LANGUAGE TUTORING IN VALENCIA

Have you ever wanted to learn a language without sweating blood? 😰

Absorbing grammar and lexicon while you enjoy yourself so much you don’t even realize you’re actually learning?

Learning a language entails a bit of boring work.

Sitting down, opening textbooks, doing homework. 📚📚

But that should be just a fraction of your learning endeavour.

Would you like to learn while and by having fun? 😎

Well, I got you covered 😉 There’s a language tutoring in Valencia ready for you.

Hi there! I’m Fabio and if you’ve read who I am, you know I’m crazily fond of languages.

Among other things, I translate, design multilingual websites, create self-teaching materials.

Basically,  I breathe languages and I also love devoting myself to language tutoring, especially about Spanish, Italian and English.

And… you know what? 😮

The majority of a language can be acquired in a fun yet effective way, quite far from your desk.

My language tutoring takes place in Valencia, Spain. This is my home base.

It’s a wonderful city with a lot to explore: ancient heritage, futuristic buildings, amazing food and spirits, breath-taking beaches.

Not to mention the benign climate all year round and the ease to get here by flight, train or car.

Join me strolling along the Turia Gardens, doing groceries at the Central Market and tasting the local delicacies. 🦐🥯🍷

Acquiring a language needn’t be pain and suffering.

Do you want to learn clothes and garments in Spanish? Ditch the visual dictionary and come shopping with me in Calle Colón. 👠

Do you struggle with talking? Let’s strengthen that skill whilst visiting a fascinating art exhibit downtown. 🖼️

Do you feel like refreshing verb tenses? Tell me what’s your story while sipping a glass of tiger nut milk, locally known as horchata. 🥛

Summarizing, it’s a wonderful place for language tutoring.

But let me tell you a bit how I got here.

How did I get from being a struggling monolingual to tutor languages?

When I was a child, one day I was flipping through the pages of my atlas, one of my favourite readings.

There I found a linguistic map, indicating Italian as being spoken by a mere 0,70% of world’s population.

Panic. 😯

What? Not even one percent of my fellow earthlings speak my mother tongue?

That was upsetting.

I had a linguoclaustrophobic attack: the one you experience when you realize you’re confined behind the walls of your monolingualism.

I saw no solution but learning other languages.

And that was the beginning.

English came first. Then German. Then Spanish.

Then, linguistic hell broke loose.

Dutch, Hebrew, Turkish, Yiddish, Portuguese, Persian, Croatian, Catalan, Welsh, French, Breton, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese… 

It soon morphed into my all-consuming passion.

I delved into 18-century textbooks, linguistic encyclopedias, self-teaching audiovisual courses, heavy dictionaries. 📚

I enrolled in a thousand courses of all kinds: online, offline, intensive, extensive, free, expensive, group courses, individual courses.

I moved abroad, attended workshops, spoke and wrote languages in my studying and working environments.

To make a long story short, I’ve been browsing anything language-related I could get my hands on since I was a pre-mustache kid. 👦

And as you may imagine, I have made all kind of possible mistakes, lost a lot of time and money pursuing unrealistic goals through nonsensical strategies.

That was useful, though.

Why?

Because it laid the foundation of the techniques I now myself employ and I teach to my students.

What are the principles of your language tutoring?

Thanks for asking. 😀

First of all, we need to get rid of a few urban legends.

Among them:

• you cannot learn a language due to your age, be eight or eighty-eight,
• you cannot reach fluency in a language without leaving your country, from your own home,
• you cannot achieve mastery in a language without astronomical sums of money,
• you have no talent for languages.

No way.

You are just as good as anybody else. You only haven’t found your way to learn a language.

I’m not surprised.

That happens to most of us for a bunch of reasons: inefficient public schools, dreadful teachers, not knowing how you learn best, wrong tools, etc.

So, how do I teach you stuff?

These are the main point of my approach:

1# Pragmatic learning: unless you want to pursue a career in Linguistics, you do not need to binge day and night on grammar.

Does this ring a bell:

Uf, I drilled so much If Clauses – Type 3 but now, how do I tell the receptionist the airco in my room is leaking?

2# Self-teaching: to find a good language school can be darn difficult.

Group teaching, the way it is commonly carried out, it’s a waste of time.

There’s a lot of sterile academicism, too much emphasis on theory and little attention to individual needs.

If you can’t find a language school worth your money and time, learn languages on your own! It can be amazingly productive.

Does this ring a bell:

I tried several courses in several schools and learned little. I presume I lack the language gene.

3# Behaviour hacking: whatever your learning approach, sooner or later you’re going to hit a wall.

Maybe it’s because the language you’ve been learning is so different from yours.

Perhaps you do not have as much spare time as you used to.

Possibly you have lost along the way some of the motivation you have started with.

Does this ring a bell:

Oh, I have no time for this (anymore).

Trust me, anyone can be fluent in any language. 😉

How does this language tutoring in Valencia work?

This is how my language tutoring in Valencia works.

I am available from time blocks of one hour minimum ⏰ up to several days full time. 🗓️

The first time we meet, we draw together a learning path.

It’s based on your goals, the resources you have at your disposal, how much time you’re willing to invest, who you are as a person, how you learn best, etc.

As there is no one else like you in the world, it makes all the more sense to have a learning strategy tailored to you specifically.

I can check the progress you’ve been making as a self-learner as little as once every two weeks, or guide you through hand in hand eight hours per day during a month.

It all depends on where you are on your language-learning journey and where you want to get.

Among my clients:

• Travellers willing to have a good time in the city and brush up their linguistic skills in the meantime,
• Students interested in improving as fast as possible their fluency in order to pass an exam,
• Executives on a bleisure visit looking for linguistic support and light-hearted companionship after work,
• Job seekers in need of an effective way to get back on the linguistic track at an accelerated pace,
• Newcomers settling down here, willing to learn the language of this sun-drenched area they now call home.

To learn a language having fun is absolutely possible. However, there’s a caveat. ⚠️

If you want to go for an official certificate like the Portuguese DUPLE C2 or the Spanish DELE C2, we need to swot up or we’ll fail.

Textbooks, bloc notes, post-its, dictionaries and all this stuff.

If you want to make a stunning impression at a job interview or lecturing in a convention, more of the same.

Good.

Now, you may want to know what they say about me:

And having said that…

Shall we talk?