About Me

My name is Andrew Lawton and I am a college ESL and Spanish professor.  I currently teach at the University of Mary Hardin Baylor and Austin Community College.  I received my bachelors from Syracuse University  and I got my Masters in Spanish from Texas State University.  My family and I live in Austin, TX.  We have three young daughters who take up most of our time. 

Before starting on a career in  teaching  ESL and Spanish at both the middle school level and the college level I worked for three years as an immigration counselor with Catholic Charities.  In this job I basically learned my conversational Spanish.  My co workers spoke only Spanish and my clients were mostly Spanish speakers.  At this job I was exposed to some great ESL teachers who worked in our program.  They inspired me to go into teaching myself.

I really enjoy the process of language learning.  When I was learning Spanish I felt like there were plenty of materials out there to work on  grammar and vocabulary.  What I couldn't find were sites and materials to practice every day language in common life situations.  I was able to read a novel in Spanish but I couldn't smoothly order food in a restaurant or talk casually to friends in a social situation.  I have noticed the same dilemma with my adult ESL students.  I have many really intelligent students who range from engineers to computer programmers who have taken years of English classes.  These students can communicate in English, but it sounds very formal and extremely awkward at times.     I created these lessons to use with my classroom students and to share on the internet.  I plan on creating a similar site for learners of Spanish in the future.

I look forward to hearing from any users of this site.  I welcome constructive criticism and any comments.  If there is a topic you would like to see covered tell me in an e mail.  Thanks!

Andrew Lawton
alawton@austincc.edu