About Read to Speak Spanish
Mission
We believe that world would be a better place if everyone learned a language. Our mission is to help learners acquire Spanish through the power of reading. We help learners build proficiency by providing compelling and comprehension-based language materials.
Our Story
I learned to speak Spanish in high school. I credit most of my fluency to my Spanish teacher who taught by pre-teaching vocabulary, and then telling us stories using that targeted language. This was the strong foundation that led me to pursue Spanish in college to study abroad into eventually get my masters in Spanish. Through Spanish, I met incredible people and made lifelong friends. It also helped me better understand the world around me. It helped me understand its rich and complex history and the numerous cultures that make up the Spanish-speaking world. Learning Spanish sparked so much joy in me, and my love of the language grew to the point of wanting to share this joy with others. I wanted to help others learn Spanish, just as my Spanish teacher had helped me. As a third generation teacher (my grandma and mom were both teachers), I knew this was the subject that would help me change the world for the better.
With the goal of becoming a Spanish teacher in hand, I taught my first full on Spanish class as a graduate student at Washington State University in the fall of 2010. We used a textbook, as most university classes do. This was a relief to me; it can be intimidating to teach a language to a group of college students. But I quickly found that the textbook was not a compelling way to teach or learn a language. Then I remembered how powerful stories were for me when I was learning Spanish in high school. I remembered how effective it was to learn some vocabulary and then put it into the context of a story. The search for a better way was on.
In 2013, I attended a workshop on collaborative storytelling in the language classroom with a heavy emphasis on reading. This way of teaching immediately struck a chord with me. I knew that reading activated the same neural pathways as listening. In other words, reading offers the same quality of input as listening. Reading is also a way that to get loads of quality input without the need for a conversation partner. Instantly I knew that the best way to help my students to learn Spanish was to provide compelling and easy to understand stories to the masses.
Coming home from that workshop and implementing storytelling in my classroom was a pivotal moment for me. It was so effective and the students reported that it was their favorite part of the class. Just as I had fallen in love with Spanish with stories, my students were doing the same!
That’s when Read to Speak Spanish was born. Since that time I’ve taught hundreds of students Spanish using highly compelling storytelling. I’ve written hundreds of short stories,written five novels for learners and a collection of short stories for beginners that can help any learner reach the next level. Reading really works as a means to acquisition, and it works really well.
Listen, Read, Interact. Leer es poder.
Andrew J. Snider
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