testimonials

I liked Joaquin’s approach; a challenging class using a great workbook, but also a lot of fun, too! And he provides ample time to practice your Spanish in conversations with fellow students. — Alysa Hunton, Development Officer, The Honors College, Kresge Library and Student Affairs

I enjoyed your class very much. I appreciated your easy-going manner and your ability to teach us at our level. — Carl Stone, DDS – University of Detroit School of Dentistry

He (Joaquin Frias) is a wonderful instructor.  He makes the class fun with his outgoing personality and good sense of humor.  It is never boring.  He comes to each class prepared with handouts of conversations between two friends. Our homework assignment is to translate these so we understand them, and then the next week play the part of the friends and read them in class.  He also uses these as a vehicle to illustrate the rules of Spanish grammar and conjugation of verbs, accompanied with additional handouts to help cement these in our memory and provide hard copy for future reference. — James N. Quinn, Former President of Harman Automotive Division, Harvard Industries, Inc.

Thank you for the wonderful teaching/learning experience that you created for our Spanish Class. You made learning fun while at the same time creating a strong foundation of the fundamentals that are so necessary to build upon. I very much appreciated your relaxed approach and bringing different elements of conversation, grammar, writing and reading. — Jane Johnson, President, Osco Inc.

Joaquín is an excellent professor. He has a very dynamic teaching style that engages the students which provides for a powerful learning environment. He is dedicated to having his students learn this language that is so important in our global business world. — Alan Kolod, CFO, VIA Information Tools, Inc.

The class was a pleasure, and you did have to handle a variety of skill levels in it. You were kind enough to work with the different pronunciations of Spanish words for various countries. We were able to successfully get around, dine, sleep, shop and enjoy the companionship of some wonderful Argentineans even though my skill level was less than a beginner…

Those with some proficiency in Spanish from the class should have done very well. — Susan Bayless, Manager, Business Intelligence

I am a Michigan attorney who has been a student of Joaquin Frias for the past four years. I have acted as a legal and business consultant to Canseco-Saldana-Escobedo, a major Mexican law firm, for the past four years. When I accepted the role of consultant four years ago my Spanish was very rudimentary. Joaquin Frias has been my Spanish tutor during this period and has enabled me to become fluent enough to handle all of my day-to-day transactions with my Mexican colleagues in Spanish. His teaching style is to emphasize conversational Spanish using contemporary written material such as newspaper articles and other Spanish language publications. He sets high standards for me as his student and I have found that my progress has been remarkable due to his teaching techniques and patient teaching methods. — Alan L. Schlang, Attorney, Canseco-Saldana-Escobedo, Queretaro, Qro., Mexico

I took Joaquin’s Spanish class in June of 2007 in preparation for an upcoming July trip to visit a friend living in Buenos Aires. I liked Joaquin’s approach; a challenging class using a great workbook, but also a lot of fun, too! And he provides ample time to practice your Spanish in conversations with fellow students. — Alysa Hunton, Development Officer, The Honors College, Kresge Library and Student Affairs, Oakland University

I want to again thank you for your compassion and patience with myself and all my fellow students for the past 6 months. I can now read the majority of the Spanish correspondence I receive through e-mail and other documentation from our Mexico Offices, and when our fellow Mexican employees are speaking, I can at least understand most of what they are saying! — Joe Chemello, Vice President, Walbridge

As a medical graduate in the US, speaking Spanish is a priority if I want to spread my service to the most of my community. My experience with Spanish international was great. You get to speak your first Spanish words and expressions from day one. I have finished Spanish I with a great fund of vocabulary. In addition you get an idea about the culture of the Spanish speaking communities which is as important as speaking their language. My overall impression with Spanish international is excellent and I will continue with in the near future. I will always recommend it for everyone who wants to learn Spanish from the original sources. — Zainab Elsarawy, MD

I found the lessons to be very engaging – every moment was interesting, informative and totally fun. Students formed friendships and were inspired to converse with each other in Spanish. I attribute much of the success of these classes to the personality of Professor Frias. — Elaine Johnston

