Self-Introduction: Hi. My name is Rachel and I am a Language Teacher from Southern California in the United States. I started teaching at University of California, Irvine in 2004, and I teach English to international students here. Before that, I taught Spanish to English speakers. I’ve been teaching for 30 years now. I’m interested in languages and cultures and I think that learning a language can be a fantastic experience, but it can be hard. It can be challenging. I hope that these videos will help you build your skills so that you can start to feel confident and comfortable speaking English. Hi. My name is Karen Vallejo, and I’m an English as a Second Language Instructor at the University of California in Irvine. I grew up in the state of Illinois, not far from Chicago, about an hour away but I lived mostly in small towns and farming areas. After high school, I wanted to travel and that is how I became interested in teaching English as a language. I did my education mostly on the state of Utah. After that, I came to California and started working at UCI. I have been teaching ESL for over 25 years. One of the things I really enjoy about teaching ESL is having beginning level students who are just beginning to understand how to use English. It really gives me a lot of joy and pleasure when I can help students understand how to use grammar in their speaking as well as in their writing and reading and vocabulary as they grow in their English language skills. I hope you enjoy this course and I wish you all the best. We have worked hard to make it easy for you to understand and hope that it will be the most benefit for you as you pursue your English language studies. Best wishes in all your adventures ahead of you.