Here's the scoop!
From how Spanglish Language Solutions began to Monisha’s teaching style and experience, find the details here.
Jump to:
Here's the scoop!
From how Spanglish Language Solutions began to Monisha’s teaching style and experience, find the details here.
Jump to:
Here's the scoop!
From how Spanglish Language Solutions began to Monisha’s teaching style and experience, find the details here.
Jump to:
About Spanglish Language Solutions
About Spanglish Language Solutions
The Story
The next exam was coming up and they didn’t know what to do – except to ask for help. One “Can you help me study? I’m so confused.” sparked the flame to what is now Spanglish Language Solutions.
What began as tutoring a few classmates in the sophomore year of high school transformed into tutoring university peers, and later, students of secondary and tertiary education. At the end of a particular tutoring session, the parent of the tutee expressed their frustration about not being able to communicate OSHA safety protocols to Spanish speaking support staff at the industrial plant worksite. And just like that, “You think you could teach me Spanish?” opened another door – and increased the passion for teaching Spanish to others. From there, individual and small group Spanish classes began to form and the momentum picked up – until the world paused to the Pandemic. Amongst the chaos, confusion, and the unknown, this was somehow the perfect moment of silence. To focus. To build. To set goals. To do better. To make it official.
Founded in Autumn 2020, Spanglish Language Solutions (SLS) is backed by more than three decades of personal Spanish language experience and nearly two decades of professional instructional experience imparted by founder and lead instructor Monisha Acosta Murillo. Setting out to support Spanish language explorers on their journey to conversational fluency and proficiency, Spanglish Language Solutions is just really getting started.
The first services of Spanglish Language Solutions were: tutoring offered to high school and university level students; Spanish classes (that were effective but did not have a clear learning path); and document translation. Trial and error helped define SLS’s true students and lean into more clarity about the language solutions that are offered. Now, Spanglish Language Solutions is dedicated to supporting adult Spanish language explorers through small group classes and 1-on-1 personalized lessons.
Monisha’s teaching style, evolving from her personal adventures with independent foreign language learning and her effective professional instructional experience, create a virtual classroom that exposes students to growth through immersive lessons, context-rich vocabulary, and actionable feedback.
The Mission
Spanglish Language Solutions exists to support language explorers on their journey of Spanish language acquisition through immersive lessons that boast context-rich vocabulary and actionable feedback.
The Vision
Spanglish Language Solutions’ vision is to connect communities through the exploration of Spanish language learning.
Core Values
Multilingualism: preparing language explorers for real Spanish communication and creating a foundation for future foreign language learning.
Transformation: leading students to observable Spanish language growth through comprehensive, learner-centered lessons.
Exploration: encouraging learners to push the limits of their language skills through use in varying contexts and tones.
Lifelong learning: equipping students with the ability to identify reputable tools and resources for continuous growth through guided and independent study.
Global Connection: linking communities through effective communication that leads to cultural understanding, acceptance, and inclusion.
The Logo
Spanglish Language Solutions’ graphic mark is a speech bubble with ellipsis that represents the conversational fluency and proficiency able to be achieved by its Spanish language explorers.
Yellow represents the clarity of impactful lessons, the optimism of successful language learning, and positive energy transmitted by an instructor who gets their students.
Blue represents the observable progress that is made through immersive lessons and the confidence that learners have in themselves to communicate fearlessly.
Green represents the growth of Spanish language explorers and the balance brought to effective communication through context-rich vocabulary.
Red represents the ambition of learners that continue to excel through receipt of actionable feedback and the bold choice they make to overcome learning obstacles.
Language Solutions
Spanish classes: Spanish classes are designed to enhance language growth, vocabulary expansion, and real-world communication skills for Spanish language explorers in a small group setting. Assorted class themes introduce learners to practical language use, simplify the rules and principles of the Spanish language structure, and provide comprehensive lessons that encourage independent learning for continued improvement and success.