The teaching methods of Joaquin Frias are very helpful in making the fundamental structure of the Spanish language very understandable to a novice such as myself. The course not only serves to foster conversational Spanish but also includes basic Spanish grammar which helps one to structure words of the language more easily and therefore arise at grammatically correct speaking of the Spanish language. — Carnell Jones

It was truly a pleasure working with you. I cannot believe I understand as much as I do. I am looking forward to seeing you in the fall for más Español! — Diane C. Farmer

I studied Spanish under Joaquin Frias for 6 months in 2008. I learned a great deal in a short time and found Joaquin’s approach to learning interesting and effective. Besides, he has a good sense of humor and I laughed almost as much as I learned.

I would recommend Joaquin to anyone who wants to learn Spanish now. — Joseph J. Weiss, MD

Hola,

Joaquin, both Joan and I enjoyed the Spanish I class. As you were aware, we were shortly off to Spain for two weeks and wanted to be able to fend for ourselves. We wanted to be able to understand enough of the restaurant menus, direct taxis and drivers, understand most of the responses and be able to read the plaques in the churches. While we were understandedly victims of the speed of conversation by the Spanirds, we did get by fairly well. All this with six (6) hour and a half session at the Community House. We tried hard to learn what we could and studied together between five and six hours in the week prior to each class. We got a lot out of this effort and highly recommend your course to anyone who is interested in picking up enough to get by at the level of our need. You did a great job! We feel our time and effort paid off!

Thanks for helping to make our first trip to Spain so worthwhile.

Best, — Ed McCallum

Communication is the key in a psychiatrist’s life. Increasingly one has to be bi-trilingual in this country. Many jobs advertised that I saw in Massachusetts felt that knowing more than one language was a plus. Joaquin’s class provided us with reading, writing and conversational Spanish which was presented in a very down-to-earth, fun manner. Though I will require an interpreter to do the evaluations, I felt that I will be able to follow some conversation due to the classes. Thank you Joaquin. — Asah Keshavan, Psychiatrist

Dear Professor Frias,

Yes, it has been a while since we were under your spell as our instructor in conversational Spanish. I still miss those classes and enjoyed them to the utmost even though I had never taken a language class. I thoroughly enjoyed getting through it. I was fortunate to have had a little previous exposure to Spanish many years ago, and seem to retained enough to enjoy the lessons.

Your command of the language was very evident to all and you handled the class extremely well, despite the varied backgrounds of these students. You seem to have a very natural bent for teaching, which helped so much. You presented the material in a way that inspired us .. you were never critical in a demeaning manner. You made us feel that you appreciated our efforts to learn and this helped us over the difficult passages and vocabulary. You made us feel proud of our achievement. This takes a truly inspired instructor … and you did inspire us. It was a pleasure to be in your class.

Thank you and good luck to you and señora Frias in all that you do.
Hasta la vista !!!!!! — Mary M. Majzoub

My husband I were students of Joaquin Frias in a class at the Birmingham Community House the summer of 2007 and have continued semi-private lessons with him. We are very pleased with our progress. Joaquin is unfailingly polite, friendly, patient and punctual. He is always prepared for class and assigns a variety of homework and class exercises. He is very thorough in his teaching, focusing on the sentence structure, grammar, verb forms and idioms required to learn a language. He addresses the different accents and sounds heard in Spain and other Spanish speaking countries, and he is receptive to requests and suggestions from students. We highly recommend Joaquin to anyone desiring a thorough and practical presentation of Spanish. — Lynn and Ray Chateau

…my company (Dura Automotive) held a series of Spanish classes on-site at our office in Rochester Hills. Joaquin was our instructor and I could not say enough positive things about him/ his teaching ability. First, since Spanish is his native tongue, he is more than qualified. Next, he promoted a working environment where the entire class was engaged and actively participated. Since the majority of the class was introverted mechanical engineers, this was no easy feat. Overall, I would recommend Joaquin to anyone who would consider him for hire. Please feel free to contact me direct if you have further questions.

Thank You,
Jamie Stratford
Product Engineering Manager
Dura Automotive Systems — Jamie Stratford