Hello everybody! Welcome to my page, and my first ever blog post (this is exciting!)
The title above is a quote by Ralph Ellison, a fine American novelist that resonates strongly with me, for I am here to build a bridge, to open up some dialogue between us all, and to introduce myself as best I can. My name is Lauren Minion, I'm graduate of Spanish and French, and a native English speaker. I took up Spanish from scratch at the beginning of my four-year degree in University College Dublin, Ireland. At the time this seemed crazy to me, however, through hard work and the help of incredible teachers I am now living in Madrid with my newfound love and appreciation for the Spanish language and culture.
Since graduating, I have worked on an international team with CPL Recruitment in Dublin, an experience that broadened my mind to the ins and outs of the corporate world. My responsibilities included sourcing candidates for vacancies with one of the largest social media platforms in the world and preparing them for interviews. Many of these candidates spoke English as a second language, and so I would help them to ensure that any answers or examples that they wanted to speak about in the interview were explained in a clear and precise way.
I have also worked as a voluntary English Journalist in Bolivia with the Bolivian Express magazine, where I needed to translate and transcribe content and interviews from Spanish into English. These experiences have shown me the most common mistakes that can really slow down a persons’ learning of the language. I have gained further experience as a teacher during my Erasmus year, where I taught in an English school in Bilbao, and through my own modules in university. I know the Spanish and French grammar systems inside out and so I can get to the bottom of any mistakes that my students might make and ensure that they recognise and understand the reason behind the English grammar equivalent.
I am so appreciative of my experiences to date, and now all I want to do is give some back! I love meeting new people from different backgrounds and cultures, and if they have an interest in learning about my language and culture, nothing would please me more than to help them along the way. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to hear about our lesson plans here in Oxinity, or if you’d like to learn more about me!