hundred eighty to four hundred twenty dollars per month, we would meet two to three times each week. Your daily study load would be heavy, two to three hours every single day. Dreaming Spanish for daily hours of comprehensible listening input. A textbook like the Practice Makes Perfect series for daily writing drills. And it would include a language exchange app like HelloTalk or Tandem for casual weekly chat with native speakers. We meet to introduce new grammar. We meet to practice grammar. Then we meet for intensive drilling on that same grammar point. Then continue practice and listening input. On Friday, we meet for a conversation class designed to use only that new grammar and the grammar from previous lessons. On the weekend, you consume media, perhaps Netflix in Spanish. The Grammar Regardless of which plan you choose, we will move through this grammar path at your pace, always using your interests as the vehicle. We start with the present tense. Then with subject pronouns and the verb ser, then move through nouns and gender, definite and indefinite articles, and regular ar, er, and ir verbs. We tackle the critical distinction between ser and estar, explore common irregular verbs like ir, venir, tener, and hacer, and master the backwards construction of gustar. We cover stem changing verbs, irregular yo forms, and reflexive verbs. Once the present tense feels solid, we move into describing and pointing. We learn how to make adjectives agree with nouns and where to place them. We cover possessive adjectives like mi, tu, and su, and demonstrative adjectives like este, ese, and aquel. We then tackle the often confusing object pronouns, starting with direct object pronouns like lo, la, los, and las, and moving to indirect object pronouns like le and les. Then the past. We begin with an introduction to the regular preterite tense, then learn the regular imperfect tense. The most important lesson in this phase is learning to choose between preterite and imperfect, understanding when to use each. We finish with the ultra common irregulars in the preterite that you will use every single day. The next part is the future and giving commands. We learn the simple future using ir a plus infinitive, then move to the actual future tense conjugation. We cover formal commands for usted and ustedes, informal commands for tú, and finally the nosotros commands that let us say let's go or let's eat. Lastly, we cover the nuances that make you sound like a natural speaker. Prepositions, relative pronouns, and then enter the subjunctive mood. The conditional tense, si clauses for if then situations, the present perfect, and finally the passive voice and the impersonal se.