¡Más Práctica!: ¡Más Práctica! was designed to provide more practice and additional support to Spanish language explorers that can benefit from personalized study plans and corrections. These one-on-one sessions help learners get past their current language learning obstacles by receiving support that is customized to their particular strengths and language goals.
About Monisha Acosta Murillo
About Monisha Acosta Murillo
¡Mucho gusto!
Hola, ¡Soy Monisha! I’m a native Spanish speaker, veteran Spanish tutor, certified Spanish World Language educator, and foreign language adventurer with a passion for language learning and supporting other language explorers on their Spanish learning journey.
I began tutoring Spanish during my sophomore year of high school and have continued to do so since then. From tutoring students, I was presented an opportunity to teach Spanish to a parent from “zero.” From there, the idea of Spanglish Language Solutions was born. It’s crazy to think that I’ve been transforming language journeys for nearly 20 years. Outside of informal instruction, I’ve used Spanish in many professional contexts: 4 years of grocery retail and management; 3 years of customer service in clothing retail; 11 years in financial services and life insurances sales; 3 years of interpreting and translating for deaf, hearing impaired, and speech impaired clients that use telecommunications relay services (TRS); and 11 years of public education instruction ranging from grades K-12. Of course, the time frame of some of these professions overlap each other.
Using my personal, professional, and technical experience, I present Spanglish Language Solutions to you with this vision: to help Spanish language learners experience real progress whether studying independently or with guidance; encourage language exploration and creativity; and connect communities by way of successful communication.
If you’re ready to experience a transformation in your Spanish language skills, you’re in the right place!
Language Variety & Dialect
I teach Latin American Spanish – as opposed to European Spanish. When speaking about plural groups, I choose to use ustedes over vosotros. My lessons are based around traditional and formal Spanish language while incorporating standards from the Real Academia Española (RAE) – and I do work to include some casual, informal, and colloquial language as well. Most of the colloquial and casual Spanish that I share are from Mexico and Honduras, the two countries that I have the most personal connection with. Other colloquial and casual language that I share come from just living life: picking up phrases from my Spanish-speaking friends and acquaintances, media consumption, etc.
My Teaching Style
My teaching style evolves from my personal, professional, and technical experience with Spanish, as well as incorporates techniques I’ve used and created for my independent language exploration of French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole.
I introduce themes to Spanish language explorers by drawing from their existing knowledge, cognitive skills, and metalinguistic awareness (the ability to recognize language as a functional system, understand the rules and structure of the language enough to correct mistakes, and navigate the language well enough to communicate effectively in different settings). I support learners in establishing language connections and building a solid language learning foundation by offering language and grammar comparisons to show similarities and differences between the Spanish and English languages. I’ve found that this makes learning more relatable and allows learners to participate in language learning with more confidence due to the ease of understanding.
Because Spanish is a different language, there isn’t always a language rule that can be equally compared to English – it’s just different because it is. I work to simplify learning topics so that lessons are easily understood and ultimately lead to real, practical and creative use of Spanish language. My teaching techniques encourage vocabulary growth through expansion (to be able to participate in conversations on a variety of topics) and through deepening (to be able to talk about particular topics with more detail).
I teach in a way that allows learners to excel both with guidance and through independent learning by sharing and encouraging the use of my own original and pre-existing, non-affiliated learning support tools and resources. At times, independent learning can be as necessary as guided learning because it gives Spanish language explorers control over their journey and an opportunity to focus on vocabulary according to the reason why they are learning Spanish. Someone learning Spanish for leisure pleasure may not need access to the same information and learning techniques as someone who is learning as part of a required course that they’re not really interested in anyway. Someone who needs access to Spanish language for professional business purposes may not need the same care and encouragement as someone who wants to reclaim their lost native language. Until a special USB is invented to allow brain-to-brain transfer of foreign language knowledge, learners still have to do their part.
Language Study & History
I grew up speaking Spanish and English concurrently. It wasn’t until middle school when I was actually introduced to formal Spanish learning in a classroom setting. It was a one-quarter class that I found enjoyable simply because I had never been in a Spanish class before. I knew all of the information that was covered in this 9-week long class because I already spoke Spanish. Although I still found it fun, it was also where my language trauma began as my teacher would semi-angrily ask me to stop raising my hand to answer questions and to give my classmates a chance – even though more than half of them weren’t interested.
Moving on to high school, there was a two-year requirement for foreign language studies. Naturally, I completed the two years and continued to choose Spanish as my elective for junior and senior year as well. Why not? I already spoke Spanish and it was an easy A. Even though these classes were super easy, I found myself reflecting back to my middle school experience and occasionally pretended not to know some of the information the teacher shared. It was quite funny to hear my Spanish teachers compliment me on my pronunciation and progress – as they didn’t recognize me as Hispanic or Latina. Hidden in plain sight, right?
Fast forward to college when my Spanish language studies went deeper. My college course work was not composed of “this is how to say this in Spanish” type classes. For some reason, many people tend to think that when I say I studied Spanish in college. My studies were more on literature by authors like Gabriel García Márquez, Benito Pérez Galdós, and Julio Cortázar; the styles and meanings of work by artists and sculptors like Salvador Dalí, Frida Khalo, Diego Rivera, and Beatriz González; the phonetic transcription and articulatory phonetics of the Spanish language; advanced grammar and composition writing; the history of various countries, important persons, and conquests; and lexical studies on morphology and semantics. I’m talking about 14-page minimum essays on Spanish language diminutives and augmentatives – written in Spanish. It brings back nightmares just writing this. But thinking back on it, I had no idea that it would bring me to where I am today!
Because I was maxed out on Spanish classes, I was made to choose an additional foreign language. French enters the scene. I successfully completed two beginner-level French courses and participated in the La Table meetings that were held on campus throughout the week. La Table meetings were a great opportunity for me to meet with a group of other French language explorers and native French speakers with the goal of conversing – just to talk. I learned how textbook language was modified to be used more naturally and was able to receive helpful corrections when I made mistakes. The most difficult part of learning French was trying to speak without pronouncing the words with a Spanish-speaking accent. At the end of these courses, I saved the ridiculously priced textbook in the back of the closet and was satisfied with remembering the “Je voudrais un livre” that played on the cassette tape in the furnace of the school on Hocus Pocus as the Sanderson sisters entered. And at the age I was when this song was released, I also realized that I had no business singing Lady Marmalade’s “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?”
A few years later, I was introduced to the Portuguese song Dona de mim by Brazilian artist Iza. My best friend had hit me with another great song! I immediately added the song to my playlist along with Ginga, another song by the same artist. I quickly dove into the lyrics and almost immediately saw Portuguese as a cross between French and Spanish. It brought back memories from the song Magalenha by Sergio Mendes and how I could not get my tongue to move fast enough to keep up with his song. Portuguese was my first independent-study language. I decided that if I was going to learn Portuguese, why not get back into French, too? Or at least use what I learned in French class to help me learn Portuguese. I began learning through subtitles on Netflix programs that I was already familiar with, through song lyrics, and random post saves on Pinterest. And because life is mysterious, my ears would suddenly open when I would hear Portuguese spoken in public spaces like the food market. And you guessed it. Yes, I’d try eavesdropping on the conversations to see if I could understand what the chisme was. No shame here. Just language learning!
In hopes of new opportunity, I relocated to a different state. After driving around to get to know the new area, it was instantly clear who the majority groups were in the community. Enters Duolingo featuring Haitian Creole. Those streaks had me feeling great about my skills until I realized I could only say “M ap bwè dlo” and “Yo manje diri ak pwa.” The lack of progress on Duolingo pushed me into vocabulary study to learn about the things that truly interested me. The exploration of Haitian Creole led me to create my own study technique to help me learn more of the phrases that I felt were essential. My French studies also allowed me to draw comparison between it and Haitian Creole due to their similarities.
As a language adventurer, I’ve definitely been able to create and implement my own learning techniques. I won’t go so far as to say that I manage French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole in the same way that I do with English and Spanish, but I will share that learning one additional language opens the doors for more language growth.
